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With Chael Sonnen’s rematch against Anderson Silva now migrating from Brazil to Las Vegas, UFC 148 becomes the Miami Heat of fight cards. It is stacked, stuffed, loaded and insane.

And let’s face it, this annually huge Vegas card had a pot of gold drop in its lap: Sonnen/Silva II is already a big enough fight to tune in. The UFC could have booked Yoislandy Izquierdo against T.J. Grant as the co-main and things would still have been fine on July 7.

But the UFC’s July 4 weekend is all Roman candles and Saturn missiles, and it’s quickly become a countdown of matchmaking franchises. Aside from Sonnen/Silva II, there’s Urijah Faber versus Dominick Cruz III, Forrest Griffin versus Tito Ortiz II, Cung Le versus Rich Franklin I. All told, there are two belts in play, a swan song or a UFC pioneer, and a return to middleweight for the former champion Franklin, who is 100 percent guaranteed to put on a features-contorting brawl.

If that weren’t enough, Demian Maia will see how he holds up against human Velcro, Dong Hyun Kim, in his welterweight debut.

To Vegas go all the spoils.

To far off Calgary in the north, just two weeks later on July 21? Smartly, Tim Boetsch and Michael Bisping.

What was meant to happen in Vegas isn’t staying there -- Boetsch and Bisping, a big intrigue pairing of middleweights that was originally slated for UFC 148, is now headed for UFC 149 in Alberta. And this is ultimately a good move by the UFC. Why lose a contender’s type bout to a thousand bunched-up storylines at UFC 148 while peripheral PPV cards -- UFC 147 and UFC 149 -- could use the additional heft?

When the first question out of people’s mouths is nearly always “what’s next,” the guys chasing Sonnen/Silva are pretty important to the scheme of things. In the fight game we’re dealing in tapestries. The newly resurrected Tim Boetsch and the MMA’s “forever contender” Michael Bisping will get a better shake at the Saddledome behind headliners Jose Aldo and Erik Koch. Let Sonnen/Silva play out, and this fight takes on more significance. It’s our duty to talk, after all, and to invent the stakes while playing at what’s in Joe Silva’s head.

And right now, a lot of people more readily recall Boetsch losing by “Philmura” against Phil Davis instead of him storming back against Yushin Okami at UFC 144. If he’s really closing on a title shot at 185 pounds, Boetsch could use the boost of a co-main event type spotlight. Right now he’s more journeyman than contender. He’s never been the recipient of Zuffa’s marketing machine. It’s time to gussy him up.

As for Bisping? He believes the same thing he’s been believed for years -- that he’s the hands down No. 1 contender. Obviously there’s still the matter of Mark Munoz and Chris Weidman out there, but Bisping might actually be on to something this time through. With unpredictable circumstances and injuries and schedule syncing and suspensions and all the things that get in the way in obvious matchmaking, the Briton really might be next in line.

Or he might not. But that we can care sufficiently enough to find out is lucky for him and Tim Boetsch. In this rare case it’s better to jump cards than end up lost in the shuffle.

Before guys like Joseph Benavidez and Jon Fitch knew limbo, Rich Franklin was the original purgatory in the UFC. He was the middleweight champion for 16 months in the mid-aughts, beginning with a declarative victory over Evan Tanner and ending three fights later where things for all men come to an end ... with Anderson Silva.

Back in the day when immediate rematches were hard to come by, Franklin had to beat Jason MacDonald and Yushin Okami to get a chance at reclaiming his belt. “Ace” finally stepped in with Anderson Silva again at UFC 77, in a conflict that was dubiously dubbed “Hostile Territory.” That is, at least for Silva. Franklin was in the friendly confines of his native Cincinnati, eschewing his trademark Neapolitan trunks for those sporting Bengals colors. It was a homecoming full of furnace warmth.

Until he was being fetched back into consciousness with smelling salts.

For the second time, Silva made quick work of Franklin -- near mirror annihilations, primarily from the clinch -- and the former champion found himself in career limbo. The aftermath was unsettling, just as it has been throughout history with boxing’s newly obsolete. The cold question of “what now?”

Half a century ago, boxing heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson lost his belt and subsequent rematch to Sonny Liston via decisive first-round knockouts. Franklin had to come to a similar realization that Patterson did back in the day, which was this: Nobody wants to see a third match of a one-sided series. That’s a hell of a thing to come to grips with for a one-time champion. In Patterson’s day, you just fought on. In the rapidly changing, modern day UFC, Franklin at least had some options.

That’s why after he beat Travis Lutter in his last 185-pound bout, Franklin decided to move up to light heavyweight and make a run there. It was with reluctance that he did so -- remember how precise he was with weighing out his food? -- but the gatekeeper gig wasn’t for him.

Problem is, he’s been a sort of passing tourist ever since.

Over the past few years, Franklin has gone 3-3 outside the middleweight division (2-2 at 205 pounds, and 1-1 as a 195-pound catchweight). His latest, a loss to Forrest Griffin at UFC 126, left a lot to the imagination. But what was concrete was that Franklin was no longer a threat to anybody’s title. To frustrate matters, he underwent shoulder surgery and has been on the sidelines for more than a year. A lot of thinking goes on when a year passes off the calendar like that.

Now, to the consternation of dudes like Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Franklin is turning back up as a middleweight again at 37 and a half years old. He’ll face a state-of-the-art action kicker in Cung Le, who only fights one way (thrillingly). If you liked Franklin/Wanderlei Silva or Le/Wanderlei Silva, then you’ll love Franklin/Le. Noses will almost certainly be smashed and further reconfigured into sharp right angles that only a math teacher can appreciate.

It’s the kind of fight that is only a fight. No context needed.

And that’s where Franklin should be for his divisional homecoming. Forget a title run at this point, he wants fun (wholesale violent) shows in the twilight of his career. He doesn’t want to be smothered by Forrest Griffin for large segments of an event; he wants to be in fights like his one with Chuck Liddell at UFC 115, where a broken arm means you throw your good one and hope for the best. He wants to stand and bang. He’s old school. In fact, he’s one of the last of the surviving old guard. Stand and trade in each other’s wheelhouse? Now you’re talking. Surely there’s another Nate Quarry out there to add to his highlight reel.

Le provides this chance. And you never know -- Dan Henderson began bouncing around weight classes at 37 after losing to Anderson Silva, too. His emphasis has always been to put on fights that fans want to see and let title shots fall where they may. Now at age 41, Henderson is accomplishing both with no signs of slowing down. Mark Hunt will be 38 next week and yet is looking 25. Randy Couture didn’t get rolling until he was in his late 30s.

