(The Iceman, seen here training hard for his upcoming bout against that guy who knocked out Quinton Jackson twice.)

In Chuck’s defense, this is exactly the way Wanderlei’s going to come at him.

U.K.-based MMA organization Cage Rage is putting on a thoroughly kickass show tomorrow, featuring Murilo “Ninja” Rua, Elvis Sinosic, Mark Weir, Neil Grove, and TUF3 alum Ross Pointon. Check out the full fight card here. I’d never heard of Rua’s opponent Xavier Foupa-Pokam (please keep your “fupa-poker” jokes to yourself), so I decided to search for a clip of him in action, which I’ve posted below. Rua might have his hands full, as Foupa-Pokam looks like a sharp striker who’s absolutely deadly once he falls on his ass. You should also keep an eye out for Neil Grove, a 4-0 heavyweight bruiser whose last two fights resulted in a 10-second knockout of James “The Colossus” Thompson (the video is below) and a 34-second TKO of Domagoj Ostojic. Cage Rage 24 can be seen live at ProElite.com PPV; the action kicks off at 1 p.m. ET.

(Xavier Foupa-Pokam vs. Alex Cook at Cage Rage 18, 9/30/06)

(Neil Grove vs. James Thompson at Cage Rage 22, 7/14/07)

In a victory for everyone who thinks the government has no right to intrude on our beloved unregulated warehouse matches, prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Fla., have dropped third-degree felony charges against UFC lightweight contender Din Thomas. As reported here a month ago, Thomas was arrested for allegedly running un-sanctioned MMA bouts at his gym, violating a Florida statute that governs “prohibited competitions.” According to the original article in the Palm Beach Post:

[Assistant State Attorney Jeff] Hendricks said several things factored into the decision, including an exception to the “prohibited competitions” statute for training. He said if the fighter or participants were students of Thomas’ school, and the purpose of the school is to teach martial arts, then they meet the exception to the law. He said Thomas’ attorney would have likely won a motion to dismiss the case by filing an affidavit stating that all the participants of the match that law enforcement officers observed on Oct. 19 were students of the school where Thomas teaches, American Top Team. Hendricks also said it was revealed after Thomas’ arrest that the school didn’t profit from the match because all the money collected was raffled* off.

* There was still no word on who won the raffle.

“The Assassin” in an interview with PunchDrunkGamer.com about his UFC 78 fight against Thiago Silva:

“It’s not like I don’t know any jiu-jitsu, because I actually do and I’m actually really good at it.”

‘Scuse me? The dude was as confused on his back as my ex-wife. But he did shed light on how he maintains his famously jacked physique:

“The day starts about 5:30 in the morning; I get to the gym about 6. We do a lot of conditioning, loosing up, simple stuff in the morning like a lot of sparring, stretching, and endurance stuff. Then after about an hour and a half of light conditioning I’ll take the kids to school. Then I go back to the gym at about 10 and work out for another hour and a half, do some light lifting, sparring, techniques, a little bit of everything…I do a lot of circuit training, a lot of dumbbells, a lot of pushups, sit-ups, general stuff. There’s no big secret, just a lot of pushups and sit-ups in different forms, a little bit of everything…I throw tires up the hills – heavy diesel tires up the hills. A lot of people will throw them in parking lots but we like to throw them up hills. The bigger tires, the tractor tires, we flip. We do a lot of sprinting too, a lot of vertical jumping, and a lot of stuff to strengthen the legs It’s actually a lot of basic stuff that anybody who’s training should be doing, besides throwing the tires, or hammering tires.”

In other words, quit your day job and don’t sleep. Live near a hill. Raid a junkyard if you have to.

MMA Junkie has revealed that the eliminated TUF fighter who comes back to replace one of the semi-finalists on Wednesday’s season finale is none other than John Kolosci.

Not to pat myself on the back or nothin’, but I MOTHERFUCKING CALLED THAT SHIT. Tune in on Wednesday to learn which douchebag semi-finalist leaves the house on a non-medical issue, and which two advance to the big show.

Happy Friday,
CP

— The fight card for WEC 31 has been finalized.

— Dennis Hallman and Alexander Crispim tested positive for steroids after the last Strikeforce show. Both were fined $2,500 and suspended one year.

— Dana White met with Randy Couture last night. “Stay tuned.”

— Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto will fight Rani Yahya at the K-1 Premium 2007 Dynamite!! card in Osaka on New Year’s Eve. Though Yahya is still under contract with WEC, he’s fighting with their blessing; hopefully this is a diplomatic step towards a Kid Yamamoto/Urijah Faber bout being hooked up in the future.

