(Buy all of the Lombard stock you can….wait…he WHAT?! THEN SELL DAMMIT, SELL!!)
If you are the type of MMA fan that gets his news from CagePotato and only CagePotato, we’d like to thank you for your dedication. Surely you will be rewarded in the afterlife for your selfless sacrifice. At the same time, you’ve more than likely missed out on all of the middleweight calamity that has happened over the past few days, as we deemed it less important than photos of mutilated hands, anti-Mandy Moore smear campaigns, and things of that nature. Clearly we made the right choice, but like we said, we appreciate your dedication.
To sum up the middleweight soap opera in a few sentences, Vitor Belfort tried to call out Chris Weidman, stating both a respect for the fact that Weidman is the top dog at 185 (as we previously stated), and realizing that a win over Weidman would be the easiest path to another shot at Anderson Silva. Weidman promptly denied Belfort, claiming that he had all the respect in the world for the former LHW champ, but simply put, “[he] had his shot” and “right now is my time.”
Meanwhile, in the outskirts of Mississippi, Johnny Cash enthusiast Alan Belcher switched his sights from Michael Bisping to that of Vitor Belfort, which seemed appropriate to us considering that we also called for this matchup. Being that there is no way in hell that a fight between Belfort and Belcher could be anything short of extraordinary, for reals this time, we imagine that most of you agreed with us.
Well, it appears that the dominoes are falling into place like a house of cards, because Belfort and Belcher have verbally agreed to face one another at UFC 153 in Rio, via their respective Twitter accounts.
Belcher hinted at the fight yesterday with the following:
“My next fight will be the biggest of my career! I may be taking a trip down south, very south. #UFC #belcher4champ“
“I will fight anyone.although I want to fight someone who will challenge me!I want to fight @vitorbelfort in his home country in October #UFC“
To which Vitor responded:
“#belcher lets make this fight #ufcrio in oct 13″
Although there has yet to be an official confirmation from the UFC as of this writing, the fight is listed on both men’s Sherdog pages, and you gotta imagine that this will be booked in the immediate future. Not only is Vitor a huge draw in Brazil, but the aforementioned fireworks are all but guaranteed when these two collide.
Belfort has picked up two straight stoppage wins since ending up on Anderson Silva’s highlight reel at UFC 126, first pummeling Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 133, then choking Anthony Johnson’s fat ass right out of the UFC at UFC 142. He was scheduled to face off against long time rival Wanderlei Silva at UFC 147, but suffered a hand injury in training that forced him to pull out from the main event matchup. Currently, oddsmakers have Belfort as a slight favorite over Belcher, but also have the likelihood of “The Phenom” withdrawing due to last minute injury at -1600.
Belcher, on the other hand, has scored four straight victories in the UFC, most recently telling said oddsmakers to go f*ck themselves by pounding out the heavily favored Rousimar Palhares at UFC on FOX 3. Belcher has also finished five of his last 6 opponents inside of the second round, and has not truly lost since getting upset by Jason Day at UFC 83 (yes, I am saying that his UFC 100 fight with Sexyama was a draw at worst. Deal with it.).
UFC 153 is scheduled to go down at the HSBC Arena in Rio De Janeiro on October 13th.
Who do you like for this, Potato Nation?