James Brydon

After Georges St. Pierre dominated Matt Hughes and Matt Serra in consecutive fights, it seemed like the only logical thing next would be for the Matts to face off against each other and finally settle their grudge from The Ultimate Fighter.

Not so fast.

The UFC just announced that Hughes will headline the upcoming event in London, England, taking on Thiago Alves at UFC 85.

OK, on paper that's a decent fight. Alves is on a five-fight winning streak, with all but one by TKO or KO, and his only loss in his past eight fights was to Jon Fitch, who is considered the No. 1 contender for the title right now. (Dana White said as much, and with 15 straight wins, you can't really argue.)

Alves' most recent win was over Karo Parisyan, who might have been the No. 1 contender himself had it not been for that loss. So he is more than a legitimate opponent for Hughes, the former welterweight champion.

And it also represents an intriguing matchup. Alves is a Muay Thai expert with tremendous knockout ability, while Hughes is veteran wrestler with slippery submission skills. This has all the makeup of being a very entertaining fight.

But it's not the fight we hoped to see next.

We were supposed to get Serra vs. Hughes in December. Unfortunately a back injury forced Serra out and in came St. Pierre. But that did not cause anyone to forget the bad blood between the two opposing TUF coaches. Certainly they didn't forget.

Serra has continued to refer to his "dislike" of Hughes, to put it mildly, even while he was preparing to fight St. Pierre. Afterward said he still wants to fight him. Hughes meanwhile said he found himself rooting for Serra in the second round of his fight against St. Pierre… because he wanted GSP to give him a beating for five rounds, not just two.

If that's not an incentive to want to get it on as soon as possible, I don't know what is.

But he's going to have to wait, since Hughes will be fighting Alves, and who knows whom Serra will fight next.

This is all because the UFC was in a bit of jam and needed to find a decent replacement for the main event of UFC 85. Chuck Liddell was set to headline against Rashad Evans, but he had to pull out with an injury. James Irvin stepped in to replace The Iceman, but he's not a household name yet. And as good as the unbeaten Evans is, for some reason, he isn't the greatest draw - or at least the UFC didn't think so.

So they decided to bring in a big-name guy in Hughes, who was at one point the most dominant welterweight in the world. The problem is, he isn't anymore. In fact, in his fight with GSP, he looked like he didn't even belong in the same organization as his opponent.

Now that could be more due to St. Pierre being on another stratosphere from any other fighter not named Anderson Silva. But I wonder if it's more than that. Hughes has only one win in the past 18 months, a decision victory over Chris Lytle, and he did not look great in his two losses to GSP. He has also hinted at retirement, saying he doesn't know how much longer he'll keep fighting.

If he were to lose to a well-motivated Alves, depending on how it goes down, that could really hurt the chances of a fight with Serra happening. And even if Hughes is intent on having that fight win or lose, which he says he is, it would still kill a bit of the momentum created by the feud between them following the reality show.

Especially if Serra were to take on another fight in between and lose that one as well. Imagine Serra vs. Hughes in which both have lost their last two fights. Not exactly as enticing as Serra vs. Hughes, following losses to GSP and completing that triangle of bad blood.

Is that underestimating Hughes? Perhaps. I'm just surprised the UFC is taking the chance that it's not.

Either way, the wait continues...