Mark Munoz (Josh Hedges/UFC)
HP Pavilion hosts card headlined by middleweight contenders
The UFC will return to San Jose, Calif., this summer for the first time since the legendary Dan Henderson-Mauricio “Shogun” Rua war.
UFC on Fuel TV 4 is now official for July 11 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose and will feature a main event middleweight contenders bout between Mark Munoz and Chris Weidman. The UFC made the card official over the weekend, and tickets for the show go on sale to UFC Fight Club members on Tuesday and to the general public on Thursday.
The UFC last visited San Jose in November for UFC 139, which featured a five-round Fight of the Year between Henderson and Rua, which Henderson won by unanimous decision in a back-and-forth bout. On Saturday, Strikeforce held its heavyweight grand prix final card there.
The card will be the UFC’s fourth to be broadcast on the Fuel TV cable network. Six fights are planned for the main card and what will be a three-hour broadcast. The UFC’s last card on Fuel didn’t provide the same ratings expectations as its first two, but the main event was arguably its most exciting yet when “The Korean Zombie,” Chan Sung Jung, upset Dustin Poirier with a fourth-round D’Arce choke.
Munoz (12-2, 7-2 UFC) will return for the first time since a November win over Chris Leben at UFC 138. He was scheduled to get back to work right away in January at UFC on Fox: Evans vs. Davis. But an injury forced him off the card the week before his fight against Chael Sonnen. Michael Bisping was pushed up from a fight against Demian Maia to face Sonnen and, ironically, it was Weidman who stepped in on 10 days notice to fight Maia.
Munoz has won four straight since a split decision loss to Yushin Okami in August 2010. In that stretch, along with the TKO win over Leben, Munoz has decision wins over Maia and Aaron Simpson, plus a 54-second knockout win over C.B. Dollaway. His planned fight with Sonnen in January was to determine the top contender for Anderson Silva’s middleweight title.
Weidman (8-0, 4-0) stepped up to fight Maia in January on the aforementioned 10 days notice – and had to cut more than 30 pounds to make the middleweight limit. He made it, but the big cut may have taken its toll in the fight. Weidman had to grind out a unanimous decision win. But that kept him unbeaten, moving him to 4-0 in the UFC – and was his biggest victory to date.
Weidman started his UFC career on short notice against Alessio Sakara in March 2011 and won a unanimous decision. The Matt Serra-Ray Longo product from New York then had back-to-back submission wins over Jesse Bongfeldt and Tom Lawlor before his fight with Maia.
The Munoz-Weidman fight could wind up determining the next contender for the middleweight title, which Silva puts on the line July 7 against Sonnen at UFC 148 in Las Vegas.
Be sure to check out the complete UFC on FUEL TV 4 Fight Card