UFC Light Heavyweight Champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s trainer, Juanito Ibarra, has told Sherdog that his boy is helping MMA step into the mainstream. A Nike commercial called “Human Chain” shoots this weekend in Los Angeles and Rampage will be a part of it. Ibarra says the premise of the ad is “overachieving with victory, getting knocked down and getting back up.” NBA star LebRon James and others are also reportedly participating in the shoot.

According to the report:

“We have been working on it for quite a while, and things are just coming around now,” said Ibarra, who credited Jackson’s charisma for the fighter’s increasing notoriety.

“I’m sure the UFC brand helps, being the UFC champion,” the trainer said about his charge. “But when people meet ‘Rampage,’ they really get it.”

Ibarra also said that Rampage isn’t looking at this “like a Nike commercial.” Sure, he’s looking at it as a chance to bed the unassuming 19-year-old production assistant from Kansas, but it’s still a Nike commercial. Regardless of how Rampage views it, the ad is the latest in a string of mainstream moves for mixed martial arts. The EliteXC joining forces with CBS, Randy Couture shooting his own Nike ad, Tito Ortiz gettin’ fired, and Bud Light becoming a UFC sponsor, are all indicators that MMA has in fact arrived to the mainstream.

A source close to the costume designer of “Human Chain” claims Rampage will wear some sort of large chain and a scowl in the ad, while King James will again insult his hometown of Cleveland by wearing Yankee gear. Bravo, Boys.

We’re aware that Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos will be in action in a few short hours at World Victory Road’s “Sengoku” event. No rest for the shaved and tattooed, because Strikeforce Veep Mike Afromowitz has told MMAWeekly that the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie title will jump back into action less than three weeks later and fight Joey Villasenor at the Strikeforce/EliteXC show on March 29th that features Frank Shamrock versus Cung Le.

What’d the fellas say about their match-up?

“I really don’t know much about his ground game – if he even likes hanging out on the ground,” said Villasenor. “I know he’s a really big banger so it’s an exciting matchup. I need to be more technical than him and be better conditioned.”

“I always look for the knockout,” stated Santos. “I think this will be a duel between his boxing and my Muay Thai techniques. Villasenor is an ideal opponent for me.”

You’ll recall that UFC vet and paraplegic grappler-owned Joe Riggs was the original opponent for Villasenor, but “Diesel” had to bow out because of that whole spinal injury thing he picked in February 23rd’s Strikeforce at the Dome. Villasenor rocked it early in his career, but then hit some speed-bumps on the way to his current 24-6 record. He has been inactive since September of last year. And the guy seems to wear a lot of yellow – not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Most importantly, “Cyborg” (15-11) is fighting in a few hours against Makoto Takimoto, and Strikeforce heads will be shittin’ bricks – or shittin’ something else large and difficult to pass through a rectum – because if Santos gets jacked up in his “Sengoku” fight, they’ll be left with signing this guy to fight Villasenor.

The Shooto light-heavyweight champ will be facing off against Kazuo Misaki at tomorrow’s Sengoku event in Tokyo. Bahadurzada has sick knockout power and an interesting personal history, so watch the vid and be informed.

(Props: BloodyElbow)

(One of the most hospitalized fighters in MMA is at it again.)

That’s the official word from the UFC:

Scheduled to make his return to the Octagon this June against Chuck Liddell at UFC 85 in London, light heavyweight star Mauricio “Shogun” Rua has instead been forced to withdraw from the bout due to a ruptured ACL in his left knee, the same injury he had surgery on to repair last October after his UFC 76 fight with Forrest Griffin.

Surgery on the injured knee will be scheduled shortly, and there is no word on when Rua will be cleared to return to the Octagon.

Liddell’s opponent for UFC 85, which will be held at London’s O2 Arena on June 7th, will be announced shortly.

Damn it, we were really looking forward to that one. All we can say to Rua is find a competent surgeon or find a new line of work; we’ve seen more pictures of you in a hospital bed than in a gym. And who knows who Liddell’s replacement opponent will be, because all of the UFC’s other top 205ers are already busy around that time. Check it…

Quinton Jackson, Forrest Griffin: fighting each other in July
Lyoto Machida, Tito Ortiz: fighting each other in May
Wanderlei Silva, Keith Jardine: fighting each other in May
Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou: scheduled to fight Kazuhiro Nakamura in May
Thiago Silva, Rashad Evans: likely to fight each other in May

That doesn’t really leave anyone else that would give Chuck a serious challenge. We’d guess that either T. Silva, Evans, or Sokoudjou will be pulled off the match they were slated for to fight Chuck. Thiago and Sokoudjou might be interesting opponents, but a win for Chuck wouldn’t do much to prove he’s ready for another title shot, and a loss would sink him. Fucking Shogun — this kind of ruins everything.

