A middleweight bout between “The Filipino Wrecking Machine” Mark Munoz and Yushin “Thunder” Okami has been added to the UFC on Versus 2 card. The fight will take place in Salt Lake City on August 1, in which fights between Jon Jones vs. Vladimir Matyushenko and Joe Stevenson vs. Takanori Gomi are expected to take place.
Sources close to the bout confirmed the news to MMAWeekly.com on Wednesday, although no official announcement has been scheduled at this point.
Munoz (8-1) is on a three-fight winning streak since dropping in weight to the middleweight division last August at UFC 102. In that fight he won a split decision over Nick Catone. Since that fight Munoz has beaten both Ryan Jensen and Kendall Grove to move up the middleweight rankings.
Munoz earned back-to-back All-American honors as a wrestler at Oklahoma State, which is the foundation of his game. He has turned into a great ground-and-pound fighter as evident by his win over Grove at UFC 112 last month. He’ll look to move up the rankings with a win over the Japanese star, Okami.
Okami (24-5) has long been one of the top middleweight fighters in the world, but he seems to come up short just as he is on the brink to challenge for Anderson Silva’s title. Coincidentally, Okami is the last man to hold a victory over Silva, although it came as a result of a disqualification back in 2006.
Okami is 8-2 since joining the UFC in late 2006. His only losses inside the Octagon were unanimous decision defeats to Rich Franklin at UFC 72 and Chael Sonnen at UFC 104.
Although the fight hasn’t been officially announced, one would think their match-up would be on the televised portion of the card, as the winner could be moved up to the top of the division for a possible title shot.