Maybe Franklin finds a similar resurgence. And, if not, bring on Le or guys just like him, and that’s good enough.

If, locked away somewhere deep inside the Richmond, Va., home of UFC matchmaker Joe Silva, there is a secret whiteboard bearing a rough sketch of the fight company’s future plans, it's a good bet there are two names that definitely aren’t on it: Tim Boetsch and Mark Hunt.

At least they weren’t on it before Saturday night at UFC 144, when Boetsch and Hunt pulled off two of the card’s longest long shots. Now, the promotion better hope those plans were written in dry-erase marker.

The UFC’s first trip back to Japan in more than a decade was a good night all around for underdogs, with seven of the card’s 12 bouts ending in wins for guys on the plus side of the ledger.

Two-to-one 'dogs Ryan Bader and Issei Tamura were each victorious -- Bader over Quinton Jackson, Tamura against Tiequan Zhang -- while Vaughn Lee trumped 3-to-1 odds and scored a "submission of the night" bonus for his first-round armbar of Kid Yamamoto. Chris Cariaso (+160) upset Takeya Mizugaki via unanimous decision and it bears mentioning that Yoshihiro Akiyama (+230) very nearly did the same in his welterweight debut against Jake Shields.

Even Ben Henderson went off as a slight underdog to champion Frankie Edgar, before claiming the UFC lightweight title by unanimous decision in the evening’s main event.

None, though, could quite stack up to what Boetsch and Hunt accomplished. Though both guys had already crafted some unlikely success in recent appearances, they came into this event as nothing more than afterthoughts in the UFC rat race. When it was over, Boetsch and Hunt left Japan with matching victories over top-10 opponents, matching three-fight win streaks in the Octagon and matching statements that they can no longer be ignored in their respective weight classes.

Against Yushin Okami, Boetsch’s 3-to-1 stakes matched Lee’s as the most lopsided on the card and for just over 10 minutes, it looked like the prognosticators had it exactly right. Okami, who came into the bout ranked No. 5 on the ESPN.com middleweight power rankings, bullied Boetsch around the cage, bloodied him up, took him down, mounted him and by any measure appeared on the verge of a dominating unanimous decision win.

With 4:30 on the clock in the final round, though, Boetsch stumbled Okami with an overhand right and then rushed him, using a series of uppercuts against the fence to drop him and force referee Leon Roberts to call for a TKO stoppage.

Was the stunning comeback a fluke? Not according to the social mores of MMA, where we’re taught that finishing fights is the gold standard of determining an athlete’s worthiness.

It’s true that prior to his cut to middleweight in 2011, Boetsch had been a lower-middleclass 205-pounder who’d been in and out of the UFC while posting a 3-3 record. Now at 185 pounds, though, Boetsch has put together a string of victories that -- while people continue to doubt him -- has him positioned for another high-profile fight against a top 10 opponent. He wins one more and you might not be able to keep him out of the expanded middleweight title picture.

Hunt had a slightly more cut-and-dried time with Cheick Kongo. Kongo, previously ESPN’s No.10-ranked heavyweight, had been dogged by questions about his chin in recent outings.

Unfortunately for him, Hunt answered those questions in short order, flooring him with a counter left hook and then following with a barrage of rights that ended things in just 2:11.

At 37 years old, Hunt may currently be on the UFC’s most unlikely tear after losing six consecutive MMA fights between 2006-10. The company only even elected to give him a couple of fights in the Octagon to fulfill the requirement of his previous contract with Pride.

Now, it feels like matchmakers won't quite know what to do with him. For that matter, it seemed like maybe nobody even bothered to tell Hunt (who was +230) he’d get interviewed inside the cage if he won, as the former K-1 striker looked befuddled by Joe Rogan’s attempts to elicit some kind of verbal response into his microphone.

Boetsch and Hunt certainly led the charge of the underdogs at UFC 144. They sent Kongo and Okami (and maybe UFC brass) scurrying back to the drawing board. They probably ruined a lot of betting parlays, too.

Will either of them be able to push their UFC successes any further? Conventional wisdom says no; that both guys are probably too limited athletically and skill-wise to compete with the true cream of the crop in their divisions.

Then again, conventional wisdom said they weren’t even supposed to make it this far, so perhaps the surprises will keep coming. Perhaps Boetach and Hunt can keep erasing guys from the UFC’s future plans.

Amid all of the fallout this week from the tepid results of the UFC’s second live show on network television -- where many of the criticisms are warranted and many are not -- it’s somehow fitting that the event’s most impressive performance came from a guy who didn’t even win his fight.

Arguably only Michael Bisping emerged from Saturday night’s largely underwhelming UFC on Fox 2 main card looking better than when he entered. By dropping a tight decision loss to top middleweight contender Chael Sonnen, Bisping actually improved his stock while many of the other the marquee names could merely tread water or -- in some cases -- took steps backward in the eyes of hardcore fans and MMA-centric media types.

Naturally, like most everything in the fight game, this had more to do with our own expectations than anything else.

As more than a 3-to-1 underdog headed into the fight, most observers thought Bisping would get crushed by Sonnen. We’d just seen the former Oregon wrestler tear through what seemed like a bigger, perhaps more dangerous version of Bisping in Brian Stann at UFC 136 and, on paper, we didn’t see any way the Brit could ward off Sonnen’s smothering takedowns and top control over three rounds.

In the end, Bisping didn’t pull off an upset, but he sure did a lot better than we anticipated.

While he couldn’t totally prevent Sonnen from taking him to mat, Bisping didn’t look out of his league, either. He proved surprisingly capable at using the fence to quickly get back to his feet and in the standup exchanges, he touched up his hard-charging opponent with crisp, if ultimately ineffectual punches.

Perhaps most shocking was the way Bisping afforded himself in the clinch. He held his own when Sonnen tried to muscle in close to him and even controlled some of the action when they locked up against the chain link -- though not as much as the UFC broadcast team would have you believe, especially in the first round.

Heck, some observers even thought Bisping won the bout, though a second viewing of the fight confirms that a 29-28 verdict in favor of Sonnen was probably the right one. In the end, the American eked out Rounds 2 and 3, though in total the fight was far closer than his unanimous decision win might otherwise let on. That one judge scored it 30-27 for Sonnen even seems unconscionable, as Bisping clearly controlled the second stanza.

All told, it was a great performance from a guy who has been dogged by skeptics and naysayers ever since winning Season 3 of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show back in 2006. Even in defeat, Bisping moved up two slots on the ESPN.com middleweight Power Rankings -- from No. 8 to No. 6 -- and now appears well positioned to take on another high-caliber opponent in his next fight.