(Shawn Tompkins works out with Wanderlei Silva.)

Here’s a story from over the weekend that fell through the cracks during our full-court-press of UFC 82 coverage yesterday. Remember when the IFL announced it had changed the name of Team Xtreme Couture to Team Tompkins out of respect for Couture’s legal situation with the UFC? Turns out, it didn’t go down like that. Randy Couture has a much different version of the events on the Xtreme Couture blog. Dig:

On January 8 we submitted a list of seven (7) fighters to the IFL that would be available to fight in the IFL event from the Xtreme Couture gym. The fighters were: Dennis Davis 145lbs (16-8), Jay White Heavyweight (2-5), Phil Friedman Heavyweight (1-0), Eric Uresk 155lbs (2-3), Josh Haynes 185lbs (8-8), Johnny Hendricks 170lbs (3-0), and Karina Taylor 135lbs (0-1).

The IFL informed us that Dennis Davis would be booked to fight a prelim bout against Ian Loveland and that none of our other fighters would be utilized. According to the IFL none of our fighters were a proper matchup for Mario Sperry’s team of Brazilian fighters. The IFL intended to field a team of Benji Radach (who due to injury was replaced by Josh Haynes), Santino DeFranco and Lew Polley. Radach had been a member of Shawn Tompkins’ Anacondas team, while DeFranco and Polley are from American Top Team.

Lew Polley and Santino DeFranco are tremendous athletes and excellent fighters. However, they are members of American Top Team not Xtreme Couture. American Top Team is a great squad and by all means seem to be deserving of having their own team in the IFL. We have 35 athletes that train in our Las Vegas gym and proudly wear the Xtreme Couture patch on their shorts during fights. Yet the IFL decided to field a team called “Xtreme Couture” without putting any Xtreme Couture athletes on the team. The Patriots didn’t show up in the Super Bowl with a bunch of players from the Packers. Why would the Xtreme Couture name be put on the line and not be represented by Xtreme Couture fighters.

It is because of this that the team name was changed to ”Team Tompkins”.

DeFranco and Polley lost their fights, and Josh Haynes won, so nyeh nyeh nyeh on you, IFL. It’s kind of shocking that they would reject the guys that Randy Couture wanted to compete for his gym, and replace their actual fighters with ringers. When Couture signed on to field a team for the 2008 season, I figured that the IFL would bend over backwards to keep him happy. But they had their own plans, and now Randy’s like “I’m done with these jokers, let Tompkins worry about it.” The main reason we were excited about the IFL’s new camp vs. camp system was the idea that we’d be seeing the relatively unknown guys that each coach had hand-picked to represent their gyms. Unfortunately, the new season isn’t any less artificial than the last. Oh well; maybe they can get their shit together in 2009.

There’s another notable recent post on the Xtreme Couture blog which mentions Ken Shamrock swinging through the gym to work out when he was in town for the IFL event: “The World’s Most Dangerous Man tells us he hopes to fight Kimbo and his brother Frank after his March fight in the UK.” Could we be seeing Slice/Shamrock on CBS this summer? Cross your fingers and toes, because that would be huge — not only as a ratings draw, but because Kimbo would finally get the challenge he deserves.

What do y’all think, Kimbo by KO or Shamrock by leg-lock?

Despite absorbing a slew of body kicks and a shoulder-lock attempt in the second round that nearly had him tapping, Ryan McGivern got the better of Matt Horwich during their IFL middleweight championship match on Friday and took the fight to a unanimous decision. So, Horwich loses his belt after just a two-month reign, and the title now goes to a guy who’s 4-4 in his last eight fights.

(Peter Graham, doing his best Vanilla Ice at the “Sengoku” press conference.)

