(Philippou puts an abrupt end to the Barbarian Era at UFC 155. Photo via Tracy Lee/Yahoo! Sports)

Well, it happened again. Due to a cut suffered in training*, UFC middleweight contender Costa Philippou has pulled out of his scheduled match against Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, which was slated as the co-main event of UFC on FX 8: Belfort vs. Rockhold (May 18th; Jaragua do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil). MMAFighting.com was the first to confirm the news.

Philippou is riding a five-fight win streak in the Octagon, and was going to serve as the UFC welcoming committee for Jacare, the former Strikeforce middleweight champion who has won his last three fights by stoppage, including his first-round submission of Ed Herman in January. No word yet if Souza will remain on the card against a different opponent…although the card could certainly use him. We’ll keep you posted.

Update: Souza will now face TUF 11 vet Chris Camozzi, who has built up a four-fight win streak in the UFC since January 2012. Camozzi was originally scheduled to face Rafael Natal on the UFC on FX 8 card. Natal will instead fight late-relacement Joao Zeferino, a local middleweight from Santa Catarina with a 13-4 record.

* I mean, we’re assuming it happened during training. Maybe Costa participates in underground knife fights on the weekends to pick up extra beer money. Maybe it was a freakish eyebrow-plucking accident. Maybe he got scratched by one of his pet wolverines. I don’t know. We’ll just say “cut suffered in training” for now.

(“OH GOD, OH GOD. I CAN’T FIND A PULSE, YOSEMITE!”) 

Considering Anderson Silva has all but left the middleweight division for the more lucrative worlds of light-heavyweight squash matches and straight-to-DVD cop films, we think it’s going to be pretty difficult for the UFC to put their patented “winner gets a title shot” rub on the upcoming UFC on FX 8 card scheduled for May 18th. Sure, the event features both a headlining fight between top contenders Vitor Belfort and Luke Rockhold and now a middleweight clash between Ronaldo Souza and Costa Philippou, but when your division’s champion has been turning down the matchups that have been offered to him for months now, to what extent can you start promoting number one contenders?

Be that as it may, UFC on FX 8 will now feature a pair of middleweight showdowns that should have title implications written all over them, as the pairing of Souza and Philippou was just made official a few hours ago. Since losing his Strikeforce middleweight title to Rockhold in September of 2011, “Jacare” has collected three straight stoppage victories, including a first round kimura submission of Ed Herman at Strikeforce’s final event last month.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

By Elias Cepeda

With a somewhat forgettable year thankfully coming to an end, UFC 155 looked to excite fans, promote contenders and get everybody ready for a new year. This card did exactly that. Not to reach into our bag of clichés so early into the aftermath, but UFC 155 really sent 2012 out with a bang, and set the bar high for upcoming cards in 2013.

With as many solid fights as took place Saturday in Las Vegas at UFC 155, Jim Miller and Joe Lauzon’s three round battle was recognized by the UFC brass as the Fight of The Night and each man earned an extra $65,000 for their effort. The lightweight contenders should also be in consideration for Fight of The Year lists everywhere.

If it is, Lauzon will be competing with himself for his incredible fight last August against Jamie Varner. JLau may have lost the decision against Miller on the judge’s score cards, two rounds to one, but deserves credit for coming back from being bullied, beaten and bloodied badly in the first round by Miller in the first round and finishing stronger in the final two rounds.

On the strength of his aggressiveness and multiple submission attempts to close out the second and third rounds, this writer believes that a very reasonable judge could have scored the bout Lauzon’s way instead of Miller’s. As it stands, both men were impressive in their own ways and, *reaches back into the bag of applicable clichés* there simply were no “losers” in this one.

Miller has always shown excellent boxing skills but he may have been sharper than ever before against Lauzon in the first and second rounds, scoring almost at will with shots to the body and head, as well as knocking Joe down repeatedly with a nasty inside leg kick. His dirty boxing from the clinch was masterful, using punches, knees and elbows to hurt and cut open Lauzon over and again.

(What a crazy year it’s been. Just think, four weeks ago that bald guy in the middle was actually homeless. / Photo courtesy of Esther Lin’s UFC 155 weigh-in set on MMAFighting.com)

UFC 155 might not be as epic as some of the UFC’s previous end-of-year cards (you can blame the injury curse for that), but any time the Heavyweight Championship of the World is at stake, it’s must-see TV.

Tonight, defending champ Junior Dos Santos will try to keep the train a-rollin’ in a rematch with his old pal Cain Velasquez. Meanwhile in the co-main event, lightweights Joe Lauzon and Jim Miller will gobble up as many performance bonuses as they can get their little hands on. Plus, six middleweight contenders — including Tim Boetsch, Alan Belcher, and Chris Leben — will swing their ham-hock fists at each other, in the hopes that the most popular kid in school might notice them. Lotsa luck, ladies.

Running our final liveblog of the year (!) will be none other than Elias Cepeda, who will be updating you with round-by-round results after the jump starting at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and please share your New Year’s resolutions in the comments section.