Perhaps a returning Mark Munoz (No. 4) might even make sense for him, after the man originally slated to meet Sonnen at this event returns from a minor elbow injury. If not Munoz, then maybe the winner of fifth-ranked Yushin Okami’s upcoming UFC 144 tangle with Tim Boetsch or newly minted Top 10er Chris Weidman, who debuted at No. 9 this week after turning in Saturday night’s second-best showing by defeating Demian Maia on short notice.

We are often told there is no such thing as a good loss, but Bisping puts that adage to the test this week. While he overachieved, Sonnen, Maia, Rashad Evans and Phil Davis -- much like the overall UFC broadcast itself -- didn’t quite live up to our expectations.

When Dana White announced that Mark Munoz was out of his UFC on FOX 2 fight with Chael Sonnen just 11 days before the Jan. 28 card, it sent MMA’s Twitter feeds into dawning.

It trickled in like this: Too bad for Mark Munoz (he’s such a nice guy, and let’s hope he’s OK). Great for Michael Bisping (and very deserving). What happens to Demian Maia (somebody plug Rousimar Palhares in, and let him charge). Great for Chris Weidman (what an opportunity to fight Demian Maia).

It’s a lot of epiphany to absorb in one scroll and, as always, people exercised their right to congratulate other people as publicly as possible.

One interesting thing was that many seemed to think that the new makeshift lineup was better than the original, if not far more just -- Bisping should have been fighting Sonnen all along. In other words, we were sitting on a pile of unaired complaints until yesterday, which is exactly why UFC matchmaker Joe Silva doesn’t have a Twitter account.

Yet there was one thing that nearly everybody outside of England agreed upon -- with the new pairing of Sonnen and Bisping in a middleweight title eliminator, Sonnen just got clearance to land in Sao Paulo for his fight with Anderson Silva come June.

Michael Bisping, for as sturdy and willing and ultimately successful as he is, won’t match up well against a guy who fights horizontally. British fighters aren't known for their wrestling. Worse, the British can't stop Americans from wrestling, not with snarky verbal protests, anyway. This thing looks one-sided. Even Vegas opened the books with Sonnen better than a 4-to-1 favorite. With odds like that, it looks like a Strikeforce event.

Yet despite all the quickly digested excitement of the Chicago card rearrangements, think about the (potential) gift this is to Sonnen.

He went from fighting a guy in Munoz who looked like a huge monkey wrench in his plans to rematch Silva, to the type of fighter he is accustomed to dominating. Sonnen doesn’t do Muay Thai plum, and he doesn’t tolerate jab-and-retreat. He tackles. Then he buries his head in chests and flails the loosest appendages he can toward the supine man’s head. He did it to Nate Marquardt, Yushin Okami and Brian Stann. His thing is to conquer.

Against Bisping, it’s hard to envision it going much differently. Bisping should show up to Chicago with a bow on top.

At least, that’s the thinking. While Chris Weidman looks like a Charlie Brenneman special for Demian Maia, Bisping appears more like a turnstile for Sonnen. The puncher’s chance will always be in play, but he might need to land it from his back.

And if Sonnen does walk through Bisping as so many believe, he might consider throwing out this all-purpose word in his postfight speech: Obrigado.

After all, there will be millions of paulistanos saying the same thing.

When the UFC went to Rio de Janeiro in August, it was a spiritual homecoming. A lot of time had passed since the salad days of 1998, and a grown-up UFC was crashing back triumphantly to the land that bore its earliest fruits.

That meant UFC 134 -- more commonly referred to as UFC Rio -- became a celebration of Gracie genealogy, of the Nogueira’s, of assorted Silva’s, of Chute Boxe, of the entire neglected culture of limb origamists everywhere who were so instrumental in changing the way people approached fighting. There were a dozen bouts on the card. Only one fight didn’t have a Brazilian in it, an out-of-place clash between Yves Jabouin (French-Canadian) and Ian Loveland (American). Smartly, that was the first prelim of the night, designed to play out while people found their seats.

Otherwise, it was Brazilian pandemonium. In a Brazil against the world scenario, a Brazilian had his hand raised in 10 of the remaining 11 bouts. It was all about Brazil and its best fighters. The Cariocas were whipped into a frenzy that night.

UFC 144 is official for Feb. 26 at the Saitama Super Arena, and it’s been simplified to UFC Japan. This, too, is a homecoming of sorts to the native roots. As Lorenzo Fertitta talked about the old recipes in a press release, saying, “Japan is the spiritual home of martial arts -- the world has learned from the Japanese many aspects of how to compete in hand-to-hand combat with respect and honor.” This parlays nicely with the UFC Rio vibe, which courted a similar muse. If there’s a difference, it’s this -- Japan may be a spiritual home of martial arts, but not its best practitioners. There are scant few Japanese fighters on UFC Japan’s main card.

In fact, there’s only one: Yoshihiro Akiyama. And he’s on there because he’s fighting a big name in Jake Shields in a new weight class (170 pounds) after losing three in a row as a middleweight. This is a curiosity bout for a man in search of lost mojo.

Otherwise, UFC Japan’s main card is all about the imports. Why? Because it has to be. Frankie Edgar from Jersey, against Colorado's own Ben Henderson for the lightweight belt. Pride star Quinton Jackson returns to Japan to fight wrestler Ryan Bader, who jumped at the opportunity to fight in Japan (just as he did in 2010 when the opportunity to do battle with Keith Jardine in Sydney arose). A re-imagined Mark Hunt takes on Frenchman Cheick Kongo in a heavyweight fight. Americans Anthony Pettis and Joe Lauzon round out the card in a lightweight bout.

Where’s Yushin Okami, the man Dana White called “the best fighter to ever come out of Japan” ahead of his fight with Anderson Silva in Rio? He’s on the prelims against revivalist Tim Boetsch. Okami headlines a fight in Rio as a stranger in a strange land (read: as prey for Anderson Silva), yet can’t crack the main card in his native Japan. It doesn’t help that there’s a very real chance of a stylistic stalemate in this one, but the point is this -- the best fighter to come out of Japan doesn’t exactly carry the importance that the imports do.

Same goes for the “Iron Broom” Hatsu Hioki, who underwhelmed in his debut victory against George Roop. He’s on the prelims, even if it is a No. 1 contender spot he’s fighting for against Bart Palaszewski. Ditto the “Fireball Kid,” Takanori Gomi (1-3 in his last four), Norifumi Yamamoto (1-4 in his last five), Riki Fukuda (coming off a loss to Nick Ring) and Takeya Mizugaki (who has traded wins and losses in his last eight bouts). All of these guys had successful careers in Japan that haven’t yet translated to the Octagon. In fact, some of them wouldn’t be on the roster if there wasn’t going to be such a thing as UFC Japan, so there’s no room for quibbling about placement.

