Back in 2012, one of the major stories of Strikeforce shutting down was whether Josh Barnett would come back to the UFC. Barnett held the UFC heavyweight title long ago, but had a falling out with the promotion when he was stripped of the title due to a steroid test failure. Barnett and UFC president Dana White had traded many barbs over the next 10 years, and it didn't seem likely that Barnett would step back into the Octagon.
Apparently though, enough time had passed and they were able to come to a deal. For his first UFC fight, he was given an opponent with a strong grappling game, just like him - fellow former champion Frank Mir. You can check out the video of that fight from UFC 164 above, which went well for Barnett.
Barnett will step into the cage again this weekend when he takes on Andrei Arlovski in the UFC Hamburg headliner.
Main Card (3 PM ET/12 PM PT)
Andrei Arlovski vs. Josh Barnett
Jan Blachowicz vs. Alexander Gustafsson
Ryan Bader vs. Ilir Latifi
Tae Hyun Bang vs. Nick Hein
Preliminary Card (time TBD)
Jessin Ayari vs. Jim Wallhead
Nicolas Dalby vs. Peter Sobotta
Leandro Issa vs. Taylor Lapilus
Christian Colombo vs. Jarjis Danho
Scott Askham vs. Jack Hermansson
Rustam Khabilov vs. Leandro Silva
Martin Buschkamp vs. Alex Enlund
Ashlee Evans-Smith vs. Veronica Macedo
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