Stephan Bonnar has a couple big life events coming up. On October 13th he will take on Anderson Silva at UFC 153. Somewhere around that date, Bonnar’s wife will give birth to their first child. Both are momentous events. One will give Bonnar a chance to shock the world. The other will give him a chance to immortalize his previous crowning achievement – his fight against Forrest Griffin at The Ultimate Fighter 1 finale.

It’s not set in stone, but Bonnar and his wife are toying with the idea of naming their son Griffin. Huge UFC fans should be ashamed they didn’t think of it first. Griffin Bonnar would be an extremely epic name for a child as Griffin – Bonnar I was the fight that made the UFC what it is today. Even for the son of someone besides Stephan Bonnar, that would be an awesome name for a child.

These two events are an excellent opportunity to look back at Bonnar’s career.

Bonnar (15-7, 8-6 UFC) takes on Anderson Silva (32-4, 15-0 UFC) at UFC 153. The circumstances of this fight are completely random, but if you think about it, you should be able to convince yourself that Bonnar earned this fight. UFC 153 lost two main event title fights when the UFC made this 205-pound fight between Bonnar and the 185-pound champion. Bonnar is semi-retired on a 3-fight win streak. He said he doesn’t want to fight anyone who has fewer Twitter followers than he has.

Fair enough. While Bonnar never rose to the heights of Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz or Randy Couture, he has earned the right to ask for Legacy League fights with guys who matter. Bonnar’s losses have come to Lyoto Machida, Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans, Mark Coleman, Krysztof Soszynski and Jon Jones. Five of those men have been UFC champions. Bonnar has never been finished. His losses to Soszynski and Machida were both stopped because of cuts.

No one expects him to win. In fact, Silva opened as a -1350 favorite against Bonnar. Anderson Silva is at his best when he has someone coming after him and Bonnar should do just that. Maybe this is the last time we see Stephan Bonnar in the octagon as a fighter. If it is, he’ll go out fighting perhaps the greatest mixed martial artist to ever live and he will be doing it in hostile territory on short notice. He’ll do it as one of the only men in the world who deserves to name his son after the most important fight in UFC history.

[Yahoo!]

Previously: Interview: Stephan Bonnar, One of the UFC’s Original Ultimate Fighers