— Mac Danzig’s blog for the OC Register is kind of amazing.

— Shonie Carter is bitter and old.

“I wouldn’t say it’s encouraged, but [the producers] told us how extreme we could go. They just didn’t want us breaking windows or burning down the house or anything like that. I don’t understand all the negative attention about it, honestly. I see a lot of people complaining. Some of these guys on the show were even saying it’s disrespectful and things like that. In the back of my head, I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ People build houses 10 times the size of that house just to blow it up for movies and stuff. This is a TV set. This is how we look at it. This isn’t someone’s house. As long as it’s fixable, it’s not really a big deal. You put 16 fighters in one house with nothing to do — and then they give us alcohol after losing fights and stuff? Well, stuff’s going to happen. Most times it isn’t done to entertain the people watching at home. It’s done to entertain ourselves because we have absolutely nothing to do in that house.”

Source: MMA Junkie

Rumor has it that the first official M-1 Global event will feature Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett battling it out in Newark, so I thought I’d post a vid of “The Baby-Faced Assassin” in action. A veteran of both the UFC and PRIDE organizations, Barnett has a record of 25-5 and holds notable wins over Randy Couture, Dan Severn, Aleksander Emelianenko, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, which makes him a much more credible opponent for Fedor than Hong Man Choi. This fight is from K-1 ROMANEX in May 2004, and features a wild ending where both fighters are hanging through the ropes (though feel free to skip past the first 2:25 unless you speak Japanese):

To see Barnett’s win over Aleksander Emelianenko, go here. Hopefully Fedor will get a chance to avenge his lil’ brudder‘s beating…

MMAPayout has a great summary/analysis of the latest developments in the UFC’s looming network television deal. Among the revelations:

— CBS’s discussions with the UFC began prior to the writer’s strike, and the deal is not dependent on the strike’s outcome. NBC’s interest, on the other hand, is directly dependent upon the strike; specifically, NBC is interested in MMA as a replacement for Saturday Night Live‘s timeslot if the writer’s strike continues. NBC has also met with M-1, EliteXC, and the IFL.

— CBS is interested in UFC 80 as a taped prime-time special.

— NBC is reportedly unwilling to pay rights fees, instead offering half the advertising inventory and NBC’s prestige and exposure. This is apparently what sunk their talks with the IFL, whose CEO Jay Larkin said, “[P]eople have been giving away this MMA product for so long that it’s very difficult to put on the brakes and say it’s no longer free, we have to get some of these costs covered…Going forward we have to stop giving this product away. It has enormous value….We have to start getting an appropriate license fee arrangement with whoever uses this show.”

— The UFC’s financially shaky and setback-filled year has damaged their bargaining power.

I think it’s safe to say that a major network TV deal is the only thing that will stop the UFC’s bleeding after a year marked by dull PPV cards, costly acquisitions/expansions, fluke upsets, and the “resignation” of one of their biggest stars. But being that you only get one shot to make a first impression, maybe UFC 80 isn’t the best way to debut the brand to an unfamiliar viewership. Though the Penn/Stevenson and Gonzaga/Werdum fights should be exciting, their names are meaningless to those who don’t follow the sport. It seems like Dana White and the Fertittas are panicking and trying to make a big move as soon as possible, when they should wait an extra two weeks to capitalize on the hype of Brock Lesnar’s debut at UFC 81.

Still, it would be nice to have the UFC fill the SNL spot for a while, if only for the possibility of post-fight interviews being handled by Fred Armisen…

Rampage was featured on TMZ.com yesterday — no, not for flashing his vagina while getting out of a car. Instead, the UFC light-heavyweight champ was asked for his thoughts on the murder of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor. His reply:

“They shot him in the leg and he died? Where the hell was the ambulance? Flavor Flav was real when he said 911 was a joke. Black folks, y’all get in any trouble and y’all need 911, please sound white when you call…We all know how to talk white when we need to.”

Click here to see the clip. Also on TMZ today: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s drummer is apparently a sex offender.

On last night’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter, Tommy proved once again that it’ll take a lot more than geyser-like cuts and fully executed submission holds to make him tap. After a dominating win over Ben Saunders last night, Tommy’s persona went from “strong farm boy” to “invincible cyborg,” and all of a sudden he’s a dark-horse candidate to win it all.

