Bellator Fighting Championships has confirmed that its middleweight champion, Hector Lombard, will return to the cage to take on former WEC middleweight champion Paulo Filho on May 13.The bout is one of the four non-title "super fights" in Season 2 featuring Bellator's champions. In Season 3, those four champions will also put their belts on the line against Bellator's four Season 2 tournament winners.
If Filho shows up in shape and motivated to fight, this is a tremendous match-up, and one of the best fights in Bellator's second season. Filho has had problems with addiction and depression over the last couple of years, but it wasn't that long ago that he was widely regarded as the second-best middleweight in the world, behind only Anderson Silva.
"I think it's a great fight for me," Lombard said in Bellator's statement announcing the fight. "Paulo is a big name in MMA and he's a former champion, so it will be champion versus champion. I think I match up really well with him both on my feet and on the ground."
Lombard is 23-2 and Filho is 19-1. MMA fans just don't get to see two fighters with a combined 42-3 record very often, so you'll want to mark your calendar for this one.
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