FanHouse UFC108

The January 2 UFC 108 show has lost its main event, as Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has had to pull out of his fight with Cain Velasquez because of a staph infection, the latest in a series of blows to the promotion.

It has been rumored for some time, that Vitor Belfort will challenge Anderson Silva for the middleweight title at UFC 108 on Jan. 2. And while Silva's recent elbow surgery might have put a wrench in those plans, UFC president Dana White told FanHouse last week that he hopes the title fight can still be put together.

Recently, middleweight contender Nate Marquardt told HDNet's Inside MMA that he didn't think Belfort deserved the shot so soon after returning to the UFC, and when FanHouse asked "The Phenom" about this, he surprisingly agreed. "I didn't look for the fight. Actually, I would like to have a couple more fights," he said. "I think [Marquardt] deserves it."

Check out the video interview below.

If the Lyoto Machida-Shogun Rua fight at UFC 104 had gone the way everyone expected -- Machida handily defeating Shogun to retain his title -- the UFC would have faced a quandary with its light heavyweight division. Machida would be perceived as so dominant that there wouldn't be any particularly interesting fights for him, and the stacked UFC light heavyweight division might have started to feel a little stale.

That's why Machida's controversial unanimous decision victory on Saturday night was a great thing for the UFC: It sets up a Rua-Machida rematch that will be a bigger fight than the first one, and it buys time for the UFC to re-establish some of its other light heavyweights as contenders to take on the Rua-Machida 2 winner.