One day after the UFC officially announced Brock Lesnar versus Shane Carwin for the UFC Heavyweight championship at UFC 116 in July, the organization added six more fights to the card, most notably Wanderlei Silva taking on Yoshihiro Akiyama.
The Silva-Akiyama fight will co-headline the show. A re-match between Stephan Bonnar and Krzysztof Soszynski was also added to the televised portion of the card.
Fights that were made official for the un-aired preliminary card include: Brendan Schaub vs. Chris Tuchscherer, Kendall Grove vs. Goran Reljic, Matt Brown vs. Chris Lytle, and Jon Madsen vs. Karlos Vemola.
Silva (33-10-1) is coming off a unanimous decision victory over Michael Bisping at UFC 110 last February in Australia. He had lost back-to-back fights against Quinton Jackson and Rich Franklin prior to pulling off the win over Bisping. The match with the British fighter was Silva’s UFC debut at middleweight, a division that many feel is best suited for The Axe Murderer at this point of his career.
Akiyama (13-1-2) has not competed in the UFC since UFC 100 last July when he made his debut with the company. He beat Alan Belcher via split decision, and the two men won Fight of the Night honors for their bout. The fight with Silva comes after both fighters had been asking to face one another for the past several months.
Bonnar (11-7) and Soszynski (19-9-1) will have a re-match from their first bout at UFC 110 in February. In that bout, Soszynski was awarded the fight via TKO after a headbutt went undetected by the referee which caused a major gash on Bonnar’s head. Bonnar’s appeal was also recently denied when he tried to get the result of the fight changed to a no contest. Bonnar has lost five of his last seven fights for the UFC, while Soszynski has been victorious in four of his five fights in the company.