World Victory Road’s debut event, “Sengoku”, is slated for tomorrow at 2:30 in the morning (ET). Fight vids will start being available shortly after the show because they know we’re all too lazy to stay up – or get up – at 2:30 a.m. to tune in. The card is a solid start to WVR and as expected, Takanori Gomi and Josh Barnett are big favorites, as is Nick “The Goat” Thompson. Kazuyuki Fujita is also favored big over kickboxer Peter Graham, who is making his MMA debut. Graham, known in kickboxing for his “rolling thunder” cartwheel kick, said some shit about Fujita back at a December press conference for DYNAMITE!! 2007:

One minor surprise took place at the DYNAMITE!! press conference held at a hotel in Osaka. When the MC began taking questions from the reporters, all of sudden a man wearing a red T-shirt stood up. His name is Peter Graham, a K-1 fighter who was there as Nicolas Petas’ teammate. While all the reporters were stunned by this abrupt interruption Graham yelled, “Where is my opponent who was supposed to fight me tomorrow! Chicken!” The MC didn’t know what to do but the interpreter softened a bit and translated what this big man from Australia had just said. Then no one knew how to react to this sudden speech by Graham, so it was basically ignored for then the press conference continued.

Graham revealed after his outburst that Fujita was supposed to fight him at the DYNAMITE!! show, but refused the fight. The Vanilla Ice-doubling big man then decided to publicly embarrass Fujita. This all came out at the “Sengoku” press conference (go here for more pics) and the two fighters had to be separated. Word is Fujita wasn’t so much upset about the remarks Graham had made about him as he was for the kickboxer’s human race-embarrassing sense of fashion.

Video of cartwheel kick attempts by Graham is after the jump. Notice I said “attempts”.

BodogFight‘s latest Bodog Girls photoset features two lovely models sort-of-but-not-really demonstrating a toe hold. Carlos Gracie is rolling in his grave right now — with an uncomfortable boner. Check out the rest of the set after the jump, and more photos and videos of the Bodog hotties here. Have at ‘em, gents.

(Josh Haynes picked up six grand for “bringing the pain.”)

Since we spent so much time yesterday looking at the generally impressive bonuses and salaries for UFC 82, it seems like a good idea to check out the IFL’s payouts for comparison. MMA Weekly has obtained the salaries for Friday’s IFL season opener, which are below. The IFL event brought 4,280 people to the Orleans Arena, with only 1,606 of those people actually paying for their tickets. The total live gate was $102,120, and the total disclosed fighter payroll was $165,500.

CHAMPIONSHIP BOUTS
Ryan Schultz ($26,000, including $14,000 win bonus) def. John Gunderson ($9,500)
Roy Nelson ($24,000 including $14,000 win bonus) def. Fabiano Scherner ($7,500)
Ryan McGivern ($10,000 including $4,000 win bonus) def. Matt Horwich ($12,000)

MAIN CARD
Alexandre Ferreira ($16,000 including $8,000 win bonus) def. Lew Polley ($4,000)
Jake Ellenberger ($15,000 including $7,500 win bonus) def. Pat Healy ($7,500)
Rafael Dias ($7,000 including $3,500 win bonus) def. Santino De Franco ($5,000)
Josh Haynes ($6,000 including $3,000 win bonus) def. Leopoldo Serao ($4,000)

PRELIMINARY FIGHT
Ian Loveland ($7,000 including $3,500 win bonus) def. Dennis Davis ($5,000)

What’s the sadder number — $12,000 (the guaranteed salary of the event’s highest-paid fighters, Schultz and Horwich) or 2,600 (the number of seat-fillers that the IFL had to bring in to make the joint look crowded)?

Here’s the video of Kim Couture’s amateur kickboxing debut, which went down at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas on Friday. Listen to her introduction at 4:02-4:13; am I crazy or is Kim’s nickname “Sugar Free”? Fight starts at the 4:44 mark, and Kim doesn’t look half bad, landing a lot of sharp body kicks and utilizing the reach advantage of her “monkey arms.” But Clarkson dominates in the third two-minute round, and if there was a decision, the Canadian visitor would have probably taken it. Randy shows up at 16:03 for some post-fight analysis.

(I like my ‘chino enemas with extra foam.)

For those of you unaware, the UFC had an event on Saturday – UFC 82. We’ve given you results & commentary, payouts, 7/11 encounters, Chuck-Heads, and more. And to cap off our thoroughly kick-ass coverage of it all, here are the traditional Monday-after suspensions.

