MMA Fight Girls came across this new photo of Ali Sonoma — looking hotter than ever — on the website of “boudoir” photographer Michael Rosen. Head to Rosen’s site for more sexy (and strange) stuff.

We’d also like to give MMA Fight Girls props for uncovering an ass-tastic set of ring girl photos (via the Bodog Blog) from the Extreme Fighting Challenge 5: Revolution event, which took place last November in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. Shocking highlights after the jump.

(Cheick yourself before you *wreck* yourself…)

**UPDATE: It looks like Kongo/Herring will go down at UFC 82: Pride of a Champion (which will be headlined by the middleweight championship match between Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson), not UFC 81: Breaking Point. Our bad, as they say. At this point, all five of UFC 81′s main card bouts and three of its preliminary matches are reportedly locked down.

“Breaking Point” could now refer to the scales used at UFC 81′s weigh-in, as a third high-profile heavyweight match has been added to the event. Already headlined by the UFC debut of former WWE-star Brock Lesnar versus ex-champ Frank Mir, and the interim heavyweight championship bout between Tim Sylvia and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, UFC [82] will also feature a match between heavies Cheick Kongo and Heath Herring, according to MMA Mania. Kongo, a.k.a. “The French Sensation,” is the UFC rising star whose last two matches resulted in decision victories over Assuerio Silva and Mirko Cro Cop. Heath Herring is a former PRIDE vet who has gone 1-2 in the UFC; his last fight was a decision loss against Nogueira, and he is perhaps best known for this unfortunate staredown with Yoshihiro Nakao at K-1 Dynamite 2005:

MMA Weekly is reporting that the pay-per-view portion of UFC 81 will include two middleweight bouts — Ricardo Almeida against Alan Belcher, and Nate Marquardt against Thales Leites — and a lightweight bout between Tyson Griffin and Gleison Tibou. The three officially announced undercard bouts are Marvin Eastman vs. Terry Martin (middleweights), Tomasz Drwal vs. David Heath (light heavyweights), and Keita Nakamura vs. Rob Emerson (lightweights).

(Twin Mulletteers, Mark and Matt Hughes)

We’ve already mentioned the bitch-fest that is Mark Hughes’ autobiography, “Matt Hughes – Made in America”. If reading the tome – which was released today –  isn’t good enough for you and you just gotta’ have it signed by the recently defeated asshole author, you can find Matt Hughes at one of the following locations:

NEW YORK CITY
Monday @ 7:00 PM
Barnes & Noble #2021
2245 Richmond Avenue
Staten Island, NY 10314 7 Jan 08

NEW YORK CITY
Tuesday @ 7:00PM
Bookends
232 East Ridgewood Avenue
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450 8 Jan 08

Dave Meltzer over at Yahoo! Sports has his own version of FMK today. The contestants being MMA, boxing and pro wrestling (okay, it’s impossible to properly play FMK with an entire sport, but go with it). He rambles on for what seems like hours and covers much of what we already know – that MMA is growing rapidly, but douches like Mayweather and De La Hoya keep boxing at the forefront with their hordes of mindless fans. And rednecks keep procreating at a rapid pace, thus keeping pro wrestling afloat.

However, he does a decent job of breaking down the numbers, mainly the TV stats. While the PPV numbers are not yet available for UFC 78 and 79 (how long does it take them to print out their numbers anyway?), the expectations are that both events will be in the top 15 PPV events of the year. Why top 15, you ask? Because that’s what Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer gave us:

1. Boxing: Oscar De La Hoya/Floyd Mayweather, May 5: 2,400,000
2. Boxing: Mayweather/Ricky Hatton, December 8: 850,000
3. WWE: Wrestlemania, April 1: 760,000
4. UFC: Chuck Liddell/Quinton Jackson, May 26: 675,000
5. UFC: Tim Sylvia/Randy Couture, March 3: 540,000
6. UFC: Couture/Gabriel Gonzaga, August 24: 520,000
7. UFC: Liddell/Keith Jardine, September 22: 475,000
8. UFC: Tito Ortiz/Rashad Evans, July 7: 425,000
9. UFC: Anderson Silva/Travis Lutter, Feb. 2: 400,000
10. UFC: Georges St. Pierre/Matt Serra, April 7: 400,000
11. Boxing: Manny Pacquiao/Marco Antonio Barrera, October 6: 350,000
12. WWE: Summerslam, August 26: 344,000
13. Boxing: Miguel Cotto/Shane Mosley, November 10: 340,000
14. UFC: Anderson Silva/Rich Franklin, October 20: 325,000
15. WWE: Royal Rumble, January. 28: 314,000

In the absence of news that interests me, let’s settle the debate once and for all with a game of FMK. The contestants are:

The fighter, Gina Carano

The ring girl, Arianny Celeste

The co-host/ex-Playmate of the Year, Tiffany Fallon

So, gents…FMK?

