If Jorge Santiago is fighting someone other than Vitor Belfort at Affliction: Trilogy, someone forgot to tell Santiago or his coaches at American Top Team.

"I know exactly what you know, that Josh Barnett tested positive," Santiago's trainer Marcus Silveira told Tatame.com. "But the situation is the same: Jorge Santiago will fight Vitor Belfort."

That statement directly contradicts recent statements made by Belfort's trainer Scott Tomkins and manager Chris Franco, who told FiveKnuckles.com that Belfort had already begun the process of gaining weight to prepare to move from lightweight to heavyweight.

"He's training hard," Franco said. "We had him on a diet to drop five more pounds and then you've got ten pounds of water-weight that he would have lost before the Santiago fight, but we're good to go now. The night of the fight he'll be up around 205 lbs to 210 lbs."

Affliction has been tight-lipped about the search for a Barnett's replacement, but Brett Rogers and Bobby Lashley are rumored to have been considered along with Belfort who has signed an agreement in principal to face the man generally considered to be the world's greatest heavyweight.

Strikeforce officials have recently ruled out Rogers, stating that neither he or Fabricio Werdum would be competing against Emelianenko. However, Rogers leaked an $800,000 asking price not long afterword and Emelianenko's fight team is asking to face the undefeated heavyweight instead of Belfort, so that fight remains a possibility, albeit a longshot unless Rogers lowers his asking price. Top heavyweight prospect Bobby Lashley, turned down a reported $500,000 to face the famed Russian due to the inability to properly train for the fight, so Rogers would have to come in around that price to make the fight happen.

In the mean time, Santiago will continue to train for Belfort until he hears otherwise. Whoever he fights, according to Silveira, will be facing a complete fighter and one of American Top Team's best.

"He has grown a lot," Silveira stated. "He's one of the best fighters we have at American Top Team. He's a complete fighter and I think it describes who he is and how he is now."

Source: www.fiveknuckles.com