Wonderful! Let’s bring back my least favorite fighter in the entire world for more of his bible-toting, crazy farm boy act! Ugh, I was hoping we were done with Hughes, but I knew that if Dana didn’t snap him up, Strikeforce would have come lurking and capitalized on all the attention he had gotten as the UFC welterweight champ for all of those years. Here’s the story from MMA Weekly:

First it was Randy Couture, now it’s Matt Hughes. The UFC seems to be locking down former champions left and right.

Hughes, a former UFC welterweight champion, on Thursday affirmed his desire to remain active, stating that he has signed a new multi-fight contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

“Last week I went out to Vegas and I signed a multi-fight deal with the UFC, which is much like my last contract,” said Hughes via a post on his official website.

Who he will fight next is not yet clear, although his most recent opponent, Matt Serra, whom he defeated by unanimous decision at UFC 98 in May, would like another shot at him.

As much as I would love to see Matt Serra smash Hughes, it probably won’t happen. Although there is an argument to made that you could scored that fight a draw, even our Long Island-based crowd that was watching UFC 98 had Hughes winning the fight. Serra’s best bet continues to be at 155.

To make the re-signing of Hughes even worse, look at this:

In an interesting aside, Hughes also mentioned that he’d like to branch out into Ted Nugent territory, which seemed to have the UFC brass’ approval.

“I also brought up the fact that I wanted to do a hunting show,” he said on his website, “and they thought that would be a good thing.”

Oh, Jesus.