(“I’ll tell you what I’d do, man: two chicks at the same time.”)

MMAPayout released it’s 2007 Power Rankings today, which ranks fighters by adding gross pay-per-view revenue ($40 per buy) and gross live gate revenue of the events they headlined last year. Fighters needed to headline a minimum of two events last year to be considered, and only pay-per-view shows were counted, which means that pretty much every fighter was eliminated from contention besides the six names on this list — but it’s still an interesting metric to see which fighters can put fans in seats and get them to buy events at home. And the winners are…

Chuck Liddell – $81.1 million (3 Events)
Randy Couture – $48.7 million (2)
Anderson Silva – $38.3 million (2)
Rashad Evans – $33.7 million (2)
Wanderlei Silva – $32.5 million (2)
Rich Franklin – $24.7 million (2)

Combined with last year’s results, you get:

It was the beginning of the Axe-Murderer’s current career-slide, and one of the greatest beat-downs in recent MMA history. In this open-weight match at PRIDE Final Conflict Absolute 2006, Mirko Cro Cop swarms Wanderlei Silva like a rabid bear until he sets up a signature head kick at the end of the first round, leaving Silva in a mental haze that followed him through his subsequent matches against Dan Henderson and Chuck Liddell. We highly recommend you skip past 2:17-5:45, which has to be the longest mid-fight medical clearance of all time.

On Saturday, there was an article about an incident at a Cranston, R.I. prison that seems tailor made for Pay-Per-View. Dudes in prison were beating the shit out of each other in what was described as an “ultimate fighting” contest. The freedom-challenged guys were claiming to be playing chess in a dorm room at the minimum security prison, but correctional officers got suspicious when they noticed bruises on their heads and knuckles. However, there never would have been an investigation had any of the officers ever played chess with my family. You’d be lucky to escape with just bruises.

Well, we might as well follow this story to the bitter end.

Last week, we discussed Ricco Rodriguez’s auction of his championship belt, and his possibly-related problems with substance abuse. The eBay auction was scheduled to close tonight at 11 p.m. ET; checking in with the auction page this morning, we got the following message:

This Listing Is Unavailable
This listing (140194796581) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.
If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it canceled.

Did Rodriguez get cold feet about selling his most prized possession, or was he just frustrated by the lack of bids? We’ll do our best to get to the bottom of this mystery. In the meantime, enjoy this clip of Bas Rutten knocking Rodriguez out to punish him for hurting Mark Kerr’s feelings.

(Not Bob Meyrowitz, but close enough.)

Entrepreneur Bob Meyrowitz — who founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993 with his company Semaphore Entertainment Group before running it into the ground and selling it to Zuffa in 2001 — has emerged from obscurity to throw his hat into the cage once again. According to Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer, Meyrowitz and leading event promoter Live Nation have signed a deal to start a new MMA promotion, with more details to follow in the next two weeks. Though Bloody Elbow argues that Live Nation’s network television connections give the yet-unnamed promotion an immediate leg up, we can’t help thinking that another addition to the MMA landscape would sink under a lack of available stars.

Meyrowitz’s first foray into MMA ended after he tried to market the UFC as the deadliest, most outrageous spectacle on pay-per-view; Dana White and the Fertittas proved that it could thrive if it was presented as safe, mainstream entertainment on basic cable. There’s no question that Meyrowitz will be taking cues from his disciples, but there’s more to launching an MMA organization than following the UFC’s lead. With all the nation’s truly talented MMArtists already signed to one promotion or another, Meyrowitz will have to cull unproven, inexperienced fighters to fill the ranks of his new show. Sure, that might be enough for the teenaged stoners looking for low-impact entertainment on Saturday afternoons — the same demographic that watches dudes jump around a halfpipe on Live Nation’s Mountain Dew Action Sports Tour on NBC — but for a new promotion to truly catch fire with MMA fans, it would need star power, or at least a large amount of undiscovered talent. If Monte Cox and Fedor Emelianenko can’t attract a decent talent pool, we don’t see Bob doing it either…

(Don “Wolf” Yates — the reason the “Amber Alert” was invented.)

