Sean Sherk gets a very specific type of look on his face whenever anyone mentions his failed steroid test. I don’t know whether it’s restrained rage or just the last of his patience draining away, but it’s definitely not good. You can see it in this video from FHM, which does its best to clear Sherk of all charges by asserting that the failed test was “pretty obviously a mistake.” I suppose you’ve got to play nice to get footage like this.

Even after that, Sherk still punches the guy in the face a bunch of times. Flattery will get you nowhere with “The Muscle Shark.”

Props: Bloody Elbow

EDIT: While YouTube sorts out its problems, you can view the video on FHM.com.

(Because what else are you going to do this weekend?)

For those of you who didn’t get your fix watching the first two Dream events on your computer screens, HDNet has got you covered. They’re airing both Dream.1 and Dream.2 this weekend, so you can bask in all the highly-defined glory.

This is just to whet your appetite, because Dream.3 will be coming at you live:

DREAM.1, which took place March 15 and featured the opening round of a lightweight grand prix, airs tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET.

DREAM.2, which took place April 29 and featured the opening round of a middleweight grand prix, airs tomorrow at 10:30 p.m. ET.

HDNet, which is owned by HDNet Fights founder Mark Cuban, recently inked a deal with the Japanese-based organization to begin airing future DREAM events live. DREAM.3, for example, airs live on May 11 at 3 a.m. ET.

I was about to complain about the first two shows airing at 10:30 p.m., and then I saw the 3 a.m. note tacked on to the end of the live broadcast announcement. Better get a nap beforehand.

We’ve said it before, but whatever you think of Dream as a promotion or HDNet as a cable network, you have to give them both points for production value:

(Mother’s Day is coming up, and the champ’s used shorts sure put flowers to shame.)

When I received an email from the UFC this morning alerting me that I had the opportunity to bid on some of Georges St. Pierre’s old shorts, I was understandably giddy with excitement. Who wouldn’t want to own a pair of autographed, extremely tight shorts that have soaked up gallons of St. Pierre sweat by now? After all, you can’t really stalk someone without owning some of their clothes. Well maybe you could, but it just seems lazy.

The joke’s on us, though, because apparently they’re a pretty hot item. Seriously. The opening bid for these bad boys was $300. At the time of this writing, the bidding is up to $8,050. Do MMA fans really have that much spare cash lying around? If so, can they really not think of a better use for it? We’re supposed to be in a recession.

For those of you who aren’t big fans of GSP or who have a weird hang-up about buying another man’s spandex briefs, there are other items on the auction block. For instance, a pair of autographed gloves worn by Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is currently going for $3,450. His shorts are a mere $3,050, though the bidding on all these items still has another five days before closing, so who knows where things could go from here.

Interestingly enough, the weirdest item for sale, a kilt worn by Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis, is still stuck at the opening bid of $300. That’s a steal. Think of it this way, when people make fun of you for wearing a skirt, at least you’ll have a good/sad story to tell them about how you got it. If they still make fun of you, they’re not your friends anyway.

Congratulations, buddy: You’re about to be one shirt-wearin’ motherfucker. By a wide, wide margin, Vrax turned in the most popular comment in our second Triumph United Comment Contest, suggesting that involvement in YAMMA Pit Fighting is more shameful than kiddie-diddling. So Vrax, please swing through Triumph United’s shirt rack, and e-mail us at feedback@cagepotato.com to let us know which one you want; we’ll hook you up ASAP.

Also important: Your homework this weekend is to make one last attempt at coming up with creatively humiliating punishments for Ryan Harkness of Fightlinker when he goes down in flames in our upcoming UFC 84 pick-off. Go here and do your worst!

(“Oh, my daughter’s going to be so excited that I met Jay-Z!”)

Via Fightline.com — Kimbo Slice responds to the rumors that he was knocked out by Forrest Griffin in a recent sparring match at Xtreme Couture:

“No, there is no truth to that at all. It’s bullshit and Forrest Griffin will tell you that it’s bullshit too. The fact is it was a good sparring session and I was training with Forrest and he was talking to me about defending yourself at all times and then he threw a big kick and I was like, ‘WOAH I never even seen that coming’. But no, I never got knocked out. Even if I did get knocked out, saying that and putting that rumor out there just makes you a pussy.”

Wait a minute, so did you or did you not get knocked out? And why are you choking that old lady? Is she your accountant’s wife or something? Did she tap or nap?

Sean Sherk before his completely unjust steroid suspension:

Sean Sherk now:

Maybe it’s a bad angle, but is the Muscle Shark looking…I don’t know…narrower to you?

(Our thoughts exactly.)

I would take this as a clear sign that EliteXC’s welterweight belt is cursed by poltergeists and refuses to be possessed by mortals.

The championship fight between top 170-pound contender Jake Shields and challenger Drew Fickett for EliteXC’s vacant welterweight title has been postponed for a second time, as it was announced today that Fickett has injured his knee and will not be able to compete at EliteXC’s June 14th event in Honolulu, Hawaii. The two fighters were originally supposed to meet at “Shamrock vs. Le” on March 29th, but Shields pulled a muscle in his back days before the event, and Fickett took on Jae Suk Lim instead, winning by guillotine choke in the first round. Luckily, Shields doesn’t seem to be too disappointed by Fickett’s injury, as his back may not be 100% recovered yet anyway. As he told MMAWeekly:

“I think I could be okay to fight by (June 14), but I think opting for July would probably be the smartest thing. It would give me more time to rehab before jumping into sparring, and I think there would be a little more exposure with it being on CBS (in July).”

