A few weeks ago, Dave Meltzer reported that UFC 89 from Birmingham, England was set for Spike TV. There hasn’t been an announcement, supposedly due to Spike’s unwillingness to pay large rights fees for a show without a big main event. According to MMA Junkie, UFC may be trying to solve that problem by adding Anderson Silva to the card:
After this past weekend’s UFC Fight Night 14 event in Las Vegas, UFC President Dana White said that UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, who defeated James Irvin in the event’s headline bout, will likely next fight Patrick Cote. (Yushin Okami had been next in line for the title shot, but he recently suffered a broken hand while training.)
White said that if Silva fights in September at UFC 88, that it would likely be against Cote.
However, one source close to the fighter tells MMAjunkie.com that Silva, largely considered the world’s top pound-for-pound fighter, could instead be added to the UFC 89 fight card in Birmingham to bolster the nationally televised line-up. (And UFC 88 would instead feature its originally scheduled pay-per-view main event of Chuck Liddell vs. Rashad Evans.)
Coming off such a strong ratings performance this past Saturday, this sounds like a good move. Silva was rumored to be on UFC 88, but that card already has Liddell, Franklin, Henderson, and Parisyan on it. It’s not clear Silva would add much more, and another widely seen demolition could increase his stock even further.