Judging from the two minutes I watched, pretty fucking terrible. I was surprised at how similar the show looked to the ’90s version — same games, same scoring system, same pre-op transsexuals. But again, I only caught a couple minutes, and didn’t see Gina “Crush” Carano once. If we missed anything important, let us know in the comments section.

(Rua, Norris & Rua: Attorneys at Roundhouse)

Chute Boxe, the legendary Brazilian muay thai/jiu-jitsu camp that has produced MMA stars including Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva, and brothers Mauricio and Murilo Rua, is finishing up negotiations to launch a satellite school in Los Angeles, according to MMA Weekly. Says Chute Boxe head coach Rafael Cordeiro:

“The plans are to make a two way road between L.A. and Curitiba and to maintain this high level training in Curitiba and in L.A. We want to put our boys to fight and train in both camps, Brazilian guys in L.A. and Americans going to Brazil to spend some time in our camp. This will elevate our athletes performance and at the same time we will recruit an excellent amount of new American and Latin athletes that are popping up in the U.S.A.”

Exact location and opening date for the school haven’t been announced yet.

It’s too bad this hasn’t happened sooner — how incredible would it be to have Chute Boxe go up against Xtreme Couture and Miletich Fighting Systems during the IFL’s 2008 season? I guess we’ll just have to wait until 2009 (assuming the IFL isn’t tits-up by then).

The L.A.-expansion announcement is the first bit of good news for Chute Boxe following a year that was marked by the departure of its most famous students, Wanderlei Silva and the Rua brothers among them. Speaking of whom…

Fresh off the announcement that Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson will be facing Tank Abbott at an EliteXC event on February 16, Triumph United has released a video of Kimbo in the gym, talking about his upcoming fight with Tank, his disappointingly short beatdown of Bo Cantrell, and the fact that entire rooms get dark when he pulls his pants down. We particularly appreciate his use of the phrase “real talk.” CagePotato and R. Kelly salute you…

NBCSports’ Mike Chiappetta reports that Matt Serra and Georges St. Pierre will meet again in April. The welterweight match-up will be about a year after GSP lost to the now inflated Serra. As you may recall, Serra was to defend his belt against Matt Hughes at the recent UFC 79, but had to drop out due to injury. GSP promptly jumped at the chance to take on Hughes for a third time, beating him easily for the interim (aka, bullshit) welterweight title. Serra said his back is getting better and he’ll be ready in April.

The April event – possibly to be on the 19th – will be in Montreal, the first UFC event to be held in Canada.

If you’re bored this weekend and there’s not an “I Love Lucy” marathon polluting your TV screen, here’s something with which you can pass the time. Yesterday and again today, BloodyElbow did cool breakdowns of the latest rankings in MMA. Their overviews didn’t include the rankings for 5oz of Pain or MMA on Tap, but they included them in updates. To check out those rankings, follow the links we have for you. Kid Nate observes the obvious domination the UFC has on the rankings, especially the light heavyweight division. Pretty much across the board.

(Yes, they’re available for purchase. Keep reading.)

— UFC 79, the IFL World Grand Prix, Yarennoka!, and K-1 Premium Dynamite!! gave us a week-long hangover.

— We became unhealthily obsessed with cauliflower ears.

— A championship belt hit the black market; profits will go towards buying an entire school’s worth of drugs.

— Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Wladimir Klitschko tried to talk some sense into the boy.

— Tiffany Fallon was gone in 60 minutes.

— In commenter news, Joe Lauzon and the lawyer suing Quinton Jackson stopped by to chat, 65 people (and counting!) had something to say about this video, and we were betrayed by those closest to us.

— And most importantly, we came up with a kickass idea for a movie called Red Devil. So far, a filmmaker named Roger has offered to direct, and we’ve made some promo tees. Buy 12 from the CagePotato General Store Presented by CafePress and start your own street team!

(Not really sure who these guys are. But you just might see some of them fight in the IFL this year.)

When the IFL announced that it was shifting focus from its fairly arbitrary city-based team format to a more natural camp system, it seemed like a good idea — but only if the nation’s top fight camps agreed to play along. If we were stuck watching Mario Sperry’s Worldclass MMA crew face off against Ian Freeman’s UK posse every show, there would be problems. Fortunately, the IFL has scored the biggest coup possible, locking down the involvement of Xtreme Couture. Now, obviously you’re not going to see Forrest Griffin and Wanderlei Silva doing battle in the IFL ring, but it’ll be interesting to see the young, hungry kids that Randy sends in to represent his Las Vegas collective. Just as Pat Miletich proved there’s more to Bettendorf than Tim Sylvia and Jens Pulver during the Silverbacks‘ steamrolling of the IFL, we could potentially be witnessing the first wave of solid professional fighters to be forged completely under the guidance of Randy Couture and Shawn Tompkins.

