A heavyweight scrap between Mark Hunt and Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva will headline the UFC’s latest visit to Australia on December 7th.
For a time there Hunt was the heavyweight division’s latest fairytale story. He arrived in the UFC off the back of a five fight losing streak, and a loss to Sean McCorckle in his debut only served to confirm everyone’s suspicions that ‘The Super Samoan’ was well past his best.
However, Hunt then went on to prove everyone wrong with a four fight winning streak that left him being talked about as a possible title contender. A win over former champion Junior Dos Santos could have been the key for him to unlock that dream fight, but a spinning heel kick from ‘Cigano’ deep into the third round of that fight left him KO’d on the canvas and brought an abrupt end to his good fortune.
Since then the New-Zealander has been struggling with a particularly bad staph infection, but is now on the mend and will now get a chance to fight again in his home continent.
In ‘Bigfoot’ he’ll be facing someone who’s also had his ups and downs in the UFC’s heavyweight division.
Silva had a rough start to his UFC career when he was paired up with Cain Velasquez and was promptly finished in the first round by TKO.
He bounce back strongly however, handing Travis Browne the only loss of his career to date by TKO, then brought an end to Alistair Overeem’s hype train with a third round KO victory.
That earned ‘Bigfoot’ a rather unlikely chance to fight for the title in a rematch with Velasquez, but again he came up short with a first round TKO loss.
So, both men have managed to exceed expections in the UFC and who’s to say that the winner of this encounter couldn’t go on to do so again in the future.
