Background
The card featured the anticipated rematch between Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre for the UFC Welterweight Championship – a fight originally scheduled for UFC 63. UFC 65 also featured a heavyweight title bout between Undisputed UFC Heavyweight Champion Tim Sylvia and Jeff Monson.
This event marked the last time to date that a UFC card with two non-interim title fights featured the lower weight class' title fight as the card's main event. The UFC has since decided that all cards with two title fights will always have the heavier weight class' title fight as the main event.
UFC 65's original slated main event was a championship superfight with UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Chuck Liddell defending his title against PRIDE Middleweight Champion Wanderlei Silva, a matchup UFC President Dana White announced during UFC 61 on July 8, 2006. Since then, the matchup appeared to have been postponed or cancelled because Tito Ortiz had been guaranteed a title shot at UFC 66, which was too close to UFC 65, as White stated in several interviews.
The Hughes vs. St-Pierre main event was long awaited. It was first officially announced to happen at UFC 63 during the July 17, 2006 edition of the The Hot List on ESPNEWS. The fight was announced before, without a date, at a press conference in Toronto, Canada on April 7, 2006, and the matchup was alluded to—but not officially announced—during the PPV broadcast of UFC 58.
Read more about this topic: UFC 65
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