UFC 97 good to go in Montreal; televised main card announced

Despite catching a good amount of flak from Canadian officials, UFC 97 will go off without a hitch in Montreal. The only altered rule? No foot stomps. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue. At least our precious elbow and knee strikes are still intact. Imagine a world where Anderson Silva was prohibited from using knee strikes. That concept would be similar to a world where Scott Farrell didn’t sound like he smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before announcing the next YAMMA event.

The possibility of the Quebec Athletic commission putting the kibosh on UFC 97 was unsettling. Many questioned as to why there were no opponents to “UFC 83: St Pierre vs Serra II” which also took place in Montreal. The answer from the commission was quite simple: they were completely unaware of the event in 2008. How an event– that was attended by 21,000 people and generated approximately 5.1 million dollars in income– went under the nose of the commission is beyond me. But I digress.

MMAJunkie.com has reported that the UFC has finalized the televised main card. The main card, along with the untelevised preliminary card, is availible after the jump.

MAIN CARD

• Middleweight champ Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites
• Chuck Liddell vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua
• Krzysztof Soszynski vs. Brian Stann
• Cheick Kongo vs. Antoni Hardonk
• Luis Cane vs. Steve Cantwell

PRELIMINARY CARD

• Xavier Foupa-Pokam vs. Denis Kang
• Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry
• Ed Herman vs. David Loiseau
• David Bielkheden vs. Mark Bocek
• Ryo Chonan vs. T.J. Grant
• Sam Stout vs. Matt Wimam