Unlike with UFC Rio, UFC Japan won’t (and can’t) be painted as "Japan Against the World." It’s more like the world coming to Japan for an exciting visit. If the UFC dotted the main card with the best Japanese fighters -- which taken as a collective, would look like wholesale mediocrity -- it wouldn’t be fit for pay-per-view. And, as Dana White reminds everyone whenever possible, this is pay-per-view business.

Therefore, Frankie Edgar and Quinton Jackson will fetch the PPV buck as the UFC forays into Asia, and the local fighters will try and change a few notions in the relative quiet of their own backyard.

TOKYO -- Nearly 14 years after its debut in the country, the Ultimate Fighting Championship will finally return to Japan.

In a Tuesday news conference at Shinjuku Wald 9 Theater -- the same locale used to screen UFC Live and Fight Night events on the big screen -- the UFC formally announced their plans to bring the Octagon back to the Land of the Rising Sun on Feb. 26, 2012.

While a November timeframe was announced for card finalization, all of the Japanese fighters currently on Zuffa roster -- presently, Yushin Okami, Yoshihiro Akiyama, Norifumi Yamamoto, Hatsu Hioki, Michihiro Omigawa, Takanori Gomi, Riki Fukuda, and Takeya Mizugaki -- were mentioned as likely participants for the event. The UFC will also be aiming for the heart of major-scale MMA in the country by staging the event at the Saitama Super Arena, frequent home to Dream and the defunct Pride Fighting Championships, which will be scaled to accommodate 20,000 seats.

News of the Japan return was delivered via a recorded video message from UFC President Dana White, who expounded on Japan's role in developing the sport and contributing some of its biggest names in Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Dan Henderson, and Mirko Filipovic.

Following White’s address, Zuffa LLC Asia Executive Vice President and Managing Director Mark Fischer addressed those in attendance.

“We want to let everyone know that we will be bringing the same high level of UFC competition, the same world class show and presentation, and great fights and the greatest athletes in the world to Japan.”

A 12-year veteran in spearheading the NBA's expansion in Asia, Fischer noted the economic potential for a UFC Japan show.

“To give another idea of the scope of this event, it will literally be witnessed by millions of fans all over the world,” said Fischer. “Moreover, this event will be a boon for Japan's economy. For example, UFC 100 in Las Vegas generated more than $51 million for the local economy. In Sydney, Australia, our two events generated over $30 million for the local economy. We're pleased to bring the similarly anticipated event to Saitama and the greater Tokyo area.”

Fischer also stated that UFC events in Japan and the Asia region would become regular destinations for the promotion.

“Let me also say that while UFC Japan in 2012 will be the first event for Zuffa in Asia, it certainly won't be the last. We hope to make UFC Japan an annual fixture on our calendar and we also have plans to follow-up with a series of high quality events across Asia,” assured Fischer.

While there were no announcement as to whether the event would be a numbered or “Fight Night” event, it is planned to start in the same Saturday night time slot for Western viewers. Preliminaries are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Japan time, with the main card running from noon to 3 p.m. No details were given as to the event's local broadcast plans.

The UFC’s debut in the country was on December 21, 1997 for the “Ultimate Japan” heavyweight tournament, which saw the UFC debut of Pride legend Kazushi Sakuraba and former UFC light heavyweight champion Frank Shamrock. The SEG-era UFC saw two more events in Japan with UFC 23 and UFC 25, in November 1999 and April 2000 respectively.

The UFC continues to play it a little bit coy on the topic of a possible superfight between Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre.

In the immediate aftermath of UFC 134, UFC president Dana White once again asserted that he’s interested in making that fight, that his organization’s stellar middleweight and welterweight champions are “both getting into a position here pretty soon” where it will make sense, but reiterated that each still has some business to take care of in his natural weight class first.

In other words, it sounded very similar to the company’s position back in February, when White said he’d consider booking Silva versus St. Pierre if “The Spider” took out Vitor Belfort at UFC 126 and GSP defeated Jake Shields at UFC 129. Obviously, both those victories came and went and a superfight didn’t materialize.

Yet, there is reason to believe UFC matchmakers are finally getting serious about setting up a bout between their two best fighters. Or at least, they should be. Not capitalizing – and capitalizing soon -- on this singular promotional opportunity would be very, very out-of-character for a company that prides itself on, in White’s words, “always delivering.”

Some three days after watching Silva toy with Yushin Okami for seven minutes before calmly dispatching him with strikes to seal his ninth 185-pound title defense and extend his record of consecutive wins in the Octagon to 14, a meeting with St. Pierre should appear more realistic than ever. After all, Silva looked about as dominant as we’ve seen him, St. Pierre is about to meet Nick Diaz in a fight he’s universally expected to win and just a couple of weeks ago the UFC finally landed the lucrative, landmark network television deal it’s been waiting on for years.

That confluence of factors makes it pretty clear: If the company is ever going book this fight, it needs to do it now.

The UFC knows full well the marketing gold it has here. The chance to have the world’s top two pound-for-pound fighters, a pair of guys who are both on the short list of candidates for “Greatest of All Time,” actually square off is something that could only come around once or twice in a generation. It also knows the shelf life for this fight is not unlimited. Silva versus St. Pierre probably needs to occur by spring 2012 -- when Silva will turn 37 and St. Pierre 31 -- and before either guy loses the glitter of invincibility that currently makes each so compelling.

There are still a couple of hurdles to get over, for sure. It’s still assumed Silva will take on the winner of Chael Sonnen versus Brian Stann at UFC 136, and St. Pierre needs to avoid a letdown against Diaz when they meet in October or November. But if those things happen -- and if both Silva and St. Pierre are game -- the promotion should (and we have to assume it will) put them in a cage together sometime very soon.

Yushin Okami stood across the cage from Anderson Silva in 2006 operating under the distinct impression that the lanky Brazilian was beatable.

He was right. And he was wrong.

Given Silva’s extraordinary track record since that ill-fated January evening in Honolulu, the bout against Okami qualifies as one of those rare occurrences over the past five years in which the man standing opposite the pound-for-pound king treated the scenario as something other than a bad omen. Remember, this was Silva two contests removed from the indignity of tapping to a stunning leg attack. A year before Ryo Chonan, Okami watched as his much smaller teammate at the time, Daiju Takase, bagged the South American in a triangle choke.