The Ohio Athletic Commission has revealed that only four of the fighters from the event have been slapped with medical suspensions. Each of the fighters who got the on-hold ruling lost via KO or TKO, although no broken bones or lacerations were reported. Since, Yushin Okami has been said to have broken his hand while KOing Evan Tanner and Josh Koscheck possibly might have broken his as well while dealing Dustin Hazelett his TKO and subsequent medical suspension.

Evan Tanner pulled a 60-day suspension, while O’Brien, Hazelett and Sakara all got 30-day suspensions. Overall, pretty tame suspensions for a major MMA event.

However, the best suspension announcement was Luke Cummo’s caffeine overload suspension. Fightlinker “broke” the story early today that Luke Cummo had received a three-month suspension for having “extremely elevated caffeine levels beyond anything the commission had ever seen before.”

“Normally we don’t pay that much attention to the level of caffeine in a fighter’s blood,” said OAC commissioner Warren Petty. “But Luke Cummo’s readings were off the chart. At first we thought there must be a mistake with the test, but follow ups showed that our original findings were accurate. This guy must have been tripping balls in the Octagon.”

Oh, you had us until tripping balls, although I wouldn’t put it past the made-up OAC member, Warren Petty, to say something like that. The story went on to say 3-liter coffee enemas were to blame, but luckily MMA Weekly was johnny-on-the-spot and squashed this one – not that anyone was buying it after “tripping balls”. However, OAC executive director Bernie Profato wasn’t too happy about the hoax story and had this to say about the matter:

“I’ll be contacting the state’s Attorney General office (on Tuesday) to see what options we have in this type of matter because this is absolutely not true.”

I’m sure Zuffa will be filing suit soon as well.

So UFC 82 has rightfully dominated not only CagePotato the past 50-odd hours, but much of the MMA world as well. With Anderson Silva’s continued dominance in the bag, the UFC is already looking ahead. Way ahead. Although the date has not been confirmed by the NSAC, Dave Meltzer is reporting in his Wrestling Observer Newsletter that UFC 86 will go down on July 5th in Vegas. The event will be headlined by “TUF 7″ coaches, Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin. The two light heavies were named coaches for the seventh season of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality series back in December, setting them up for a battle at the next UFC event following the end of TUF’s finale.

The light heavyweight fight – which will have Rampage’s title on the line – is so far the only fight “scheduled” for the UFC 86 card. As has been the case lately, once a date drops – be it official or rumored – scheduled fights start falling into place at a frequent pace. The event is four months away and with the recent UFC event cards, the show already has a lot to live up to. And let’s hope they told the 4-year-old who designed the UFC 84: ill will poster what he can do with his crayons and will get a real designer for the UFC 86 poster…like at least an eight-year-old who understands the upper-case/lower-case rule.

When reached for comments, Rampage just said something about “ass” and “whuppin”, while Forrest Griffin would only take questions on what his years were like playing Opie. Apparently Andy Griffith was a prick. Who knew.

(Props BloodyElbow)

Taken outside of the Nationwide Arena after UFC 82 was over. This dude was actually on crutches, which took some of the edge off his look. Still, the ubiquitous Liddell-hawk wasn’t my favorite hairstyle from the weekend. That honor goes to a gentleman I saw at the airport on Sunday…

Even though it lacked late-night room service, the Holiday Inn where I slept after UFC 82 had free wireless Internet in the rooms. Connecting to their system took me to a homepage which featured this 15-minute workout video hosted by Matt Hughes, where the former UFC champ discusses the fitness program he uses to develop his core. If you’re like me, you have an ass like a veal and a spine bent from years of office jobs and astigmatism, so I was definitely interested in some core-blasting tips from Hughes. Unfortunately, he leaves the actual workout demonstration to his assistants, and just shows up to do the introduction and provide occasional encouragement like “You can do this; just picture those rock-hard abs you’ve always wanted.” His delivery, by the way, is as wooden as Pinocchio’s dick. If you’re interested, give it a look before Holiday Inn’s lawyers make us pull it.

After day 1, my ass is still rather veal-like, but I’ll keep you posted.

(The Crippler was rewarded handsomely for his blood-loss.)

The UFC paid out a chunky $932,000 in official salaries and bonuses on Saturday night, with Anderson Silva unsurprisingly coming out the big winner. The amounts are below; these figures don’t include any undisclosed “locker room bonuses” that are often given out to headliners and other fighters who put on noteworthy performances.

