Contracts are fickle. Fabricio Werdum knows that better than anyone, as he’s already been released from his contract with the UFC.

Vai Cavalo, who has wins over Gabriel Gonzaga, Brandon Vera, Aleksander Emelianenko and Alistair Overeem, was probably dropped as a result of his loss to Junior Dos Santos, and opponent that we all know he should have beaten. Werdum made the mistake of keeping the fight standing and was knocked out by a hard uppercut.

Werdum has gone from title contender to free agent, but it’s hard for me to look at this without remembering a year ago when the UFC was dropping heavyweight contracts left and right and chaos insued in the division. While Werdum may be an anomaly and not a new policy with regards to the heavyweight division, he is a pretty major loss for the UFC, all things considered.

Perhaps he wasn’t worth the cost. No one has yet released how much the UFC was going to pay him. What’s important, though, is more that the UFC veteran with a 2-2 record (his other loss came as a boring decision against Andrei Arlovski that probably resulted in the UFC’s release of Arlovski) is now on the free market, but that it opens up a lot of matchups for organizations that need a UFC veteran to promote major fights.

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First are a couple of the interesting undercard fights.
Thales Leites vs. Drew McFedries
Matt Horowich vs. Dan Miller

And the main card fights!
Anderson Silva vs. Patrick Cote
Josh Koscheck vs. Thiago Alves
Fabricio Werdum vs. Junior Dos Santos
Rich Clementi vs. Gray Maynard
Sean Sherk vs. Tyson Griffin

It looks like my two favorite UFC heavyweights will be appearing on the UFC 90 card, in what seems to be the brass’ attempt to show us a decent heavyweight contender.

Those two fighters: Fabricio Werdum and Cain Velasquez.

But they are not fighting each other. Velasquez will be fighting my fifth favorite (behind Mir and Nogueira, and trust me, that division is not that hard to organize), Antoni Hardonk.

Werdum will be fighting the new recruit and giant talent Junior Dos Santos. However, I don’t think that Dos Santos is quite at the level of Werdum on the ground, and so I’m looking at Werdum to take this one and establish himself a solid top contender.

Anyway, it’s about damn time. The only real issue is that on the four cards between now and then we will only be seeing three other bouts: Brock Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, Kongo vs. Evenson and Shane Carwin vs. Neil Wain.