(His mouthpiece says "DEATH." His shorts say "CONDOM DEPOT." Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

With Gegard Mousasi and Vitor Belfort‘s weight-related bitch-fest producing nothing positive, Affliction has scrapped the match and moved on. MMA Weekly has now confirmed that Mousasi will be instead be taking on #6-ranked light-heavyweight Renato "Babalu" Sobral at Affliction’s third MMA event (August 1st; Anaheim, California). Not exactly an easy first fight at light-heavyweight for the Young Vagabond, but he’s already 1-0 in the highly competitive Super Hulk division, so don’t count him out. At any rate, the fight against Babalu should tell us a lot about how Mousasi will fare as 205-pounder.


As for Sobral, the Strikeforce light-heavyweight champ still intends to defend his title shortly after the Mousasi fight, health permitting; Babalu hasn’t made a Strikeforce belt defense since winning the strap from Bobby Southworth in November. In fact, all of Strikeforce’s titles have been on ice lately — Josh Thomson has only participated in one non-title fight since he won his lightweight strap a year ago, Cung Le hasn’t fought at all since winning the middleweight belt last March, and Alistair Overeem hasn’t returned to Strikeforce since becoming their heavyweight champion in November 2007. Maybe BJ Penn can fight for Strikeforce’s vacant welterweight title so that belt can stay inactive too…