Anderson Silva — $260,000 ($70,000 to show, $70,000 to win, plus $120,000 in bonuses)
Dan Henderson — $160,000 ($100,000 to show, $60,000 for Fight of the Night bonus)
Andrei Arlovski — $170,000 ($105,000 to show, $65,000 to win)
Heath Herring — $140,000 ($70,000 to show, $70,000 to win)
Chris Leben — $110,000 ($25,000 to show, $25,000 to win, $60,000 for Knockout of the Night bonus)
Jon Fitch — $60,000 ($30,000 to show, $30,000 to win)
Diego Sanchez — $60,000 ($30,000 to show, $30,000 to win)
Cheick Kongo — $30,000
Yushin Okami — $28,000 ($14,000 to show, $14,000 to win)
Evan Tanner — $25,000
Josh Koscheck — $20,000 ($10,000 to show, $10,000 to win)
Alessio Sakara — $17,000
Luigi Fioravanti — $16,000 ($8,000 to show, $8,000 to win)
Luke Cummo — $16,000
Jorge Gurgel — $14,000 ($7,000 to show, $7,000 to win)
Dustin Hazelett — $12,000
Chris Wilson — $12,000
Jake O’Brien — $11,000
David Bielkheden — $8,000
John Halverson — $3,000

Underpaid: Josh Koscheck, who is still finishing out the indentured servitude of his Ultimate Fighter contract.
Overpaid: Luke Cummo, who didn’t do much that resembled work during his 15 minute grabass with Luigi Fioravanti.

(Props: MMA Mania)

Josh Koscheck vs. Dustin Hazelett, the best fight of the undercard. Awesome exchanges in the beginning, explosive finish at the end.

Andrei Arlovski vs. Jake O’Brien. Feel free to skip past the entire first round.

More fights after the jump…

Again, at the Arnold Classic, marveling at the power-lifters and their bloated legs. Nearby, Jose Canseco and Triple H were shilling for something or other. This guy caught my eye for his Liddell-Hawk with just the hint of a prehensile rat-tail.

(…and the card holders for Barnett’s next fight.)

When Josh “The Babyface Assassin” Barnett fights for World Victory Road in Japan on March 5th, it’ll be the first time we’ve seen him in action in 15 months. Hidehiko Yoshida will be his opponent in the main event at “Sengoku” – WVR’s debut event. Barnett says this fight makes for a good headliner – on an already exciting card – and he’s glad to be back in action.

World Victory Road became the winning horse in the Barnett race after a messy contract situation left by the dismatling of PRIDE. The brand new WVR has been snatching up fighters lately, including top guys like Nick “The Goat” Thompson, Takanori Gomi, and Kazuyuki Fujita – all fighting in the debut event.

Barnett mentioned that although he is now with WVR, he wouldn’t rule out signing up with DREAM, which is run by several former PRIDE suits in conjunction with some K-1′s parent company. Barnett says the deal would be up to DREAM and the execs know what the issues were in PRIDE, so the conflicts can be avoided if they wanted. That could set up a possible fourth fight with Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic who recently signed up with DREAM. Cro Cop accounts for three of Barnett’s five career losses. Are we over that match-up or not? Me? I could probably be coerced into tuning in, but would complain about it being boring the next day.

Josh also recently spoke about the talk of him possibly fighting Fedor Emelianenko.

“Honestly, I don’t think much about it at all. I’m not Randy (Couture),” he said about the Fedor fight. “I’m not going to chase after this fight. For me, I need to be out there fighting my fights, creating my own merit. Fedor is the No. 1 guy out there based on his past performances; he’s an incredible fighter and a cool guy. At this point people need to go their own ways.

“I’ve been waiting way too damn long to get a fight because of the turmoil that came of Pride folding, so at this point I’m not going to do anything that could possibly stall or hold up my career anymore in hopes in putting one specific (fight) together.”

— Further support for the “Andrei Arlovski is leaving the UFC” theory: Though he got a rapturous response from the crowd on Saturday, Andrei Arlovski wasn’t given the honor of a post-victory interview with Joe Rogan, like Jorge Gurgel, Diego Sanchez, and Josh Koscheck were granted in earlier undercard fights. As soon as he chalked up his win, a commercial for Harley-Davidson filled the jumbotrons. Nothing to see here, folks. Luigi Fioravanti was similarly snubbed after his win over Luke Cummo, but I just figured it was because nobody cared to hear him. Anyway, all appearances of civility are out the window.

