The UFC made a successful entrance into continental Europe last weekend at UFC 99 in Cologne, Germany.

The event helped spread the UFC seed to another country and started to clear up the upcoming picture of potential title contenders.

The event’s two biggest gainers were Cain Velasquez and Houston native, Mike "Quick" Swick.

Mike Swick has fought in the UFC ten times in his career and only lost once. Interestingly, the fight he lost was to Yushin Okami at UFC 69 in Swick's backyard of Houston.

After that loss, the middleweight Swick moved down a weight class to become a 170-pound welterweight.

With his victory over Ben Saunders at UFC 99, Swick is now 4-0 in his new division.

Second only to light heavyweight, welterweight is the deepest UFC division. Swick's victory thrusted him close to the elite in the division. With one more victory, he could be in the same contender class as Jon Fitch and Thiago Alves.

As mentioned earlier, Cain Velasquez was the other big mover. His three-round victory cemented his place as a top ten heavyweight. Unfortunately, his fan support didn't improve with his ranking.

Velasquez appears to have fallen into the trap that many former NCAA All-America wrestlers like him do.

He was able to control his opponent by maintaining top position, but wasn't able to do much beyond that.

Even though he pulled off a three-round decision, his "lay and pray" style was unpleasing to the fans.

His opponent, Cheick Kongo arguably lost the bout more than Velasquez won it. After landing damaging strikes, Kongo couldn't stop Velasquez's takedowns.

It seemed Kongo would have trained to prevent that against a vaunted collegiate wrestler, but it happened round after round. With his non-existent takedown defense, one can consider Kongo the French Heath Herring.

The main event left some major questions to be answered about one of MMA's greatest fighters.

Wanderlei Silva lost in the UFC again, this time to Rich "Ace" Franklin. After being a dominant champion in PRIDE for years, Wanderlei has lost five out of his last six fights.

It's hard to put a finger on why he plummeted so quickly and uncontrollably. At 33, Wanderlei is clearly not over the hill. Some argue that Mirko Cro Cop's high kick knockout of him about three years ago damaged his psyche. Some theorize that the rules changes from PRIDE to the UFC hurt him.

What's next for Wanderlei? He's got something great going for him. He has a lot of credit with true MMA fans after owning the last decade. Although the UFC often drops fighters who lose a lot, they'll probably retain Silva because they know he's a draw.

This may sound crazy, but a good next fight for Wanderlei would be a rematch with Chuck Liddell, who is on a similar downward spiral.

He's lost four out of his last fights. Wanderlei and Chuck's spirited battle in 2007 deserves a rematch. Their longtime rivalry and compelling matchup style-wise warrants another fight.

It'll be interesting to see what the UFC decides to do with the both of them.

David Estrada Jr. is a Mixed Martial Arts columnist for the News. He can be e-mailed at DavidEstrada@DavidEstrada.com