With Vitor Belfort Out, Demian Maia Will Now Face Anderson Silva At UFC 112

The word in the middle of this week was that Vitor Belfort hurt his arm and was going to pull out of his scheduled middleweight title match against Anderson Silva in Abu Dabi at UFC 112. It was later confirmed, but there wasn’t a true contender waiting in the wings.

The obvious choice would’ve been Chael Sonnen, but he had just finished a tiring match-up against Nate Marquardt. Demain Maia cut his eye lid in his fight with Dan Miller. We at FGB all started to think about who it could be. Cactus Jim scolded the UFC for screwing up negotiations with Dan Henderson, though, who knows if Silva would’ve fought him anyways. Duan didn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t Sonnen who he finds terribly boring. For comedic purposes, we went through many of the middleweights like Michael Bisping, Wanderlei Silva, Yushin Okami, Amir Sadolah, Phil Baroni, Chris Leben, and even Phil Baroni and Patrick Cote. No one really resonated except for Bisping and Silva, but they have to fight each other this month.

Kevin Iole had an interesting quote from Dana White in his article earlier today.

“It’s always tough when a top fighter like Vitor Belfort has to pull out of a big title fight, but we have found a high quality replacement. Top contender Chael Sonnen was not available due to injuries sustained in his fight with Nate Marquardt, so top six middleweight Demian Maia will step in to fight for the title.

There is still some risk in that Maia’s eye lid injury will have to be medically cleared before he can fight. He is on suspension until the summer unless he gets his eye cleared, which I suspect White expects to happen soon or else he wouldn’t have booked the fight.

This is just the latest injury to ruin a main event fight, which has been the pattern in the UFC of late.

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