Official MMA Thread

[NCRadioMan]

Hughes re-ups with UFC

The Ultimate Fighting Championships has signed a new contract with the man who has more title defenses than anyone else in the promotion's history.

Matt Hughes, facing camera, has seven successful UFC title defenses, with the last one coming against BJ Penn in September 2006 at UFC 63.

Welterweight former champion Matt Hughes has a new multifight deal with UFC, he announced on his blog today. Hughes described the agreement as "much like my last contract."

That previous deal ended with Hughes' fight against Matt Serra at UFC 98 in May.

Hughes last held the 170-pound division's belt in 2006. He has gone 2-2 since losing the title to Georges St. Pierres in November of that year, but Hughes remains a formidable presence — the USA TODAY/SB Nation rankings currently list Hughes in the No. 4 spot.

UFC's new agreement with Hughes marks the promotion's second move in less than a week to lock up a former champion. Last Saturday, six-time champion Randy Couture signed a deal that added six more fights to his UFC tenure, following his UFC 102 bout with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

The new contract with Hughes apparently gives him room to pursue some outside interests.

"I also brought up the fact that I wanted to do a hunting show and they thought that would be a good thing," Hughes wrote on his blog.

His next opponent hasn't been determined yet, although UFC officials mentioned the possibility of "a person I've never fought before," Hughes posted.

That leaves a wide range of names. Among the 19 UFC fighters in the consensus top 25, more than a dozen have not fought Hughes, who started his mixed martial arts career in the late 1990s, years before UFC's current owners got into the business.

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...ups-with-ufc/1