Nogueira vs Couture at UFC 101?

MMA Weekly (link below) is reporting that Randy Couture has agreed to square off against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC 101, which is set to take place sometime this summer.

The UFC offered Couture this match earlier this year, but he had to turn it down at the time due to his movie commitments and to give himself time for recover from surgery that removed large bone spurs from his left elbow.

The fight, according to the MMA Weekly report, will now take place at UFC 101, contingent on Nogueira and his camp verbally accepting the fight. Nogueira has publicly stated his desires for a fight against Couture, so there is no reason to think that this fight won't happen, barring any unexpected injuries.

Originally the fight was supposed to take place "in the first half of 2009", but Couture had to turn it down at the time due to the stated reasons above.

Both fighters are coming off of disappointing losses late last year.

Couture was stopped by Brock Lesnar and stripped of his heavyweight title at UFC 91, while Nogueira was soundly beaten for the interim heavyweight title by Frank Mir at UFC 92.

The winner of a Couture / Nogueira fight will likely square off against the winner of Mir/Lesnar, which is scheduled to take place at UFC 98. Any combination of Couture/Nogueira vs Mir/Lesnar would generate huge business for the UFC (except for maybe Nogueira vs Mir II), so I think that this would be the likeliest scenario, barring any unexpected Fedor signing.

A Couture/Nogueira bout just makes sense for both of the fighters. I mean, who else would Randy Couture square off against at this stage of the game? He needs to beat someone before fighting Brock Lesnar again. He doesn't want to drop to light heavyweight, and he only wants to fight in "big" fights. Nogueira, Fedor, Mir and Lesnar are the only logical opponents for Couture at this stage of the game, in my opinion.

There were rumors that Nogueira was going to square off against Cheick Kongo at UFC 99, but this fight really didn't make sense to me either.

Penn vs Couture is also a possibility for this card, which will help to continue the UFC's impressive string of big PPVs.

We'll post another update once this fight has been verbally agreed to by Nogueira.

Source: MMA Weekly

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