Hector Lombard (Bellator Fighting Championships)
Middleweight bout set for main event in August at Staples Center
The recently announced middleweight bout between Hector Lombard and Brian Stann will be the main event at UFC on Fox 4 this August.
Sources close to the fight on Tuesday confirmed the news to HeavyMMA. The fight was booked earlier this week, not long after Lombard’s signing with the UFC became official.
UFC on Fox 4 will take place Aug. 4 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be the UFC’s first trip to that venue since UFC 104 in 2009.
Lombard (31-2-1, 1 NC) comes to the UFC after a run as Bellator Fighting Championships’ middleweight champion. But when his contract expired, he signed with the UFC and quickly made it known he wanted to make his way to middleweight champ Anderson Silva. He’ll get a stiff test in Stann for his promotional debut.
Lombard brings a 25-fight unbeaten streak to the promotion. He has gone 24-0-1 since his last loss – a unanimous decision setback to Gegard Mousasi in a 2006 Pride fight. In fact, Lombard’s only two losses came in 2006, both in Pride, to Mousasi and Akihiro Gono, both by decision.
The 34-year-old Cuban-born fighter was a member of the 2000 Cuban Olympic team in judo, a sport in which he currently is a fourth-degree black belt. His primary training ground is with American Top Team in Florida. He was Bellator’s first middleweight champion, winning the promotion’s Season 1 tournament at 185 pounds. He defended the title just once, more than a year later, with a five-round unanimous decision against Alexander Shlemenko. His other Bellator fights since winning the title, aside from the one title defense, have been catch-weight bouts or non-title fights.
Stann (12-4, 6-3 UFC) is coming off a dominant first-round knockout of Alessio Sakara last month at UFC on Fuel TV: Gustafsson vs. Silva. That win got Stann back on track after a second-round submission loss to Chael Sonnen in October at UFC 136.
Prior to that setback, Stann had a three-fight winning streak – all three by stoppage. A Fight of the Night submission win over Mike Massenzio in August 2010 was followed by high-profile TKO wins over Chris Leben and Jorge Santiago. But the former WEC light heavyweight champion, Marine and Silver Star winner for valor in combat was overwhelmed by Sonnen from the opening bell in October, and eventually tapped his winning streak away.
UFC on Fox: Stann vs. Lombard also will feature a light heavyweight bout between former champion Lyoto Machida and Ryan Bader, plus a heavyweight bout between recent bonus winners Ben Rothwell and Travis Browne, who picked up impressive victories at UFC 145 just 10 days ago.