The IFL’s 2008 season kicks off in Las Vegas on February 29th [Ed. note: Oh shit it's a leap year again?] and will feature the Xtreme Couture camp, Matt Lindland’s Team Quest (formerly known as the Portland Wolfpack), Ken Shamrock’s Lion’s Den, and one more yet-to-be-named team.

Despite its plummeting stock value, the IFL is still making all the right moves in terms of its product and could potentially turn its fortunes around in 2008. If team-based MMA was to ever catch on, this is how to do it. Ask yourself, what would be the better showcase of fresh MMA talent — a bunch of guys who send in videotapes to get on a reality show and are chosen for their “colorful personalities” (i.e., The Ultimate Fighter), or a competition between guys who really want to compete and are hand-picked by the greatest living legends in the sport. If you honestly care about the next generation of MMA fighters, you’ll be watching. Now if they could only replace that silly boxing ring with a cage…

(Julie Kedzie: There’s nothing better than losing that last 10…)

According to press release sent out today by EliteXC, that Miami event featuring Kimbo Slice vs. Tank Abbott won’t be the first show that Elite puts on in 2008. “ShoXC: EliteXC Challenger Series” is scheduled to go down on January 25th in Atlantic City and will feature the following matches:

TELEVISED CARD
Paul “Semtex” Daley vs. TBA (160 lbs.)
Yves Edwards vs. Kyle Bradley (160 lbs.)
Bobby McMaster vs. Bao Quach (150 lbs.)
Kala Kolohe Hose vs. Bellaton Frederic (185 lbs.)
Julie Kedzie vs. Tonya Evinger (140 lbs.)

PRELIMINARY MATCHES
Eddie Alvarez vs. Carlos Quinlon (160 lbs.)
Zach Makovsky vs. Wilson Reis (140 lbs.)
Binky Jones vs. TBA (150 lbs.)
Sergio Vinagre vs. Doug Gordon (170 lbs.)
Joe Shilling vs. Matt Makowski (170 lbs.)

The event will be broadcast on Showtime at 11 p.m. ET/PT, and tickets are available here. At this point, we’re really only interested in the Kedzie/Evinger fight, which would establish a clear successor to Gina Carano, should she decide to leave the fighting life and pursue other opportunities full-time; both women lost to Carano in 2007.

8. Ed Herman We all know what the song is supposed to be about and we’re all wondering what business it has being an entrance song. It doesn’t even have a cool beat. But that didn’t stop Ed Herman from using ”In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins at UFC 72. I can feel it, coming in the…okay, that’s enough. [...]

Dana White, Joe Rogan, BJ Penn, Joe Stevenson, and Gabriel Gonzaga get us hyped for UFC 80:

(Props: MMA Fever)

Manny Gamburyan performing the leg lock that blew-out Nate Mohr’s knee at UFC 79:

And finally, here’s Japanese MMA star Genki “Neo-Samurai” Sudo competing on the Most Extreme Elimination Challenge-esque TV show Ninja Warrior. So close!

(Props: Bloody Elbow)

90% of my interest in watching NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice was dashed last night, thanks to the conniving, under-the-bus-throwing ways of Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the most awful person ever featured on network television.

The season premiere involved a hot dog-selling contest, where the celebs (divided by gender) did battle to raise the most money for charity. Manigault-Stallworth quickly established herself as the biggest, dumbest asshole in room, demanding to be team leader and crafting a plan that involved pushing the hot dogs rather than their celebrity star power. Obviously, the guys dominated, and OMS scrambled to find a fall girl.

She found her mark in poor, sweet Tiffany, who was blamed for not fully exploiting her sex appeal or hitting up Hugh Hefner for money. The former Playmate of the Year was given the show’s first pink slip, thus reducing the show’s remaining eye-candy to Carol Alt (too old) and Jennie Finch (too softball player-ish).

Tito Ortiz (who represented the remaining 10% of my interest in this show) got a small amount of screen time in the episode, sparring with Lennox Lewis to draw interest in his team’s hot dog stand, and posing with girlfriend Jenna Jameson as she stopped by to suck down some meat for charity. “Anything for my man,” she said — quite a woman, that Jenna.

Also, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama won something or other last night, but I wasn’t really paying attention.