Though Silva’s confidence post Chonan had been restored in some capacity after violent victories in London over Jorge Rivera and Curtis Stout, he wasn’t regarded anywhere near the threat we know him to be today. And it’s entirely understandable why Okami felt he had a legitimate shot at winning.

Silva, like Okami, was simply attempting to separate himself from the pack back then. And as one of eight established fighters inked to the 175-pound catchweight Rumble on the Rock tournament promoted by BJ Penn’s family, “The Spider” was being afforded that opportunity. Of course, we know he failed to advance beyond the opening round through no one’s fault but his own. As a result, Silva’s brilliant ledger features 30 wins against four losses, even if most observers don’t consider the last setback of his career to be authentic.

During fight week activities, there was a palpable air of confidence and anger surrounding Silva, which was picked up on by Okami and his camp.

“These things kept Yushin in suspense through the fight week,” recalled Okami’s longtime manager, Gen Isono. “When the fight started, it was pretty obvious for me that Yushin was under huge pressure which Anderson was creating.”

For as much as Okami thought he could win, two and a half minutes in the cage together provided plenty of evidence to the contrary. Silva flowed from the opening bell, employing unique footwork to create angles and close distance at his leisure. Okami started slow and was disinclined to trade or go to the floor.

Okami, though, was able to force Silva to his back and sit in the Brazilian’s long guard -- and this is where things went bad. From the bottom, the soon-to-be UFC champion sloppily swung his right leg out and around and slammed the sole of his foot square onto the Japanese fighter’s face. Okami fell backwards, hurt and ripe for punishment had Silva not been restrained by the referee.

“He was in a panic and he believed that he was knocked out by some kind of a punch,” said Isono, who tended to Okami in the cage afterwards. “I explained to Yushin that he had gotten an illegal kick on the ground but I was not sure if he understood what I was saying. I asked him if he could keep fighting but he absent-mindedly said, ‘I have a headache’ several times. I translated what he said to the doctor, then the doctor advised the referee to stop the fight. After going back to the hotel, Yushin kept cooling his head down with some ice, but did not need to go to a hospital.”

Only when the venerable Murilo Bustamante informed his countryman and charge that the up-kick produced a fight-ending foul and was not considered a legal weapon, as it would have been in Pride where Silva pieced together a 3-2 record, the Brazilian came to the stunning realization that he was disqualified.

"I feel it was a cheap, cowardly way of winning," Silva told me two years after fighting Okami on Oahu. "People that were there saw that he was in the condition to come back and keep fighting, and he didn't."

The status of Okami’s health that night is fine to debate of you’re aiming to rehash a discussion that doesn’t mean all that much. There is, however, no ambiguity when it comes to Silva’s disdain for Okami, which manifested itself over the years via outbursts of disrespect mixed with outright dismissiveness.

“We have never insisted that Yushin won the fight,” Isono said. “Yushin has never insisted that he won the fight. We have always admitted that Anderson controlled the fight with a huge pressure until right before the fight ended. We had no choice, the rules decided the winner.”

RIO DE JANEIRO -- The sun came out Thursday in Rio, and it finally made those sharp, humpback mountains you see jutting out of the ocean in postcards become visible. For the first time you could observe Sugarloaf Mountain, the most famous of these peaks that sits in Guanabara Bay and on Wednesday was shrouded by cloud cover. The sun also worked against the city’s aesthetics, as it brought out the Speedos in droves on Copacabana Beach. Dennis Hallman was a fight card early, apparently -- in Rio, he’d have been a scoffable cliché. In Philadelphia, he was treated like a flasher who sneaked into the cage. Then again, that was probably the point.

Otherwise, it was your typical day interacting with Rio natives, mixed martial artists and peanut mongers.

9:08 a.m.: Coffee at the Sol Ipanema is for savoring, not guzzling. It’s served in a glass cup with a handle in which the finger hole wouldn’t let a Twizzler through, much less an index finger. The endless cup of coffee that so many northerly Americans prefer is much trickier here. There aren’t any Starbucks that I’ve seen, which makes Rio defiant toward global homogeny. No venti-sized options anywhere, on any menu. The coffeehouses serve little crumpets the size of acorns with the cup, but they don’t come along and freshen anything. If you want more coffee, you pay another 6 real, dude. There’s something ominously leisurely about all of this. I like it, but I yawn a lot as I like it.

9:10 a.m.: What is the protocol for calling yourself an American? I am an American, but so are the cariocas (the people of Rio de Janeiro). I have learned to just say eu nao sou de por aqui, which means “I’m not from around here.” This seems elusive, but at the end of the day it’s as dismissing as beginning a sentence with “At the end of the day …”

Christ the Redeemer

9:36 a.m.: A group of journalists, including ESPN.com photographer Ed Mulholland, are currently riding up to view the Christ the Redeemer statue with UFC legend Royce Gracie and Junior dos Santos. That’s some Hunter S. Thompson off-kilter stuff right there. Me? I am writing this journal with no coffee left. They are having a Rio experience, while I’m having something more ... meta. I wish I were they.

12:36 p.m.: Ran into UFC commentator Mike Goldberg, who likes himself some Rio. I asked him whether he’s been here before and he said yes, in 1998, when he visited Sao Paulo. “I came here, too, and went to a party right there at the Copacabana Palace,” he says. “I don’t remember anything about it." He laughs. Sounds like my kind of party, I tell him. He laughs again, this time more suspiciously.

1:39 p.m.: The news conference is at the famed Copacabana Palace of Goldberg’s forgotten night. It is, in fact, palatial. There are more media gathered for this event than just about any other UFC event. The foreigners are easy to spot. They are wearing headsets so that the Portuguese can be translated from a woman in an elevated police booth. This seems like a truly foreign experience. Then again, MMA Junkie’s John Morgan is typing something. This is a sign that everything is as it should be.

2:32 p.m.: The soft blue-hued lighting has given way to a strobe light effect as the panel makes its way to the stage. UFC president Dana White has a headset, and so do all the Americans -- or, I should say, Brendan Schaub, Yushin Okami and Forrest Griffin. The ones who aren’t from around here.

2:36 p.m.: Is it just me, or is the translator/emcee in the police booth trying to seduce everybody in the room? Anderson Silva's usual translator, Ed Soares, doesn’t have anything on this delivery. What Silva is saying is suddenly becoming interesting.
2:56 p.m.: The thing that keeps being brought up is that Silva really became a breakout star in his native Brazil when he front-kicked Vitor Belfort all the way back at UFC 126. The reason? The fight was free in Brazil, while it cost a cool $49.99 in the U.S. This sort of goes against the notion that Silva was a big star down here before 2011. We’d heard many times about how much the middleweight champion was beloved in his native country. Nike and Burger King endorsements I guess helped nudge him toward superstardom, but reports of his transcendence in Brazil going back the mid-aughts seem slightly exaggerated.

