Report: UFC 92 Card Shaping Up

Oct 2, 2008 5:25 PM Bill Reger

Wanderlei Silva. Photo property of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Yahoo Sports is reporting that the UFC has finalized the top three fights for their New Year’s Eve weekend show. Its long been known that the fight for the interim heavyweight title between Antonio Nogueira and Frank Mir would take place. But the two fights below that fight are main event quality themselves. For the UFC Light Heavyweight belt, champion Forrest Griffin will take on undefeated Rashad Evans. And for the third time in their illustrious careers, former UFC champ Quentin “Rampage” Jackson will battle former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva.

As recently as Monday, UFC president Dana White said there were “lots of moving parts” as he tried to complete the company’s end-of-year fight cards.

On Wednesday, he at least got the top three fights of UFC 92 finalized. The co-main events will feature the interim heavyweight title match between champion Antonio Rodrigo and Frank Mir. Forrest Griffin will defend the light heavyweight title against Rashad Evans and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will meet Wanderlei Silva, who defeated him twice when they fought in PRIDE.

The Jackson-Silva card had been considered for UFC 91, when the card was slated to be in Portland, Ore., as well for UFC 94, which will be Jan. 31 in Las Vegas.

But White said he wanted to “stack” the UFC’s traditional New Year’s Eve weekend card and managed to do so by putting four of the company’s most popular fighters on the card.