Jon Fitch vs. Thiago Alves II completes UFC 111 pay-per-view main card

A welterweight bout and long-awaited rematch between Jon Fitch (21-3 MMA, 11-1 UFC) and Thiago Alves (16-6 MMA, 9-3 UFC) officially has been added to next month's UFC 111 event and completes the March 27 fight card.

MMAjunkie.com (http://www.mmajunkie.com) first reported the UFC 111 bout, which was initially expected to take place at UFC 107, back in December.

UFC 111 takes place at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., and Fitch vs. Alves is one of five fights slated to air on pay-per-view.

(A source close to the event told MMAjunkie.com that a one-hour "UFC Prelim" special will likely air in conjunction with UFC 111 on Spike TV.)

Fitch defeated Alves in 2006, and they were first slated to rematch back in December at UFC 107. Alves, though, was forced off the card with a knee injury.

Both Alves and Fitch have suffered previous losses to welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, and both came via lopsided unanimous decision. Fitch's came in 2008 at UFC 87, and it snapped a career-high 16-fight win streak – one that included eight straight wins in the UFC. Since that defeat, Fitch has re-emerged as a top contender with three consecutive unanimous decision wins over Akihiro Gono, Paulo Thiago and Mike Pierce.

Alves' loss to St-Pierre came this past July at UFC 100 and snapped a seven-fight win streak. All of the wins took place under the UFC banner and came against notables such as Josh Koscheck, Matt Hughes, Karo Parisyan and Chris Lytle. He now returns to the cage for the first time since that loss to the champ and the subsequent knee injury.

The official UFC 111 lineup now includes:

MAIN CARD

Champ Georges St-Pierre vs. Dan Hardy (for welterweight title)
Shane Carwin vs. Frank Mir (for interim heavyweight title)
Thiago Alves vs. Jon Fitch
Martin Kampmann vs. Ben Saunders
Mark Bocek vs. Jim Miller
PRELIMINARY CARD

Nate Diaz vs. Rory Markham
Ricardo Almeida vs. Matt Brown
Fabricio Camoes vs. Kurt Pellegrino
Jared Hamman vs. Rodney Wallace
Tomasz Drwal vs. Rousimar Palhares
Ricardo Funch vs. Matthew Riddle

This is shaping up to be a bad ass card. Hope my boys Matt Brown and Ben Saunders whoop some ass