FanHouse YushinOkami

I've been banging the drum for a couple years saying the UFC needs to give Yushin Okami a shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva. You won't be hearing that from me anymore.

After Chael Sonnen thoroughly dominated Okami with a unanimous decision win on Saturday night at UFC 104, Okami took a tumble in my rankings of the top 10 middleweights in mixed martial arts. So how far did Okami fall, and what does the middleweight picture look like now? My rankings are below.

LOS ANGELES -- Chael Sonnen was very vocal prior to his UFC 104 fight against Yushin Okami about being disappointed with his placement on the card, but after his dominating victory on Saturday, Sonnen told FanHouse that he is very much a player in the UFC's middleweight division. Sonnen also talked about who he would like to fight next.

Check out the video interview below.

LOS ANGELES -- This is the UFC 104 live blog for the four preliminary bouts of the night's event featuring middleweights Yushin Okami vs. Chael Sonnen, Jorge Rivera vs. Rob Kimmons, heavyweights Stefan Struve vs. Chase Gormley and light heavyweights Kyle Kingsbury vs. Razak Al-Hassan.

The first bout is scheduled to begin at 7:30PM ET. The live blog begins below.

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Saturday's UFC 104 card features two bouts pitting Top 10 fighters against each other. One of them, of course, is the main event, Lyoto Machida vs. Shogun Rua. The other one won't even be televised.

Yushin Okami vs. Chael Sonnen is Saturday night's second-best fight, at least if you judge the quality of the fight based on how highly ranked the competitors are. In Bloody Elbow's consensus rankings, Okami is the fourth-best middleweight in the world and Sonnen is 10th. No other fight on the card even features one Top 10 fighter, let alone two Top 10 fighters against each other.

On this week's jam-packed edition of The MMA Hour, we first spoke to heavyweight Brett Rogers about his showdown against Fedor Emelianenko on Nov. 7. Rogers was his usual confident self, predicting what round and time he'll beat the "The Last Emperor."

Later in the show, we talked to Anthony Johnson about his UFC 104 fight against Yoshiyuki Yoshida. "Rumble," who weighed 17 pounds over the 171-pound weight limit less than a week before the fight will finally get a chance to shine on pay-per-view this Saturday night. Finally, we were also joined by middleweight Chael Sonnen, who faces Yushin Okami on the UFC 104 undercard. Sonnen called Okami a "nuisance" and said a win over the Japanese fighter should put him right back in the mix for the 185-pound title. Watch or listen to the show below.

UFC middleweight contenders Yushin Okami and Chael Sonnen will meet at UFC 104 on Oct. 24 in Los Angeles, the UFC announced today on the Japanese version of its website.

Okami (23-4), who was last seen in the Octagon outpointing Dean Lister at UFC 92 in December, will be competing for his first time in 2009. He was scheduled to fight Dan Miller at UFC 98 in May but was forced out due to a knee injury. Sonnen (23-10-1), incidentally, stepped in for Okami and earned the unanimous nod over Miller.

Most of the best middleweights in mixed martial arts are in the UFC, just as most of the best fighters in every weight class from bantamweight to heavyweight are under contract to Zuffa. But as I post my new list of the Top 10 middleweights in MMA, a list topped by UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva, I want to commend Affliction for putting together the best middleweight fight possible outside the Octagon: Vitor Belfort vs. Jorge Santiago.

Although the UFC rarely labels any fight as one that guarantees the winner a title shot, all indications are that the winner of the UFC 100 fight between Michael Bisping and Dan Henderson will get the next chance to fight UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

The UFC 100 Countdown show that aired Tuesday night referred to Bisping vs. Henderson as "an international grudge match for a shot at the middleweight belt."

The middleweight division in mixed martial arts is a mess. The undisputed best middleweight in the world, Anderson Silva, looks bored with the middleweight division in the UFC, and he's moving up to fight Forrest Griffin at light heavyweight, at least for the time being. The UFC 99 main event of Wanderlei Silva vs. Rich Franklin features one star (Silva) moving down from light heavyweight to middleweight because he wants a shot at Anderson Silva's belt, and another star (Franklin) moving up from middleweight to light heavyweight because he knows he'll never get another shot at Anderson Silva's belt.

And that's just for starters.