Confirmed: Joe Doerksen vs. Jason MacDonald at UFC 84

by Luke Thomas on Jan 14, 2008 11:42 AM EST in MMA News

Joe "El Dirte" Doerksen (39-11) has signed on to fight Jason "The Athlete" MacDonald (19-9) at a UFC event scheduled to emanate from the Bell Centre in Montreal on Saturday, April 19.

The pairing of two of Canada's top middleweights will be a 2005 rematch of an Ultimate Cage Wars 3 bout in Winnipeg, Manitoba in which Macdonald won via a fourth-round submission.

"If the UFC had offered for me to face anyone on that card, it would have been Jason, so I'm extremely happy with the match-up," said New Bothwell, Manitoba native Doerksen. "I wanted this fight for so long."

...

"[MacDonald's camp has] been saying that Jason controlled me for the whole fight, but I completely disagree. I have no problem with Jason. I don't think we'd be best of friends, but [MacDonald's manager Mark] Pavelich really bugs me," said Doerksen. "He rubs me like sandpaper. I want to go in there and beat MacDonald, and then I maybe I can shut him up. If I lose, then I'll accept it, and I won't talk about it anymore."

Decent match-up from a stylistic perspective as well as appealing to the hometown crowd with the inclusion of two more Canadians on the bill. I don't know that this match-up has any implications for the anemic middleweight division, but as a filler on the card this more than suffices.

Update [2008-1-14 14:34:45 by Nick Thomas]: Another match just announced is Mac Danzig vs. Mark Bocek @ UFC 84.