3:12 p.m.: Luta livre was the poor man’s discipline back in the day here in Brazil. And jiu-jitsu was more about the aristocrat. They intersected a lot of ground fighting elements. In vale tudo fights, luta livre was obviously advantageous for a smaller competitor. In fact, Robert Leitao preceded Royce Gracie by 20 years and ... oh, look, the news conference is wrapping up.

4:39 p.m.: Just as feared, the surfing lesson at Praia do Arpoador that was to involve featherweight champion Jose Aldo, Gracie, Lyoto Machida, Junior dos Santos and a small parcel of Octagon girls was canceled because of the immense waves. Bodhi from “Point Break” wouldn’t have been able to resist but hey, in lazy fighter vernacular, it is what it is.
5:18 p.m.: Copacabana Beach. I'm having a coconut husk that has been jack-o-lanterned, which the tourists drink as a natural hangover cure. Being accosted by people hawking Copacabana sarongs, some of them as Brazilian flags. One man is selling fake glasses of beer that look deliciously authentic. He then lunges the glass at passerby and makes them take cover. This is his sales pitch. It doesn’t seem as though he’s moving a lot of pieces.

5:19 p.m.: Flocks of frigates all over the beach, those red-throated seabirds of the pelican family. They enjoy the balmy climes. I also spotted a lavadeira-mascarada, which is a small black and white bird that translates to “masked washerwoman” in English. You don’t see masked washerwomen in the U.S. everyday.

6:00 p.m.: There’s a local Shooto fight card happening, but it’s invitation-only. Some of the media got themselves invited. It has a Fight Club vibe. Photographer Esther Lin is going. I will later see a photograph of her standing between two dudes wielding AK-47s. Needless to say, later I will be kicking myself for not going.

7:58 p.m.: Instead, it’s dinner at the Garota, which means girl. The restaurant name is borrowed from Antonio Carlos Jobim’s famous song “Girl From Ipanema.” This is a misnomer. This place is teeming with men drinking glasses of beer. It’s a carnivores gathering, too. The picanha a Brasileira no rechaud is a sizzling hot plate of thinly sliced top sirloin that people hibachi at their own pace. At first it seems like they are upselling an expensive plate (76 real), but in the end, turns out they are steering people toward a culinary epiphany. Nicely done.

9:13 p.m.: There was supposed to be a UFC media mixer planned for tonight, but just like the surfing lessons, it was canceled. Bummer. The one in Pittsburgh was a hoot with Jim Miller and Clay Guida engaged in a secretly contentious pingpong battle. The phrase you hear a lot in Rio is “organized chaos,” and that holds true in just about everything. No mixer. Eh, at the end of the day, it is what it is.

RIO DE JANEIRO -- UFC 134’s main and co-main events are as much rematches as asterisked grudge matches. Technically speaking, Yushin Okami has a victory over Anderson Silva, but it’s the kind you can’t celebrate because -- just like anything that begins with “technically speaking” -- it’s not exactly literal. He didn’t win so much as the thing was abruptly discontinued after Silva’s illegal upkick. That worked out to be more buzz kill than triumph.

The thing is, neither man came away feeling good from 2006’s Rumble on the Rock. Silva has rattled off so many wins since then that you’d need a scroll to read them all (14). Okami hasn’t done bad either, but there are just three Japanese media outlets in Rio to cover his big title shot. This tells you something about the “best fighter to come out of Japan’s” mojo and why it took all this time to get back together with Silva. If Chael Sonnen hadn’t had the travails he did, it’s likely Okami would still be waiting.

Meanwhile, Forrest Griffin welcomed Mauricio Rua to the UFC back in 2007 when Rua was Jon Jones. Rua was so good in Pride that the word "invincible" was getting flung around pretty loosely. Griffin? Nobody was giving him a chance. He was game, but he wasn’t the guy who was supposed beat “Shogun,” who’d won eight in a row heading into that fight (and seven of those were KO/TKO finishes). That night, when Griffin did his victory lap after choking out Rua, it was either fairy tale stuff (we’ve underrated Griffin all this time) or a big stage fluke (“exposed” is the common hater’s refrain) -- or both (Rua was fighting with his gas light on from the first round on, meant as an excuse and an accusation). Either way, UFC 76 is a lasting image that Rua would like to erase.

So after years of "what ifs" and "could’ve beens," here we are with two matchups that could use some resolution. For Silva-Okami, a definitive stamp. For Rua-Griffin, some myth-busting finality. Will we get it? Chances are, we will.

Shake the rafters

If the open workouts on a soggy, gray afternoon on Copacabana Beach are any indication, the HSBC Arena is going to be loud on Saturday night. More than a thousand fans came together to make a lot of noise for middleweight champion Anderson Silva as he hit some mitts. Most media point to Georges St. Pierre’s walkout for his fight with Matt Serra at UFC 83 as the loudest moment in UFC history. Will the main event at UFC 134 approach those decibel levels? Maybe. There is a lot of passion for Silva ever since he knocked out Vitor Belfort on free Brazilian television.

But Okami, who will take on Silva in front of 18,000 throaty partisans, isn’t that worried about the atmosphere.

“I am used to fighting in hostile territory, so I feel comfortable,” he told ESPN.com via his translator/coach Gen Isono.

He’s got a point. Okami did beat Mark Munoz in his hometown of San Diego not all that long ago.

Forrest Griffin on tough home crowds

Forrest Griffin joked about being heckled when he gets home after a loss: “Winning a fight’s a lot better than losing. Then I’ll get to go home and get a lot less stupid questions. ... So it’s win/win.”

Say What?

So, how does Yushin Okami beat the Spider, you ask? “I’m going to make Anderson Silva miserable. I’m going to be in his face and I’m going to smash him,” Okami told ESPN.com. And if the fight is on the feet for five rounds against one of the game’s most precise strikers? “I’m going to be comfortable against Anderson standing," he said, "and I think I can beat him up there as well.”

Optimism is good.

Hypothetical Hendo

There were those in the media fishing for information on who would be next for the middleweight title shot, and one reporter rolled out two names for UFC President Dana White at the UFC 134 newser -- Chael Sonnen and Dan Henderson.

“Chael Sonnen has a fight in Houston before we can make that decision,” he said. “And did you ask about Dan Henderson, with Strikeforce? And the answer is obviously Dan Henderson is a possibility too.”