So first of all, the upper-deck thing, which resulted from Troy, War Machine, and Richie sitting around drinking instead of going to practice. After some time spent destroying the house, Troy and War get the idea to poop in the tank of Team Hughes’s shitter. (For the record, it was War’s poop, and Troy handed him the toilet paper.) Billy Miles discovers the prank and tells his teammates; Jared freaks out, kicks down a door and confronts War with the repeated question of “Who shit in our toilet, dog?” When he doesn’t get a satisfying answer, he knocks off War’s hat. War responds by tackling Jared, and a brawl ensues. Luckily, nobody is injured, and those responsible for the upper-decker are ordered to clean the toilet. It is the first — and possibly last — time a toilet is ever cleaned in the TUF house.

Of course, the real excitement comes from the fight between Tommy and Ben, who enter the Octagon somewhat less than 100%. Tommy’s still-wrecked face looks like it could split open at any moment, and Ben wakes up sick on the day of the fight (maybe from the fecal particles floating in the air from the upper-decker?). Round one starts with Ben securing a thai clinch on Tommy and working him over with knees to the body. Tommy takes Ben to the mat, but finds himself being assaulted from the bottom. Ben takes Tommy’s arm and rolls over into an arm-bar that would make Richie Hightower yelp for mercy:

You know how a prank goes too far on tonight’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter? Well, MMA Junkie has revealed that the prank in question is the dreaded “upper-decker.” I’ve changed my mind about these MMA fighters — they’re nothing but mindless animals.

The Junkie has also learned that “for unexplained reasons, and not necessarily health-related reasons…one semifinal qualifier will not be able to compete in next week’s fights, which allows one of the eliminated cast members to step in for a shot at the finals.” I’m putting my money on John Kolosci to come back, based on the fact that TUF.UFC.com originally forgot to put his headshot in black-and-white (it was in color as of Monday). Tune in tomorrow morning for the episode recap…

Gina “Conviction” Carano — a.k.a. the “Beautiful Disaster,” a.k.a. the face of women’s MMA — increased her record to 5-0 in her last fight at EliteXC: Uprising (9/15/07), where she reversed Tonya Evinger’s ground control and scored a submission victory by rear naked choke in the first round. Watch her work…

By the way — the “25 centimeter pole” remark? Brilliant, sir. You’re a credit to your gender. Would have loved to hear the punchline to that Lindsay Lohan bit at the end…

As you may have heard, the UFC is releasing a 392-page coffee-table book called Octagon. Limited to a run of just 600 copies, weighing over 50 pounds, and coming with a price tag of $2,500 (or $3,500 for the Deluxe Collector’s Edition), the book collects five years worth of portrait and action photography of UFC fighters shot by Kevin Lynch. In this video, Lynch gives some insight on the project’s creation and his attention-getting “Before and After” pictures:

To check out photos from the book — and you might as well, considering you’ll never, ever own this thing — go to Octagon-Book.com.

To clarify the miscommunication and conflicting rumors generated by M-1 Global and its maverick Russian arm Mix Fight M-1, Sam Caplan tracked down Fedor Emelianenko’s manager Vadim Finkelchtein for an e-mail interview on his ProElite blog. (By the way, I’m spelling Vadim’s last name as it has appeared in M-1 Global’s press releases and on their website, not as every MMA journalist in the United States insists on spelling it.) But between Vadim’s shaky written English and his inherent caginess, not much was accomplished. Witness the first question:

Sam Caplan: There has been a great deal of mis-communication in regard to Fedor’s involvement with a card to be held in Japan on Dec. 31. M-1 Global president Monte Cox has said it will not be an M-1 Global event yet a statement made on Mixfight.ru, which I believe is affiliated with M-1 Global, claims that it will be an Mixfight M-1 event. I realize there’s a difference in the phrase “M-1 Global” and “Mixfight M-1″ but both are using the M-1 name. Can you clear up any confusion by stating who will be promoting the Dec. 31 card in Japan that Fedor will be fighting on?

Vadim Finkelstein: An event scheduled for December, 31 in conjunction with M-1 Global and ex-Pride staff. We plan a long-term collaboration with them. Mixfight M-1 is a Russian MMA organization which makes part of M-1 Global. M-1 Global intends to hold events worldwide.

Great. Thanks for clearing that up. There are lots more non-statements like this one in the interview, but I’ll leave you with this excerpt, which may give hope to the easily encouraged:

— Audio from yesterday’s UFC conference call with Matt Hughes, Georges St. Pierre and Dana White is at the OC Register. Hughes said he would have much rather faced Serra “because of all the built up anger.” Dana White still hasn’t met with Randy Couture to discuss Couture’s future with the UFC.

