Hammer House vs. Chute Boxe gets settled at UFC 93

A couple of years ago Mark Coleman and Mauricio Rua fought at PRIDE 31: Dreamers.

In the fight Coleman and Rua were grappling on their feet at one point. Coleman pushed forward and got Shogun off balance. Shogun put his arm out to break his fall but wound up breaking his arm instead. For once the PRIDE referee saw that Shogun was in trouble and jumped in to start the fight.

But the fight didn't end. Coleman started punching Rua. The ref got between them and managed to get Coleman upright, but Coleman threw the referee aside and looked intent on continuing his assault on the prone and defenseless Rua. Its at this point that some speculate that Coleman was 'roid raging like crazy (there was no drug testing in PRIDE). Then shit hit the fan and Chute Boxe and Hammer House charged into the ring.

At one point Coleman was standing on Wanderlei Silva's head during the melee. Phil Baroni and other Hammer House fighters were throwing punches and the brawl would lead to a permanent rift between Hammer House and Chute Boxe.

After the fight Coleman approached Rua backstage in an attempt to apologize, backed by Baroni and Rampage Jackson. Rua, Silva, and the rest of Chute Boxe weren't having it. Silva pledged to avenge his teammate and fight Coleman in the future but that bout never happened.

Coleman has only had one fight since this incident--a loss to Fedor Emelianenko. He's been out of action for a couple of years and was slated to return to the UFC with a match against Brock Lesnar, but that fell through when Coleman injured himself in training. Now he has decided to avoid Lesnar altogether by dropping down to his natural weight class of 205-lbs. Rumours that he would fight Shogun flared up months ago but with Shogun's multiple injuries it seemed like the fight wouldn't happen.

Well now it is happening at UFC 93 in Dublin, Ireland, on January 17th.

Here is video of what I talked about:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=n5fkHXvgGVQ