MMA News April 21 2011

By: Clay

-Vitor Belfort and Yoshihiro Akiyama will lock horns in August at UFC 133 in Philly.
-Randy Couture has announced that his upcoming April 29 fight vs Lyoto Machida at UFC 128 will be his last.

"I believe this is my last fight," "I know the UFC is probably going to have other ideas, especially with acquiring Strikeforce and all that. They're probably going to try to draw me into another fight but I don't think that's going to happen. I want to stick to my guns and this is the last one."
"I will miss the competition immensely but I want to go out on my terms I want to go out when I think it's time to go out and not because I lost this fight or lost that fight or because I had an injury that precludes me from training the way I want to train.
"I want to make the decision on my own."

-Chris Leben will finally get his wish to fight Wanderlei Silva at UFC 132 on July 2.
-Nick Diaz claims his next fight will be a boxing match unless he sees more money.

-Here's the trailer for the Anderson Silva doc.

Anderson Silva Still The Best/Jones vs Shogun

By: Clay

If you watched Anderson Silva knock out Vitor Belfort last night, you might be wondering who is next to challenge Silva at 185.

I guess the obvious choice would be Yushin Okami, however, it appears that if Georges St. Pierre comes out victorious in his title defense against Jake Shields, we will see GSP face Silva for the middleweight title.

Honestly, I don't see anyone in the UFC middleweight division (or welterweight) that can defeat Silva. To me, Chael Sonnen still poises the biggest threat to Silva but it doesn't look like that fight will happen. I feel that the only way Silva can lose in the UFC is if he were to fight a wrestler at light heavyweight. Randy Couture, Rampage and Rashad all come to mind for me. I can't really think of anyone else in the UFC who could defeat Anderson.

Also last night, Jon Jones choked out Ryan Bader. Joe Rogan broke the news to Jones and the audience that Rashad Evans had gotten injured in training for his title fight against Shogun. Rogan let Jones and us know that the UFC wanted Jones to step in for Rashad and fight shogun for the LHW title. Jones accepted of course. Jones has looked amazing so far is his mma career but, gee, a title shot already?

The winner of Jones/Bader would have been the only realistic choice the UFC had to step in for Rashad and especially on such short notice. They could have gone with the winner of Franklin/Griffin but that would only seem logical if Franklin pulled out the win. Griffin just came off a 14 month lay-off before defeating Franklin last night and the UFC was expecting that fight to be more of a war than it was. Couture and Machida are booked to fight in a couple months as well as Rampage and Thiago Silva. Tito Ortiz and Little Nog are headlining Ultimate Fight Night 24.

That's how the Jones/Bader fight determined the fill in for Rashad Evans. Good Luck to Jones. He's gonna need it.

Overall, UFC 126 disappointed in my opinion. I expected to see more out of Vitor Belfort, Miquel Torres and Ryan Bader.