— According to MMA Payout, the S&P downgraded Zuffa‘s credit rating from BB to BB- today, due to a “weaker than expected performance in the third quarter, marking the second consecutive disappointing quarter.” BB ratings indicate “Bonds with speculative fundamentals. The security of future payments is only moderate.”

— Newly formed Japanese MMA promotional outfit World Victory Road, Inc. announced its first event, “Sengoku,” which will take place in Tokyo on March 5th, 2008, and will feature Hidehiko Yoshida, Sanae Kikuta, Makoto Takimoto, and Ryo Kawamura. More info can be found at Suki MMA.

— UFC 81 has been named “Breaking Point.”

— Chuck Liddell wants you to join his cute little social networking site.

How does a guy with only a 4-1 MMA record find himself ranked #6 on MMA Weekly’s list of the best current light heavyweights? Simple: When he’s Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, a judo champion and Team Quest member whose last two fights resulted in quick knockouts of MMA superstars Ricardo Arona and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. This bout against Arona went down in April of this year; “The African Assassin” is scheduled to make his UFC debut next month at UFC 79 against Lyoto Machida (11-0), who has scored wins over Rich Franklin, Stephan Bonnar, and B.J. Penn. Should be a real corker.

According to TradingMarkets.com, filming began today for a Canadian action film called Weapon, which stars former UFC Middleweight champ Rich Franklin opposite Bruce Greenwood and Tiffani Thiessen. The plot, you ask?

In “Weapon,” a lonely U.S. border patrol agent (Thiessen) apprehends a genetically engineered super-soldier (Franklin) and experiences the ride of her life when the soldier’s creator (Greenwood) relentlessly hunts them down.

The movie will also feature a lanky Brazilian cyborg named “SilvaBot3001″ that keeps kicking the shit out of the genetically engineered super-soldier despite everyone’s best efforts. The DVD will be be available exclusively at Canadian garage sales.

Hey guys, you know who isn’t a prostitute? Paulo Filho. But do you know who quite possibly might have been one in the past?

According to FightLinker.com and this reliable forum thread on MyTerb.com (a review site devoted to Toronto hookers), new French-Canadian UFC ring girl Edith Larente used to be employed by both Eleganza Escorts and Devilish Escorts (“All our Girls are Guaranteed to be GFE or PSE!!!![?]“). As the MyTerb thread goes:

“Let’s play guess teh agency she worked at. Man oh man did she really make it. I have seen at least 4 x in Montreal she was one of the best escorts. Word at the strip clubs talking with some HA is that she met and fucked Dana White when he went out to hammer out GSP’s contract. WORD!!! Kind of sucks that these bald, fat Americans took one of ours. One of the best.”

Incriminating! (Though, for the record, who the hell knows.) Click here for a sort-of NSFW trailer of Edith (aka “Anabelle”) from FlashyBabes.com and check out more pics of Edith after the jump.

I just came across this pre-TUF Peta2.com interview with Mac Danzig, where the former King of the Cage lightweight champ discusses his career and his conversion to veganism. Some highlights:

What made you go vegan? How long has it been?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had a profound respect and interest in nature and animals. I remember being 13 and seeing a truck on the interstate filled with pigs all headed to the slaughterhouse. One of them made eye contact with me for a while. It was one of the saddest moments I can remember. There was so much intelligence and spirit in him, and here he was, being sent to an awful death…I experimented with a vegan diet for about a year, but once I started training full-time for fighting, I believed what certain people said and started eating chicken again because I thought that I had to have some kind of animal protein in order to be a successful athlete…about 2 years ago, I read a Mike Mahler article on an animal rights Web site where he explained his vegan diet for training in detail, and I said, “That’s it—I can do it too,” and I started 100 percent vegan again for life and I’ve never looked back. I feel great.

Has being vegan helped your training and helped you maintain your weight class?
Absolutely. When I decided to go vegan, I was able to make the 155-pound weight class much easier, and I haven’t lost an ounce of muscle. I’m leaner than I used to be, and I have much more energy than I used to.

What are your favorite vegan foods generally, and what do you eat when you’re training?
When I’m not in training, I eat Soy Delicious ice cream and vegan chocolate chip cookies like they’re going out of style. There’s also some awesome vegan restaurants out here in L.A., like Native Foods, that have great vegan pizza. When I’m in training, I eat a lot of brown rice, tofu, oatmeal, and of course lots of vegetables and fruit.

