Manitoba's Capital Chosen to Host UFC 161 in June

Winnipeg will be the fifth Canadian location to see the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The MTS Centre, home of the NHL’s Jets, is the site of UFC 161 to take place June 15. The capital of Manitoba joins Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary in hosting UFC. Tickets for the event, which will also be available live on pay-per-view, go on sale April 12. It will be one of three UFC cards projected for Canada in 2013.

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua will take on Antonio Rogerio “Li’l Nog” Nogueira in a replay of their middleweight clash at the 2005 Pride Fighting Championship. “They had an epic three-round battle in Japan,” UFC Canada director of operations Tom Wright told a news conference on Tuesday. (Rua won that bout by unanimous decision.)

The 6-foot-1, 205-pound Brazilian hasn’t been in the same form lately, losing four of his last seven fights including a unanimous decision to Alexander Gustafsson last Dec. 9 in UFC on Fox 5 in Seattle. Nogueira — 6-foot-2, 205 pounds and also from Brazil — has wanted a rematch with Rua since last summer. Although he’s been out of action for more than a year, “Li’l Nog” had won his last two fights, against Evans and Tito Ortiz.

Wright, a former commissioner of the Canadian Football League, noted there would be five fights on the main card. According to UFC president Dana White, one of those matches could be onetime light-heavyweight title winner Rashad Evans (17-3-1 record in MMA, 12-3-1 in UFC) against ex-Pride and Strikeforce champ Dan Henderson (29-9 MMA, 6-3 UFC), pending medical clearance.

Henderson has not fought in 15 months while recovering from a knee injury; he had to withdraw from a title fight with Jon “Bones” Jones last summer. In addition to his loss to Nogueira, Evans was also defeated by Jones at UFC 145.

The mixed martial arts website MMAJunkie.com had previously reported of another potential bout for the card, between former welterweight contender Jake Shields (27-6-1 MMA, 2-2 UFC) versus Tyron Woodley (11-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC), but this has not been finalized yet.

The biggest Ultimate Fighting Championship card to date remains UFC 129, held at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in 2011; 55,000 people attended that event and garnered more than $35 million — more than $11 million was in gate revenue. There was also speculation that a Canadian city would be the site for the next edition of “The Ultimate Fighter” TV series, which develops combatants for the UFC; at this point, the TUF match may be moved to next year.