The time has come, and December 29th is the date. Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell (20-5-0) is going to face off against “The Axe Murderer” Wanderlei Silva (31-7-1) at UFC 79 in Las Vegas. After years of being let down by missed opportunities, and back-to-back losses for both fighters, Dana White officially announced the bout during a commercial break at the 2007 Scream Awards on SpikeTV.

Both Liddell and Silva have had their imprints on the 205-lbs. weight class for nearly a decade, and the first opportunity for them to fight each other was supposed to be at the finals of the 2003 PRIDE Middleweight Tournament. Unfortunately Liddell ran into a very tough Quinton “Rampage” Jackson who then lost to Silva in the finals.

Then there was “The Staredown” at UFC 61 when PRIDE was still a functioning organization, Wanderlei Silva was brought into the Octagon with Chuck Liddell to officially announce a fight that would never take place.

Dana White then blamed PRIDE for ruining the mystique of Wanderlei Silva by putting him against two straight fighters (Mirko “Cro Cop” & Dan Henderson) with knockout power, who both coincidentally knocked out Silva. Fans got lucky though as the UFC announced that if Chuck Liddell could get past tough, but not unbeatable Light-Heavyweight Keith Jardine, then we would see Silva and Liddell face off at UFC 79.

We all know what happened here as Liddell was stunned again with a unanimous decision loss to Jardine, and again the biggest fight in MMA history was lost. Until now… People are going to be skeptical until both fighters are facing each other in the Octagon on Saturday, December 29th, 2007. This time, the UFC won’t let this fight slip through their hands, because this is the last chance.

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Don’t forget that we’re going to talk about this, and a lot more on Wednesday’s edition of the 5thRound Beat Down starting at 8PM. If you’d like to call in, the phone number is 646-716-9824. You can discuss anything you want, but we’ll be talking about M-1 Global and the signing of Fedor Emelianenko, as well as Randy Couture’s press conference.