(Jr. and Sr., in happier times.)

Well, we already have a candidate for interview of the year. In this Q+A with FightHype.com, Floyd Mayweather Sr. — estranged father of the undefeated boxing champ who’s been hinting that he wants to compete in MMA — tells Percy Crawford what he really thinks about his son’s possible new money-making scheme. And it’s totally fucking amazing. To wit:

PC: I don’t know if you read yet, but Lil Floyd has been talking to Mark Cuban about fighting in mixed martial arts?
FM: He needs to leave that shit alone. He’s going to get the same fucking thing Vince Phillips got; leg broke, arm broke or whatever. Vince Phillips got his arm broke. You can’t mess with that…that’s what they do. You can’t beat nobody at their own game…All of this he talking about right now, this martial arts shit, I’m telling you, he about to get broke the fuck up right now. I’m telling you, he could forget all of that stuff being cute and how you supposed to hit somebody with a check hook. Man, them motherfucker’s going to take that check hook motherfucker and squeeze your guts out. I’m just being real with you man…If he ever want to take a motherfuckin’ loss, you bout to take one right now motherfucker. Go ahead and try that. One of them motherfuckers grab you and bing, bing…hit the floor twice motherfucker and it’s over with….Lil Floyd about to get his ass tore up man. He ain’t about to whoop them motherfuckers. He can forget that shit!

A copy of the lawsuit against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and his bone head manager, Juanito Ibarra, is now floating out in cyberspace. White Chocolate Management (WCM) president, Reed Wallace, is seeking $10,000,000 in damages for the company, alleging that Ibarra talked shit about WCM and road-blocked some deals the company brought to him with the plan of going after the same deals later and keeping the spoils for himself. Doesn’t seem like something a colleague of the uber-classy Rampage Jackson would do, now does it?

MMA Fightline has some choice quotes from the pissed-off Wallace:

“Rampage has lost literally millions of dollars in deals that Juanito [Ibarra] just sent away because he didn’t want someone else taking credit for those deals,” Wallace explained. “Juanito tried to go back to those companies and do the deals on his own and it just didn’t work out. I know of two of [these deals] that he’s still working on right now and one of these deals is a deal whereby Juanito will only agree to allow the deal to happen with Rampage if the company in question agrees to do a deal with him personally as well.”

Joe Lauzon…

…and Bat Boy

Okay, so it’s not as sad as when Corey Haim tried to auction off his rotted-out teeth. But whenever a fighter tries to sell a championship belt, there’s an inescapable air of desperation. So it goes with Ricco Rodriguez, the veteran fighter who briefly became the UFC’s heavyweight champ in September 2002, after a fifth-round TKO of Randy Couture — an incredible achievement that you can relive by buying his championship belt on eBay. Though Rodriguez lost his title to Tim Sylvia in his next fight, the belt would still be a prized collector’s item for any affluent UFC fan (hear that, guys who bought Octagon?) and is on the block with a starting bid of $29,999. From the ad:

THE ULTIMATE COLLECTABLE FOR THE UFC FAN!! THIS IS THE TIME TO BUY, AS THE SPORT GROWS IT WILL ONLY GO UP IN VALUE!! THIS IS THE BELT PUT ON RICCO RODRIGUEZ AFTER DEFEATING RANDY COUTURE IN UFC 39!!. HE’S SELLING IT TO HELP RAISE MONEY FOR A SCHOOL WE ARE OPENING IN THE SOUTH.

THE WINNING BIDDER WILL ALSO BE GIVEN AN AUTOGRAPHED PICTURE OF THE BELT ON RICCO, AND WELL AS A PICTURE HANDING THE BELT TO THE NEW OWNER.

DON’T BE THE GUY KICKING YOURSELF 20 YEARS FROM NOW WISHING YOU BOUGHT THIS WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE. THEY DON’T COME ON THE MARKET VERY OFTEN. RICCO ISN’T EXCITED TO PART WITH IT, BUT HAS A FAMILY NOW AND IS LOOKING AT THE FUTURE. HE WANT TO TEACH PEOPLE WHAT HE’S LEARNED IN THE OCTAGON , RING, AND MATS, AND NEEDS AS MUCH CAPITAL AS POSSIBLE TO GET IT DONE RIGHT. AND HE WOULD RATHER JUST WIN ANOTHER DOWN THE ROAD!!

Well sure, we’d all love to “win another down the road,” but lightning only strikes once for some people, and Ricco is probably one of them. Surely there are other things he can do to raise 30 grand besides sell off the physical representation of his greatest accomplishment. It would break my heart if nobody bid on the belt — there are no bids yet, with five days left in the auction — and then Ricco was forced to reduce his starting bid to $25,000, then $20,000, and then eventually this is happening.