(Ferguson verbally agrees to fight Abbott after defeating Ray Mercer at Cage Fury FC in June 2007.)

According to Sam Caplan’s blog on ProElite.com, Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson has been scheduled to headline EliteXC’s next card on February 16th against 42-year-old brawler Tank Abbott; the event will likely go down in Ferguson’s home city of Miami. Abbott and Ferguson had originally been scheduled to fight each other in October of last year for the Cage Fury Fighting Championships organization, but the event was canceled due to financial difficulties, after which Kimbo signed an exclusive deal with EliteXC that pays him more than six figures a fight.

Abbott has a career record of 10-13, has lost 7 of his last 9 matches, and placed #2 in our list of dudes who should quit. Putting Abbott against Ferguson may interest fans who followed Tank’s UFC glory days in the mid-’90s, but it’s insulting to Kimbo; it further ghettoizes him as a freak-show act, rather than validating him as a serious mixed martial artist. We’ve posted about this before, but we’ll repeat it: Kimbo deserves better. He’s been devoted to MMA training for the better part of a year and has an intimidation factor not seen since Mike Tyson in the ’80s. Yet EliteXC still seems unwilling to risk having him go up against a credible opponent and lose. In terms of his career, Ferguson needs a challenging fight more than anything else right now, to prove that his hype is justified. After February, there will still be detactors saying “Kimbo ain’t shit, just see what happens when you put him up against a real fighter.”

(“I am pussy, okay?! Rrrrrrowww!” — Kazushi Sakuraba)

A couple weeks back, we put a fight between Kazushi “The Gracie Hunter” Sakuraba and jiu-jitsu uber-guru Rickson Gracie as the #1 Greatest Fight That Never Happened. Well, if Inside Fights is to be believed, then the most long-awaited grudge match in history may actually have a shot of coming together. From an article posted yesterday:

K-1′s Dynamite!! 2007 card has come and gone and one thing that is for sure is that Kazushi Sakuraba isn’t even thinking about retiring. A lot of the pre-fight hype before the Sakuraba/Funaki showdown amongst MMA insiders was the apparent need for Sakuraba—deteriorated he is—to call it a career after this dream match. Well, Sakuraba for the most part dominated the former Pancrase legend submitting him in 6:25, but mentioned nothing about retirement in his post-fight interviews.

With Rickson Gracie’s appearance at one of HERO’S’ Yokohama Arena shows this year, the impossible seems almost possible: a fight between Rickson and The Gracie Killer himself. Long looked at as the Sakuraba/Gracie fight that would forever be part of fantasy warfare amongst MMA fans, this match may in fact take place in 2008. Had it happened in 2000, it would’ve likely broken attendance records, now it’ll be something that fans of the two and fans of the sport can give thanks for, if it in fact does happen.

One thing we weren’t aware of when we were posting that story about ex-UFC champ Ricco Rodriguez auctioning off his championship belt is that Rodriguez will reportedly be appearing in a new VH1 series called Celebrity Rehab, in which Loveline host and addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky guides a group of down-and-out ex-celebrities (and the term is being used very loosely here, even for VH1′s standards) through an arduous recovery process. Ricco Rodriguez, who was suspended by the CSAC in 2006 for testing positive for cocaine and marijuana following a local MMA event in Bakersfield, will be appearing alongside actor Daniel Baldwin, former pro wrestler Joanie “Chyna” Lauer, porn star and one-time gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey, actress and Flavor Flav-paramour Brigitte Nielsen, and five other faded pop culture figures; the show debuts on January 10th.

So, first off, we’d like to take back what we said about Rodriguez’s situation not being as sad as when Corey Haim tried to auction off his teeth and hair; this is possibly sadder. Haim can get a wig and dentures to replace his hair and teeth (and hopefully he has by now), but Rodriguez will never get another championship belt. Plus, the fact that he’s an addict sheds some doubt on this claim that he’ll be using the money to open up a new MMA school. If you’ve ever watched Intervention (or, you know, dealt with addicts in real life), you’d know that any monetary windfalls usually wind up feeding the monkey, no matter how many promises are made otherwise.

We’d also like to say that Dr. Drew is a God among men and we cannot fucking wait for this show to start. It’s everything that Celebrity Apprentice should be!

UPDATE: With four days left in the auction, there are still no bids for Rodriguez’s belt.

