After competing in the three legendary light heavyweight fights, former UFC champions Randy "The Natural" Couture and Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell (picture) could now meet during a heavyweight encounter at a June 13, 2009 event in Cologne, Germany.The report comes from the UK based The Sun, which cites UFC officials as saying Liddell has been offered the heavyweight main event.
The Natural recently lost his heavyweight title to Brock Lesnar at UFC 91. Liddell, meanwhile, has dropped three of his four past fights at light heavyweight, but he's made no public statement regarding a potential move up to heavyweight division.
A source said that Couture is open to his fourth fight againsts Liddell, but we've been unable to confirm is the fight has been offered to Liddell.
With the event apparently in the works for Germany, it should come as little surprise that the UFC invited a small contingent of German press to UFC 91 to see Couture's main event with Lesnar. The 45-year-old Couture speaks German and has long been considered a likely headliner once the UFC does head to Germany, a market UFC officials have continually mentioned as a site for future expansion.
Couture and Liddell took part in a popular trilogy of fights that played out between 2003 and 2006. Couture scored a TKO in Round 3 at UFC 43 to win the first match-up for the interim heavyweight title (the former champion Tito Ortiz had been stripped of the title), but the 38-year-old Liddell won back the belt and made a successful title defense over Couture with two KO wins at UFC 52 and UFC 57.
With Liddell potentially tied up with the Germany event, he is apparently no longer being considered as an opponent for Anderson Silva at UFC 95 in London, England.
The Sun reported the possibility of the match, and though not opposed to the fight, Silva's manager, Ed Soares, last week told that UFC had not officially approached them about it.
The newspaper now reports that Silva, who is the current UFC Middleweight Champion, could instead meet one of the losers from UFC 92's two marquee 205-pound fights: UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Forrest Griffin vs Rashad Evans or Wanderlei Silva vs Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.
The fight would take place at 205 pounds as a non-title affair.
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