Still, if each of you wanted to send me $10, I could buy the belt, take a picture of myself wearing it, and then post that picture on CagePotato.com — that way, the belt could belong to all of us.

(Props: MMA Fever)

Co-host Tiffany Fallon was the greatest knockout to ever be featured on IFL Battleground. Though the former Playboy Playmate of the Year may not be returning for the 2008 season, she’ll be appearing as a castmember on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, which premieres tomorrow night at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. Tune in to see if she can outlast Tito Ortiz with her business acumen.

Before you check out more pics of Tiffany after the jump, I’d just like to say that when I did a Google Image Search of her to put this post together, I had to sift through hundreds of naked photos of the woman in order to get these few sorta-clothed shots; this is still a family website, after all. I just hope you people appreciate the sacrifices I make for you.

Honorable Mention: Pat Militech

10. Frank Trigg

9. Matt Hughes 

MMA Madness gets all mathematical ‘n shit with UFC 79′s Liddell/Silva fight, analyzing the data from Fightmetric, the world’s first comprehensive MMA statistics system. The most interesting part is the round-by-round chart at the bottom of the page which shows how many of each type of strike the fighters landed to each section of their opponent’s body, but the breakdown is fairly insightful on its own. Some of the observations:

— “…it took Silva longer to throw his first punch (45 seconds) than it did for him to earn five of his 31 career victories.

— Although two judges scored the fight 30-27, “FightMetric clearly gives [the second] round to Silva by a score of 158-87, even after Liddell’s score is bolstered for the damage inflicted in the round that opened a cut on Silva’s right eyebrow.”

— “Silva’s jab-to-power strike ratio is absurd. Based on FightMetric’s database of statistics, the average fighter throws about 1.5 jabs for every power strike at distance, a ratio of three-to-two. Silva threw more than 2.5 power strikes for every jab thrown, a five-to-two ratio that is at odds with most fighters’ striking styles.”

Overall, Liddell wins the fight by a Fightmetric total score of 340-265. If you want to kill your productivity at work today, go to Fightmetric and start clicking around. Particularly notable is the insanely-detailed breakdown of the Michael Bisping/Matt Hamill match at UFC 75, which argues that Bisping did sneak off with rounds 2 and 3, though the first round was so lopsided that he would have lost if the fight was judged on total scoring, and not the outdated-for-MMA 10-point must system.

(Tim Sylvia-as-mongoloid sketch courtesy of tim-sylvia.com)

Perhaps trying to make himself look tough after being portrayed as a total feeb in Matt Hughes’ book, Tim Sylvia has been on a trash-talk streak lately. In Gary Herman’s post-UFC 79 column on 15rounds.com, the Maine-iac addressed Fedor Emelianenko’s decision to fight in M-1 Global rather than the UFC:

“I think he’s being a (expletive). I think Fedor is very good, but you have to fight the top level competitors all the time to keep that status, and he is just not doing that.”

(Plugging the column on Five Ounces of Pain, Herman revealed that the expletive in question was “pussy.”)

Calling Fedor a pussy is basically like spitting in the face of a member of the vory v zakone. I’d imagine an exchange like this went down before Tim dared to open his mouth…

Tim Sylvia: [knocking on Dana White's office door] Hey boss, gotta minute?
Dana White: [to self] Fuck. [to Tim] Yeah, what.
TS: Hey, yeah, you know that Fedor guy? The crazy Russian, Enemanenko or whatever?
DW: Yeah, what about him.
TS: He’ll never fight in the UFC, right?
DW: No fuckin’ way, him and his manager are dead to me.
TS: So you’re saying there’s no chance he’ll ever fight me?
DW: Fuck no, not on my watch.
TS: That’s aaaall I needed to know. Thanks boss! [leaves]
DW: [to self] Christ, what an asshole.

While Yarennoka! was ringing in 2008 in Saitama, K-1 was celebrating its own New Year’s Eve MMA tradition in Osaka with its Premium 2007 Dynamite!! show, a 15-fight card that featured Joachim Hansen, Kid Yamamoto, Kazushi Sakuraba, and a marquee matchup between Bob Sapp and Bobby Ologun. (Full results from the night can be found here.) You already know Bob Sapp as the crybaby brawler who we’ve begged to retire. Bobby Ologun is a Nigerian-born television personality, beloved in Japan for his butchering of the Japanese language and minstrel-like facial expressions; he’s fought at the last four K-1 Premium Dynamite!! events, including a 16-second loss to Hong Man Choi last year. On Monday, Bob Sapp needed over four minutes to beat Ologun. It’s hard to think of an American equivalent to a sideshow like this — maybe picture Tracy Morgan spending four months in a gym and then fighting Mike Tyson. Enjoy…