MMAWeekly reports that the catchweight fight of Babalu Sobral and Matt Lindland has been cancelled in favor of putting up Lindland against Vitor Belfort in a middleweight matchup for Affliction's January 24 event:
Renato "Babalu" Sobral defeated Bobby Southworth recently to capture the Strikeforce light heavyweight championship. One unfortunate side effect for the new titleholder, however, is that he has been removed from a fight against No. 3 ranked middleweight Matt Lindland.
Affliction had planned to pair Babalu and Lindland against each other at the promotion's Jan. 24 event at The Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. It now appears that Babalu's recent effort at 205 pounds for Strikeforce may have necessitated the bout with Lindland to be at a catch weight in the 190 to 195-pound range.
Affliction vice president Tom Atencio told MMAWeekly.com on Monday that he made an "executive decision" not to do the catch weight fight. He instead decided to pit Lindland against Vitor Belfort in a true middleweight contest at 185 pounds.
Belfort and Lindland were scheduled to fight each other on the "Day of Reckoning" card when it was originally planned for October in Las Vegas. The move to January saw their bout split apart before the recent decision to put it back together.
I think this is good news. The catch weight was supposed to be a feeler on how Babalu would perform at a lower weight, with the goal of eventually cutting to middleweight. But since Babalu just won the Strikeforce light heavyweight belt, it would be natural for him to stay at 205 rather than cut weight to fight at Affliction and then go back to 205 to defend his belt.
Also, we don't need to see another meaningless non-middleweight fight for Lindland. I think it would be better for his career if he would try and solidify his claim as the top middleweight outside the UFC. Who knows? Maybe we'd get to see him and Robbie Lawler square off in the future.
Vitor looked good in his last fight and it would really be interesting to see how this fight pans out. Could we see the vintage vitor and him pull off the victory? That would surely let him leap frog some people in the Middleweight rankings.