(The following is to be read in the voice of Don LaFontaine)

Two boys, whose lives took two very different paths…

One became a champion, adored by millions…

The other, a thief who’s never played by the rules…

But they’ll have to work together to stop a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top…

[Cut to montage soundtracked by pounding drums, with brief shots of car chases, sex scenes, and naked bathhouse knife-fights edited together faster and faster until it ends with the sound/image of a gunshot]

[Cut to shot of Aleksander Emelianenko, who holds a lit cigarette over a pool of gasoline, says "The devil never sleeps," then drops it]

Fedor Emelianenko and Aleksander Emelianenko star in…

As we roll towards UFC 80, the hype machine is already revving for UFC 81. I, however, still have the burr of Sokoudjou’s hype rammed up my ass and am going to proceed with caution. My particular focus is on the building hype surrounding Brock Lesnar, the former college wrestling champ, WWE champ, NFL shit-causer, Japan pro wrestling star and now undefeated MMA fighter (1-0). It was announced at UFC 77 that Lesnar had signed with the UFC, so we knew it was just a matter of time before we started hearing the hype drums in the distance. He faces off against Frank Mir on February 2nd in Las Vegas.

Lesnar’s story might be an interesting one, but only because he’s earned a reputation for pissing in the face of success. I’m not convinced he’s going to be a force in the UFC, but if he does pull his shit together and starts making waves, I wouldn’t be surprised if he bolted like he always does. However, if he does become a huge UFC force, I will erase this post and replace it with one where I predict Lesnar will be the next UFC king. That’s how I roll.

Let’s glance at our most recent hype example. The bad taste of The African Assassin’s loss has been particularly rank for bettors. Some of the lines had Sokoudjou and Machida almost even at UFC 79 with some giving the edge to Machida. Yet most sites like this one still suggested betting Sokoudjou. Message boards around the MMA world threw more fuel on the hype fire and by the afternoon of the 28th, it was being reported by BloodyElbow that wages were being placed overwhelmingly on Sokoudjou. Not that the Assassin didn’t have a shot. He had impressive KO’s in PRIDE, is a ball of muscle and those dreds look badass. But this is the UFC and Machida has been winning in Dana World already. He’s a counter strike specialist and his ground game is one of the best (notice BloodyElbow saw past the Sokoudjou bullshit).

Did we – and bettors – pay attention to this? We’d like to say yes, but the hype monster is too fucking strong sometimes and we don’t realize it until we see the guy we bet (Sokoudjou) on his back for most of the fight looking like a turtle flipped on his shell. I don’t blame us. We just want to be there when the next dominating fighter bursts on the scene — is that so wrong? So when you feel the urge to throw down your life’s savings on Brock Lesnar just because something inside is telling you to, that’s not intuition. It’s Dana White’s hype machine.Note: We should mention that one of Lesnar’s nicknames is “The Next Big Thing”. Subtle.

Much of the mystique of UFC co-owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta stems from the fact that we don’t see them cursing and making outlandish statements every day like their president and public face. Not that Lorenzo Fertitta’s statements are any less outlandish, but when he shows up to the occasional press conference or does the rare interview, we tend to pay a little more attention; clearly, the man has decided to speak because he has something important to say. In this interview with Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, Lorenzo — ranked 380th on Forbes Magazine’s most recent list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated fortune of $1.3 billion — discusses the state of the UFC’s business and whether Dana White ever embarrasses him with his big mouth. We’ve gone and excerpted the best parts below.

On MMA being the country’s “fastest growing sport”: “A lot of people talk about the growth of MMA. I don’t believe in that. I don’t know where anybody can show me there is this great success in MMA outside of the UFC. There has been explosive growth for the UFC, but MMA in general, nobody is making a breakthrough. The biggest non-UFC pay-per-view, you might know better than me, but it’s something like 25,000, maybe 30,000 buys. There is a bit of a misnomer there. It’s not the growth of MMA. It’s the growth of the UFC.”

Fedor vs. Hong is what got us to wake up at 6 a.m. on our day off — but the real highlight of “Yarennoka!”/”Fedor Returns” was easily the 8-minute battle between 187-pounders Kazuo Misaki (black trunks) and Yoshihiro Akiyama (red trunks). Misaki’s wild jumping-bean dance can’t save him from being floored by a punch from Akiyama, who nearly pounds him out on the ground, but Misaki rallies back toward a spectacular finish. Still, there was more behind this fight than the action. Yeo Jong-Hoon gives some historical and political context to the matchup in this article on FightOpinion, and clarifies that what we thought was Misaki paying tribute to Akiyama after the fight was actually him chastising the Korean-born fighter in front of a packed arena. Harsh! A must-read article and a must-see video.