I already knew that tofu makes babies gay…but could it also be responsible for Mac’s famous mood swings and sociopathic lack of sympathy? In the absence of any kind of data, I’m gonna go with “probably.” Plus, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good cheeseburger…

From an interview with undefeated WEC middleweight champ Paulo Filho on Tatame.com.br, run through a translator by Five Ounces O’Pain:

You received proposal to train Chuck Liddell. Did you accept the proposal?
I would never train with an American to fight with a Brazilian. I am not a slut, or a prostitute. We are we against the foreigners.

To see how Filho responds to such insightful questions as “What the Chael Sonnen finds of?” and “How the weight is?”, read on…

The UFC Hall-of-Famers whose blood and sweat carried the organization in its early days will act as coaches for a series of team MMA events to be held in Asia. According to MMA Weekly, Las Vegas-based Platinum Fighting Productions is organizing a tournament named “Ring of Fire,” which pits teams of five fighters (including one woman) against each other, with four preliminary events leading up to a final matchup between the two best teams. Along with Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, the other coaches will be UFC/PRIDE veteran Josh Barnett and Armenian-American submission grappling guru Gokor Chivichyan. The lineups will be:

Team Gracie: Cleber Luciano, Jorge Patino, Daniel Serafian, John Marsh, Katrine Alendal
Team Lion’s Den (Shamrock): Evan Dunham, Kyacey Uscola, Mike Whitehead, Ricco Rodriguez, Tonya Evinger
Team Barnett: Koji Oishi, Yuki Kondo, Renato “Babalu” Sobral, Jeff Monson, Ginele Marquez
Team Gokar: Karen Darabedyan, August Wallen, Rodney Faverus, Hakim Gouram, Amanda Buckner

The first event will take place on December 9th at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines, and will feature Barnett’s team taking on Chivichyan’s. Future events will take place in Macau, Japan, and China; the final is slated for December 2008. Why this is being held on the other side of the world is anybody’s guess — it doesn’t seem to be the best move for a fledgling organization, marketing-wise, if a television broadcast is out of the question. Stay tuned for more details on this compelling, possibly bullshit event.

If you’re only a casual fan of MMA, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that Fedor Emelianenko has a younger brother who is covered with Russian prison tattoos, proudly sports a mullet, and is a total badass in his own right. Though Aleksander Emelianenko has suffered notable losses to Mirko “Cro Cop” Filopovic, Josh Barnett, and Fabricio Werdum, he was one of PRIDE’s brightest stars, and takes after his brother when it comes to his aggressive attack and heavy hands. Aleksander is possibly the only MMA fighter to ever score three consecutive knockouts in fights lasting less than 30 seconds, which he did against James Thompson (12 seconds), Ricardo Morais (15 seconds), and Rene Rooze (28 seconds) in 2004-5. For a taste of the fury, check out the videos below, which show his fight against Morais, and his most recent match against Dan Bobish, which took place last month at a Hardcore Championship Fighting event in Calgary.

(Aleksander Emelianenko vs. Ricardo Morais, 4/3/05)

(Aleksander Emelianenko vs. Dan Bobish, 10/19/07)

Attention social networkers: CagePotato.com done gone and got itself one of them MySpace pages! Click here to check it out. Please add us as a friend and learn what it feels like to be part of something greater than yourself.

If you were avoiding computers and televisions as much as I was since Wednesday, you may also be unaware of the following:

— Josh Koscheck has been scheduled to fight at UFC 82 (which, as previously reported, will be headlined by a championship match between Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson). Koscheck’s last fight was a unanimous decision loss to Georges St. Pierre at UFC 74 in August. Though follow welterweight contender/American Kickboxing Academy teammate Jon Fitch is also scheduled to be on the UFC 82 card, the two are not expected to face each other.

— Matt Arroyo and George Sotiropoulos advanced to the semi-finals on The Ultimate Fighter, sending home Troy Mandaloniz and Richie Hightower, both via armbar. Matt Serra’s retarded logic principles prevented him from cornering his fighters during the matches, but he showed up to beat Hughes in the coaches’ challenge, out-bowling his rival in the final frame. In a heartbreaking display, Mandaloniz broke down in tears before his fight, then marched out to the ring wearing a t-shirt that said “I CAN”; unfortunately, he couldn’t. Richie shaved off his stupid mall-punk hair, and looked surprisingly tough in his match with George; instead of sobbing in his bunk bed a la John Kolosci, Richie actually looked encouraged after his loss. On the next episode, Ben Saunders takes on Tommy Speer, and a prank goes too far!