— Speaking of the Pitbull, one of his current sponsors is do-it-yourself online print shop CafePress. So that’s another thing we have in common.

— In the press conference after UFC 82, Dana White said that Jon Fitch would be next in line for a title shot after “this whole Matt Serra and Georges St. Pierre thing gets figured out.” White implied that Fitch could have sat out and waited for his title shot, but instead he stepped up and took the fight with Wilson. Ouch, Karo! With his win over Chris Wilson, Fitch tied Royce Gracie’s ’93-’94 streak of eight-consecutive victories in the Octagon, which hadn’t been matched since.

— Also during that press conference, Dana White revealed that he recently made Randy Couture another offer to fight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. “We’re waiting to hear back from him,” White said.

At “Pride of a Champion,” newly inducted Hall of Famer Mark Coleman announced that he would be returning to the Octagon to fight Brock Lesnar. The match is slated to go down August 9th in Lesnar’s adopted hometown of Minneapolis; it will be Coleman’s first fight since losing to Fedor Emelianenko in October 2006 at PRIDE 32, and his first UFC appearance since 1999.

This is kind of like the UFC’s version of Kimbo Slice vs. Tank Abbott — the much-hyped new crossover star against the faded veteran. The major difference is that Tank, even in his prime, wasn’t worthy of hand-washing Mark Coleman’s jock. And unfortunately for Brock Lesnar, his strengths are basically canceled out in this matchup. Brock was a dominant amateur wrestler? So was Coleman. Brock’s got scary ground-and-pound? Mark Coleman invented that shit. Lesnar’s only advantages are youth and athleticism. Does that trump Coleman’s 12 years of ring experience, during which he threw down with legends like Dan Severn, Don Frye, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko Cro Cop, and Fedor?

In retrospect, putting Brock Lesnar up against Frank Mir in Lesnar’s first UFC fight was a bad, bad idea, and this could be just as bad, if not worse. Coleman lacks Mir’s submission mastery, but he’ll test Brock’s chin with his heavy hands, and he won’t go to the ground as easily as Mir did.

We’ve given EliteXC a lot of grief for protecting Kimbo Slice with cut-rate competition, but at least they understand how to build up a franchise star — one can at a time. I’m starting to wonder if building Brock Lesnar as an MMA star was even the UFC’s intention to begin with. Was Dana White’s secondary motivation behind signing him (after the huge PPV buys) to prove that pro wrestlers would get stomped by skilled MMA fighters? I’m not saying I would have particularly enjoyed seeing Lesnar face Justin McCully, but what happens after he goes 0-2?

Here’s one of the dudes waiting in line to meet Houston Alexander, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, and Sam Stout at the UFC booth at Saturday’s Arnold Classic, a multi-sport athletic competition and fitness convention held in Columbus every year. On the way to the Greater Columbus Convention Center, my West Indian cab driver told me he’d actually caught a glimpse of Arnold himself that morning, coming out of his hotel: “He looked great. He looks about 250, 280 pounds, and he had no wrinkles. The man is 60 years old. My father is 60. He doesn’t look like that.” I asked him what he thought Arnold’s secret was for staying so youthful. “Steroids and buttocks,” he said. I think he was trying to say “botox,” but he could have just as easily meant “getting tons of ass.”

It would not be the last time I spotted this haircut…

Anderson Silva left the Nationwide Arena on Saturday night with the bank account of a champion, pulling in $120,000 in bonuses on top of his usual salary and win bonus (which were $60,000 each for his previous title defense at UFC 77). As announced in a press conference following the event, the UFC distributed its customary end-of-night bonuses like this:

Fight of the Night: $60,000 each for Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson.

Submission of the Night: $60,000 for Anderson Silva. It was the night’s only submission, unless you count the tapout-by-strikes that Diego Sanchez scored at the expense of David Bielkheden.

Knockout of the Night: $60,000 for Chris Leben.

So, another 1-for-3 performance on our bonus predictions, though we did call Arlovski for a KO/TKO in the second round. And Diego did technically win by submission. You know, I think we’ll just start predicting the outcomes from now on; we’d sound a lot smarter that way.