You should have seen Silva’s face when White said that. This was obviously news to him, and judging from the raised eyebrows, not the best kind. But it also hints at two things -- one, that Henderson’s signing with the UFC could be imminent, and two, that he might be lobbying for the same fight that prompted him to leave in the first place. A rematch with Anderson Silva for the middleweight strap. Ahead of a card that’s centered on play-it-back matchups, this possibility seemed only fitting.

Rio de Janeiro -- Wednesday, 9:35 a.m. BRT: Just about everyone I’ve talked to who coming down from the States is having a hard time processing that they’re in Rio -- red-eye flights tend to mesh normal and dream states -- but it’s nevertheless a fact. At yesterday’s open workouts at Copacabana Beach, Forrest Griffin said he only accepted it when he landed. There’s a refrain going around that is strictly existential, which goes like this: “Wow, I am in Brazil.” Not sure why, but for a lot of people in the U.S., countries such as Brazil seem theoretical. Until they get there. Then they themselves seem theoretical. Until they sleep.

But there is plenty of reality around. Rio is excited to host UFC 134, as thousands turned out for the open workouts in a torrential downpour. The waves crashing on Copacabana were menacing, and more than just a couple media members openly wondered if the surf lessons involving Jose Aldo, Junior dos Santos, Royce Gracie and a couple of Octagon girls would be called off. The reception that Anderson Silva got when he took the platform and banged Pedro Rizzo’s mitts was lively. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, who has become that much more distinguishable from his brother with new ink on his arm, is also an iconic figure out here. So is Amaury Bitteti for that matter, and Roan Carneiro. Brendan Schaub? Not so much. And Yushin Okami was happy to have escorts through the sands of Copacabana and back to his shuttle. Talk about a man with odds stacked against him, Okami is fighting the best pound-for-pound MMA fighter in the world, and doing it in the champion’s backyard. It’s shades of Rocky IV, or Matt Serra versus Georges St. Pierre.

New York to Brazil

Sitting at JFK waiting to head to Rio the afternoon before, there is an earthquake, something very novel for people on the East Coast, and that’s what everyone was talking about -- people want to know if that’s an aftershock they just felt. Folks are very green when it comes to seismic activity in New York, but oddly giddy to be included in something Los Angeles has held over its head for so long.

Once in Miami for the connecting flight, Hurricane Irene is circling up from the coasts of Cuba. A meteorologist is showing its path along the Floridian coast. People at the Islander Bar in Terminal D barely notice. In New York they embraced nature’s discord, and in Miami they barely notice when hurricanes are barreling in. Either way, the earth seems very unhappy with my selected route to Rio de Janeiro.

9:45 a.m.: It’s a long flight into Rio, but we’ve just landed. Is that marine layer or is it smog? It’s the old Los Angeles query (and just as the case there, I suspect I know the answer). There are a lot of cranes, perhaps building up for the 2014 World Cup or 2016 Olympics -- Brazil is about to become the world’s stage. Otherwise, South America looks a lot like the Cleveland outskirts and Ensenada cobbled up. At least initially.

11 a.m.: For a country that required a consulate visit and so much forethought to get in to, Brazil is fairly lax at customs. It’s a long immigration line, but once through there the customs officer is just waving us through. Exchanging American money for the Brazilian real is easy, and there are toucans on the 10 real notes. A nice touch. The UFC is shuttling North American media from the Praia Ipanema to the open workouts at 11:45 a.m. I will not make it. Besides, I am staying at the Sol Ipanema, a distance away.

11:45 a.m.: Favelas to the left of me, favelas to the right. The favelas have become just about as famous in Rio as the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the city. It’s a strange juxtaposition in a city that juxtaposes all over. While it may be possible to describe the favelas aesthetically upon first glance, it’s much more difficult to bring out the feelings they give you. It’s something akin to curiosity, but to come from the U.S., where so much is privileged and comprehensible, there’s a quiet gulf of empathy in play. It’s like a child’s creation, bricks stacked in precarious ways and leaning as if they’ll fall over any second. It’s impossible to understand what goes on in those labyrinthine corridors. Many of the favelas have been pacified and are now under surveillance by police. The ones out near the airport haven’t been. Drug dealers still rule. The Brazilian freeway gleefully goes right by them. What a strange immunity to build up that the favelas should pass by and register no differently than, say, a Wal-Mart in the northerly America.

12:05 p.m.: My bathroom has a bidet.

12:30 p.m.:The hotel bar serves Brahma beer. That looks inviting. They also have gumdrops on the reception desk. The concierges play like voyeurs over it all.

1:15 p.m.: It’s drizzling and the skies are gray. There are throngs of people being partitioned off from the fighters at the open workouts at Copacabana Beach. In fact, you can’t see the fighters upon approach. The police are out in force and heavily armed. Very few people speak English, so when I speak to the security detail about being part of the media inside, it takes a lot of broken Portuguese and hand gesturing to convince them to tug the sleeve of an event coordinator. Once inside, it’s like a fighter bazaar. Okami and his faction, Silva and his, Schaub et al. The Brazilian media are out in mass. It’s a free for all with the little digital recorders. There’s a designated scrum area where you can find media regulars such as MMAFighting's Ben Fowlkes and Ariel Helwani, and in another tent are Lorenzo Fertitta and Mike Goldberg. It’s organized chaos. I am assured that everything in Rio is organized chaos. Besides, MMA Junkie’s John Morgan is typing on his computer as if nothing is going on around him. This detail suddenly makes it all feel normal.

2:50 p.m.: There’s Burt Watson, the UFC’s babysitter to the stars. Dude is everywhere. “I logged 144,000 air miles last year,” he says. “I know pilots who didn’t fly 144,000 miles in 2010.”

2:51p.m.: It’s interesting that the city of Rio is sponsoring this UFC, monetarily, just as with Toronto. The Rio insignia is everywhere. Fertitta estimates that the UFC event will bring in millions of dollars for the city, similar to Toronto. Hearing a bunch of tickets that were bought up by scalper types are being sold at 800 real apiece.

Welcome to Rizzo's world

3:55 p.m.: Pedro Rizzo is stuffing the lot of us into his Land Rover like we’re on a guerrilla mission. We are headed to a favela where he heads a social project for underprivileged and problem children. Photographer Ed Mulholland and ESPN correspondent/former Fighter’s Only editor Hywel Teague are in the back with me. Driving lanes are largely hypothetical in Rio. Everybody drifts from one to the next, just as in New York City with the cabs. There are more motorbikes, though, and they beep their horns while zigzagging through. There’s an overturned vegetable camper that is delaying things, and a man standing arms akimbo like it’s the damndest thing he’s ever seen. Rizzo’s shotgun passenger is a man they call Juarez, who is tall, lanky and soft-spoken. He’s a former boxer, and he’s half-Cuban. He’s also Anderson Silva’s father.