— Four bouts were made official for the TUF finale’s undercard.

— The IFL World Grand Prix Finals on 12/29 will air live on HDNet, as part of a new agreement that will have HDNet broadcasting IFL events starting next year.

— Chuck Liddell filmed this ridiculous/brilliant commercial for Dell:

Man, I can’t leave you people alone for two seconds…

While some of us were enjoying a few days off the grid during the Thanksgiving holiday, the UFC was busy releasing the most disappointing news in recent memory — followed by the most exciting. On Thanksgiving day, Dana White announced that Matt Serra has withdrawn from UFC 79 due to a back injury sustained during a routine training session in his Long Island gym. According to Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer, Serra suffered a herniated disc on Monday while working out with Matt Arroyo (who knocked off Troy “Rude Boy” Mandaloniz on Wednesday’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter). Writes Meltzer:

It was serious to the point he had to practically be carried to the hospital. And after an MRI, he had to practically be carried off the table. He didn’t tell anyone about it, hoping it would heal. He went to the chiropractor to see if he could make it better, and ended up hurting even worse. The doctors told him there was no way he could fight on Dec. 29, so he canceled yesterday. Matt Hughes was told this morning and naturally noted he had three bulging discs when he fought Royce Gracie. But said he believes Serra is really hurt…Serra’s doctors haven’t even given him an estimate of when he’ll be ready [to fight again].

After the anticlimactic shitshow that was UFC 78, this was the worst possible thing that could have happened to the organization. The Hughes/Serra feud — which the UFC has spent so much energy and resources hyping up for their meeting on December 29 — will go unresolved, and the pay-per-view event that was supposed to get the UFC back in fans’ good graces suddenly lost its main attraction. Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, and Thiago Alves were discussed as possible replacements for Matt Serra, but without a championship belt on the line, “Nemesis” would likely play out like UFC 78.2.0. Of course, MMA diehards are still salivating for Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva, but since both fighters lost their last two bouts, there isn’t much riding on the outcome. And of course, Serra’s injury has sucked all the tension out of the remaining episodes of The Ultimate Fighter.

But then, in the horizon, a savior appeared.

John McCain in 1996: “[MMA is] a brutal and repugnant blood sport…that should not be allowed to take place anywhere in the U.S.”

John McCain in 2007: “The sport has grown up. The rules have been adopted to give its athletes better protections and to ensure fairer competition.”

Nice try, Senator, but no amount of pandering is going to pull us from the Kimbo Slice War Wagon to the Straight Talk Express.

As reported on MixFight.ru and Fight Opinion, a press conference was held in Japan today to shed more light on the MMA show headlined by Fedor Emelianenko on New Year’s Eve. The event will be “supported” by M-1 Global, and will feature Shinya Aoki, Mitsuhiro Ishida, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Gilbert Melendez, Hayato Mach Sakurai, Hidehiko Hasegawa, Ricardo Arona, Kazuo Misaki, Joachim Hansen and Luis Azeredo. The specific match-ups don’t seem to be announced yet, and as you’ve probably noticed, Hong Man Choi is suspiciously absent from the list. As the MixFight story says, “There are negotiations going on with other famous ex-Pride fighters who would contribute to the event,” and the show will be broadcast by SkyPerfecTV PPV. For another brilliant example of MMAFightline declaring things in headlines that are sourced nowhere in the article, go here.

As you may have already heard/seen, Sean Salmon found himself on the wrong end of a brutal flying-knee knockout at last week’s Strikeforce middleweight tournament. Though he denied reports that he had a seizure in the ring, Salmon was given a 45-day medical suspension after the fight, making him ineligible for a scheduled match against Jason “Mayhem” Miller at the HDNet Fights “Reckless Abandon” (!) event on December 15.

Taking Salmon’s place is Tim Kennedy, a member of the IFL’s Chicago Red Bears who previously defeated Miller at an Extreme Challenge event in 2003. Kennedy is scheduled to fight in the IFL World Grand Prix only two weeks later, so let’s hope he isn’t slapped with a medical suspension himself.

The “Reckless Abandon” card also features Frank Trigg vs. Edwin Dewees, Yves Edwards vs. Alonzo Martinez, and Pete Spratt vs. Tristan Yunker. Our best wishes go out to Sean Salmon, who should really learn how to protect his head…