There is no doubt about it.

When the UFC picked up top middleweight, Hector Lombard, they were expecting a title challenger to Anderson Silva’s throne.

Unfortunately for the massive amounts of Lombard supporters, he failed to deliver in his UFC debut against Tim Boetsch.

After a successful second UFC bout and a dominant victory over Rousimar Palhares, the top middleweight now gets a shot to really jump to UFC elite status.

As announced late yesterday evening via the UFC’s official Twitter account, Hector Lombard will face Yushin Okami at UFC on FUEL TV 8 in Japan.

UFC on FUEL TV 8 is set to go down from Japan’s Saitama Super Arena on March 3. The evening’s card features a main event between Wanderlei Silva and Brian Stann.

Okami last saw action at UFC 155 against Alan Belcher where he was able to pick up a pretty one-sided unanimous decision victory. The win was his second straight following a two-fight deficit after facing Anderson Silva and Tim Boetsch.

The latest UFC on FUEL TV 8 card is as follows:

Wanderlei Silva vs. Brian Stann
Mark Hunt vs. Stefan Struve
Hector Lombard vs. Yushin Okami
Takanori Gomi vs. Diego Sanchez
Siyar Bahadurzada vs. Dong Hyun Kim
Mizuto Hirota vs. Rani Yahya
Riki Fukuda vs. Brad Tavares
Bryan Caraway vs. Takeya Mizugaki
Cristiano Marcello vs. Kazuki Tokudome
Alex Caceres vs. Kyung Ho Kang
Marcelo Guimaraes vs. Hyun Gyu Lim