The Strikeforce-to-UFC fighter defection continues.
Former Strikeforce middleweight champion Cung Le will enter the UFC and debut against Vitor Belfort. The UFC has not announced the fight, but Belfort said on his website late Friday the matchup was in place.
Belfort vs. Le, according to Belfort, will take place Nov. 19 at UFC 139 in San Jose, Calif., which is Le’s home training base. Le joins Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem and welterweight champ Nick Diaz as fighters who have switched promotions since Zuffa announced its purchase of Strikeforce earlier this year. And light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson is widely believed to be returning to the UFC, as well.
Le (7-1, 7-1 Strikeforce), who will turn 40 next spring, has been out of action since a knockout win over Scott Smith in June 2010. That victory avenged his only loss, which came seven months earlier when Smith knocked him out.
All seven of Le’s pro MMA wins have come by stoppage, including the March 2008 middleweight title fight against Frank Shamrock in which he broke Shamrock’s arm with a barrage of kicks and won the belt. Le is also unbeaten in his professional kickboxing career.
But after going 18 months without defending his title, Le relinquished the belt to focus on an acting career. Le has appeared in several movies, and will appear in the forthcoming film “The Man With the Iron Fists” along with Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu and Dave Bautista, “Batista” of WWE wrestling fame, who has been long rumored to be pursuing an MMA deal with Strikeforce.
Belfort (20-9, 9-5 UFC) will be back to work quickly after his last outing, in which he made quick work of Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 133. Belfort handed Akiyama a knockout loss just 1:52 into the first round. That fight was Belfort’s first since being knocked out by Anderson Silva in a middleweight title fight at UFC 126.
Belfort is now 2-1 in his return to the UFC, including a knockout win over Rich Franklin. After not fighting in all of 2010, Belfort will now fight three times in 2011, making this his most active period in five years.
UFC 139, though not yet made official by the UFC, will take place at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. The last time Belfort fought there was for Strikeforce against Alistair Overeem, who like Le also just signed with the UFC.
UFC 139 originally featured a heavyweight title main event between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos. But that fight was moved to the promotion’s first show on the Fox network one week earlier.
Vitor “The Phenom” Belfort (20-9) today 
In the last three years, the Strikeforce middleweight title has been vacated more times than it’s been defended, and 2010 has been another long year for the promotion’s 185-pound division. Its champion, Jake Shields, whipped its big free agent acquisition, Dan Henderson — and then promptly bolted for the UFC. And then a much-discussed middleweight tournament failed to materialize.