Take a look before it’s pulled…

– Watch More Funny Videos

Oh this? It’s just me hangin’ out at a 7/11 on the OSU campus in Columbus with my buddy, UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra. Pretty average Saturday night, really.

Alright, let me explain. You want the long version? Good.

The hierarchy of hatred in Columbus, Ohio, seems to go like this:

1) The University of Michigan, particularly its football team and its mascot, the wolverine.
2) New Yorkers.
3) All other non-Ohio residents.

As a U of Michigan grad who’s lived in New York for the last 5+ years, I could feel their eyes as soon as I stopped into Tommy’s Pizza to take a piss. It wasn’t paranoia; they knew. I got a sense of what it must feel like for a Crip to walk through a Blood neighborhood. That’s both an apt metaphor and a totally lazy one, as most people on the Ohio State campus — where I booked my hotel, mainly out of curiosity — were flying Blood-like colors yesterday. Literally everyone under the age of 25 and over the age of 50 was decked out in Ohio State sweatshirts, jackets, hats, whatever. It turns out that the Ohio State Wrestling Championships were that weekend — fitting, since former OSU wrestling champ Mark Coleman was going to be inducted in the UFC’s Hall of Fame that night — and the sporting types of Columbus were showing their support. So here I come into Tommy’s with my black pea-coat and reptilian loafers (already I was thinking afterparty), and my big Jew nose, reeking of Ann Arbor pheromones. Forks hits plates, a record scratched.

(Arlovski climbs the cage after vanquishing the evil forces of Lay ‘n Pray. Photo courtesy of my Canon Powershot.)

Andre Arlovski def. Jake O’Brien via ground-and-pound TKO at 4:17 of round 2
It’s hard to describe how cathartic it was to see Andrei Arlovski triumph over the excrutiatingly dull, cheap-suit-like wrestling-tactics of Jake O’Brien. In the first round, O’Brien shot in for takedown attempt after takedown attempt, and Andrei sprawled on all of them. It didn’t matter that O’Brien’s success rate was nearly zero; he was going to stick with his one attack, come hell or high water, booing fans be damned, because if the match went three rounds, he’d probably pick up the decision. But in the second round, Arlovski was able to take O’Brien to the mat and started droppin’ fists. O’Brien had no answer, the fight was stopped, and O’Brien took his first much-needed loss. Arlovski’s back, baby — just in time to leave the UFC over contract squabbles.

Luigi Fiorvanti def. Luke Cummo via unanimous decision
Luigi threw the “Silent Assassin” all over the cage for three agonizing rounds. There really isn’t much to say about this one except that Cummo looked like shit. I don’t even mean his performance, I’m talking about his physical appearance. Living off a diet of bark and urine doesn’t seem to contribute to an impressive physique or healthy skin tone.

Josh Koscheck def. Dustin Hazelett via TKO (head kick, punches on ground) at 1:24 of round 2
This one was the best fight of the undercard, easy. Hazelett rocked Koscheck with a punch early, which freaked Kos out enough for him to start throwing wild haymakers. After the opening brawl, Kos shot in for a takedown, and Hazelett sunk in a guillatine choke that nearly ended the match. Kos shook out of it and found himself in a traingle choke instead. Luckily, the bell rang. Koscheck turned it on the second, catching Hazelett with a thunderous head kick that sent him (both of them, actually) to the mat. Kos went in for the kill with punches from the top and it was all over.

Diego Sanchez submits David Bielkheden via strikes at 4:43 of round 1
Sanchez shot in for a takedown right after the opening bell, and never gave Bielkheden a chance to breathe. He worked some strikes from the top position until he scored full mount and started jackhammer-punching him in the face. Bielkheden didn’t wait around for the ref to stop the action and tapped out from the abuse. For that, he earned CagePotato’s Bitch of the Night bonus ($5).

Jorge Gurgel def. John Halverson via unanimous decision
Gurgel had Halvorson on his back eating leather more than once, but couldn’t find a way to finish him. Still, the Ohio crowd cheered hard for their homeboy through the match and showed mad love after his hand was raised. “Ohio is my family,” he said. Awww!

Guest Liveblogger Ben Fowlkes of The Fighting Life here, all set and ready to go for UFC 82. I’m looking forward to a good night of fights, which I’m warming up for by watching Dana White swear through the countdown show. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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