UFC 84 & 85 Fight Card Update

Thiago Silva, the 25 year old American Top Team fighter, is flawless in 12 fights and has 10 (T)KO’s. In October of 2007, Thiago stopped, who many thought was the unstoppable, Houston Alexander with a violent barrage of punches in the first round at UFC 78. Silva looks to continue his run to the top of the light heavyweight division.

While Antonio "Samuray" Mendes might not be as highly regarded as Thiago Silva, don’t pick a winner yet. Mendes is 14-2 with 7 (T)KO’s, 3 submissions and 4 decision wins. He is a Thai Box / Vale Tudo fighter from Fortaleza, Brazil and fights out of Europe Top Team. His style matches up well with Thiago so we should be in for a treat.

Hopefully three’s a charm at UFC 85 in London where Leites will join Liddell, Evans, Werdum and Vera at the O2 Arena and finally get his shot at submission artist Nate Marquardt. If this third fight falls through, Leites plans on retiring from MMA for good (just kidding). Leites has only lost one fight during his 4+ years of mixed martial arts as a pro. He has wins over Ryan Jensen, Pete Sell, Jose "Pele" Landi-Jons and Gustavo Machado.

Nate Marquardt is the more experienced fighter with a total of 35 pro fights under his belt, 26 of those being wins. He fought recently at UFC 81 last month snagging the victory from Jeremy Horn via a tight guillotine choke at 1:37 in the second round. Before that he fell victim to "The Spider" at UFC 73 losing via TKO and losing his shot at being the UFC middleweight champion. The winner of this fight could possibly be within a fight or two’s reach of another shot at the 185lb title.

Tavares is 3-1 in the UFC with his most recent win coming over Michihiro Omigawa at UFC Fight Night 12 back in January. Thiago pulled off a hard fought unanimous decision win over the Japanese Judo stylist. In his toughest fight to date, Thiago lost via unanimous decision to Tyson Griffin at UFC 76 in September of 2007. Tavares looks to make it 2 in a row against his "handsome" opponent.

Matt Wiman’s last appearance was at UFC Fight Night 12 as well where he took on the colorful Justin Buchholz. Wiman submitted Justin in under 3 minutes via rear naked choke in the very first round putting on an impressive performance in front of the Vegas fans. Like Tavares, Matt is also 3-1 in the UFC with only one of his fights going to the judges. In one of his toughest scraps to date Wiman lost via flying knee to Spencer Fisher in highlight real fashion. Since then he has went 3-0 inside the octagon. It should be a very high paced fight when these meet inside the cage on June 7 at the O2 Arena for UFC 85.