5 p.m.: Rizzo’s project is back out near the airport, and it’s expansive. Check out the ESPN.com column on that later today for details. Saw a lot of different birds en route, waterfowl and fat, yellow birds that were as bold as French Quarter pigeons. Also saw what looked like a pipit with a showy crest, though I can’t confirm because my Rio bird book from Amazon didn’t arrive in time. What is the point? What. Is. The. Point.
7:42 p.m.: One thing about Rizzo is that stop signs don’t mean anything. He sees a “pare” sign and he doesn’t hesitate, just rolls right through. This makes him a cliché in Rio. Nobody cares about stop signs. Back in Ipanema for dinner, Rizzo drops me off in a place he calls the “Rodeo Drive of Rio,” a street (Rua Garcia D’Avila) with an Amsterdam Sauer and other shops. Above one shop is an ad with George Clooney sipping a liqueur of one kind or another. The farofa is like eating cornbread mix, but it grows on you (and in you).

8:52 p.m.: No sleep on the red eye to Rio makes for a hallucinatory experience while there. So, it’s back to the hotel for sleep. Thursday, the press conference is set to happen. Hearing tale of a reconstructed rain forest near the Christ the Redeemer statue, where wild sloths live in the tree canopy.

9:25 p.m.: The bidet is the elephant in the room.

PHILADELPHIA -- The truth is, if you look at Chael Sonnen’s history of skewering opponents before a fight, you won’t find many examples. He had things to say about Paulo Filho, particularly heading into the second bout, but the microscope wasn’t on like it was with Anderson Silva, when he made it fairly plain that he wasn’t a fan. But he was completely respectful of Dan Miller, and he was nothing but class leading up to Yushin Okami at UFC 104. The worst he would say about Nate Marquardt ahead of UFC 109 was that it was a “must win” for him. That was more cliché than lambast.

We’ve seen a billion Chael’s since then, or at least seemingly. He says we’ve seen one. One real Sonnen -- the one who will stick to being reverent of his opponent at UFC 136, Brian Stann. He says he hasn’t fallen out of character for any of the aforementioned fights because he was never in character.

“I don’t manufacture conflict,” he told ESPN.com while at a media event in Philadelphia. “I don’t go out and say anything bad about Anderson Silva -- I don’t like Anderson Silva. I made that known, and I make no apology for it. I do like Brian Stann and I’m not going to pretend I don’t. I see guys in this sport continually attempt to imitate me and copy me and to be like me, [but] they get it wrong -- I’m real. What you see is what you get. If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t say it.

“When it comes to Brian Stann, when it came to Nate Marquardt, when it came to Yushin Okami … those are great guys and I won’t say otherwise in the attempt to draw attention to myself or to the event. The event has enough attention, I’ve got enough attention, tickets are moving just fine. I’m not in the business of hyping or selling a fight.”

Sonnen’s treatment of Silva ahead if UFC 117 was novel. For one thing, up until then not many people had been irreverent toward the long-time middleweight champion (at least not in public). For another, it was hard to stay up with the Sonnen soundbites while holding your bearings -- he took things to a different level that blurred media senses. He was telling people what they had and hadn’t heard, which is the closest to a Jedi trick we’ve seen in MMA. He contradicted himself with impossible audacity. There were moments when you wondered if Silva really did speak the King’s English, but even an MMA novice suspected that a Nogueira black belt was harder to come by than a Happy Meal toy.

In any case, this split his audience up into love/hate positions with him (often interchangeable, and very close to the same). Against Stann we won’t catch any of that. He likes Stann. He doesn’t like Silva. It’s just that simple.

“Stann’s a stud, and I tried to not get on the docket with him,” he said. “I did everything I could to get an easy fight. I tried to get [Lyoto] Machida to lure into a fight, I tried to get Wanderlei [Silva], I tried to get Anderson. I tried to get every easy fight I could think of, and Joe Silva didn’t like it so he called in the Marines.”

With Yushin Okami set to take his chances against UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva on Aug. 27 in Brazil, the maneuvering has begun for top-contender status at 185 pounds.

The common belief is that Chael Sonnen is next in line if Silva exacts revenge on Okami. But that might be jumping the gun a bit.

Sonnen, who hasn’t fought since coming within an eyelash of upending Silva in August 2010, has agreed to face fast-rising Brian Stann in October. And it’s not hard to imagine Stann’s hand being raised at the conclusion of that bout.

A win over Sonnen would put Stann front and center of any title conversation. But Stann wants no part of that discussion.

“I’m not concerned about [getting a title shot] right now,” Stann told ESPN.com. “With the person the caliber of Chael Sonnen, I need to focus on one thing, one thing only, and that’s Chael Sonnen.”

While Stann prefers to stay away from thoughts of a title shot, other middleweights are scrambling to position themselves for the top spot.

Before Stann’s next fight was made public, Mark Munoz had his eye on the former WEC light heavyweight champion. But Stann isn’t the only high-profile middleweight Munoz would like to test his skills against.

“At this point we’ve talked about a few people and Chris Leben’s name came up, coming off a big win,” Munoz’s manager Mike Roberts told ESPN.com. “That is definitely a fight Mark would be interested in.

“There are a lot of good fights for Mark at 185. But we would definitely be interested in Chris Leben.

“He’s not calling him out or anything. Mark just wants to fight the next guy who will get him closer to a title shot.”

Munoz wants a date with Leben, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Leben’s handlers just don’t view Munoz as attractive enough at this time.

“Let’s say Vitor Belfort beats [Yoshihiro] Akiyama, that fight [with Belfort] makes sense to me,” Leben’s manager Malki Kawa told ESPN.com. “Vitor is somebody near the top of the division.

“He’s a guy who has accomplished a little more than Mark at this point.

“Mark has everything to gain by beating Chris Leben or a Brian Stann at this point, but it’s not necessarily the same thing in the opposite way.”

Kawa refuses to completely slam the door on a possible Leben-Munoz showdown, but he’d like assurances from UFC officials that a title shot isn’t too far down the road if his guy wins.

“I’m looking for fights that will put Chris Leben in position to be the top contender,” Kawa said. “If that’s Mark Munoz, so be it.”

Yushin Okami is promising a victory over UFC middleweight champion when the pair square off at UFC 134. More