The June 14th card still features K.J. Noons defending his lightweight title against Yves Edwards, as well as fights between Nick Diaz and Muhsin Corbbrey, Murilo “Ninja” Rua vs. Tony Bonello, Rafael Feijao vs. Wayne Cole, and Ron Waterman vs. Dave Herman.

Speaking of Diaz, the pot-abusing lightweight has joined the lineup of DREAM.3 (May 11th; Saitama, Japan), where he’ll take on Katsuya Inoue, a two-time welterweight King of Pancrase with a career record of 16-5-3. Reportedly, the winner of that fight will face Hayato Sakurai for DREAM’s welterweight title in July or September. (I guess not all the belts will be awarded via chaotic grand prix.) With this addition, DREAM.3′s mighty, mighty lineup is looking like this:

Lightweight GP Round 2
Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Luis Buscape
Joachim Hansen vs. Eddie Alvarez
Mitsuhiro Ishida vs. Caol Uno
Katsuhiko Nagata vs. [whoever fills in for Shinya Aoki]

Middleweight GP Round 1 Fight
Jason Miller vs. Katsuyori Shibata

Middleweight GP Reserve Fight
Melvin Manhoef vs. Kim Dae Won

Nick Diaz vs. Katsuya Inoue (welterweights)

Jung Bukyung vs. Daisuke Nakamura (lightweights)

Takeshi Yamazaki vs. TBA (featherweights)

(You laugh now, but we’ll see who’s laughing when those ice caps melt.)

You might think that Wanderlei Silva, who came up in the old school Vale Tudo circuit in Brazil, would have some outdated training methods. It’s not hard to imagine him carrying several people on his back around a Rio de Janeiro beach, or sparring with pitbulls to increase his courage and the speed at which his blood clots.

Not so, as it turns out. In fact, Silva and his strength and conditioning coach, Rafael Alejarra, are so cutting edge in their training methods that it is literally ridiculous. One wonders how much Silva’s decision loss to Chuck Liddell has him feeling desperate for a victory and willing to try anything, even snorkeling. Alejarra explained it all to MMA Weekly:

Wanderlei is always searching for the best training, and by that he wants the best for me. So he said to me that I will always travel to places where I can learn something to add on to his training. I am very happy to have a boss like him. By that, I have the opportunity to grow as a sport scientist.

Today, I am studying a new training called HIPOXIA, which consist in a few words in a hard training with low demand of oxygen. This kind of training is developed in other sports and I am bringing it to MMA. It’s a very hard type of training because the athlete must tolerate a huge quantity of lactic acid in the blood.

I have made some tests with Wanderlei and brought it to Brazil and presented to a board with Masters of Exercise Biochemistry and the results of the study were that the athlete had a great increase in conditioning of the aerobic and anaerobic (energy systems).

It sounds so crazy it just might work. Silva’s upcoming bout with Keith Jardine will be an important one if he wants to stay in the UFC for very long, and it could also dictate whether he’ll continue competing as a light heavyweight. Alejarra wouldn’t say whether Silva was planning a move to middleweight, commenting only that they were “waiting for the natural process.”

That could mean a lot of different things. Getting beat up by bigger and stronger opponents could be considered a natural process. The UFC telling you to lose fifteen pounds or find a new line of work? That could also be considered a natural process. Sort of.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

EDIT: As it turns out, Wanderlei has used this training before his bout with Liddell. Rachelle Leah has the full story for you.

With the UFC dropping fighters like bad bean pies and more roster cuts on the horizon, you can bet that there are more than a few guys in the Zuffa stable who are feeling pretty nervous right about now.

It used to be just the fighters who put on a supremely bad performance got cut from their contracts, but not so anymore. The UFC is trimming the fat, which means plenty of able bodies may be getting the old ‘let’s just be friends’ speech from the UFC. But how will you know if you’re about to be the next one on the bread line?

Being the helpful jerk that I am, I’ve come up with a handy list of warning signs that it may be time to start looking for a new job (I’m looking at you, Marvin Eastman). Somewhere there is a strip club that’s about to get an influx of bouncer applications.

1. Someone keeps leaving a book on conversational Japanese in your dressing room.

2. The UFC begins paying your fight purses in change, and your post-fight bonuses in cases of Xyience and 40 oz. bottles of Mickey’s.

3. Every time you try and call Dana White’s cell phone, he suspiciously “can’t talk right now” because he’s just about to hop in the shower.

4. They take away your parking space and give it to Diego Sanchez, while giving you Kalib Starnes’ old spot. When you complain about how it’s all the way at the other end of the lot, they tell you not to worry because it’s “only temporary.”

5. When you show up to film your pre-fight shadow boxing montage, the crew doesn’t even bother to make it look like it’s raining.

6. Joe Silva schedules you for a fight with the new “Ultimate Fighter” winner. Before the current season is over.

7. Instead of giving you a Hummer after a victory, you get a bus ticket and a thermos of coffee.

8. When you pass “Rampage” Jackson’s trainer in the hallway and ask him how it’s going, he pats you on the shoulder and says, “Everything happens for a reason, son.”

9. Dana White keeps talking up this night class on air conditioning repair down at the technical college, insisting that it “never hurts to learn a trade,” before leaving you with a pamphlet and a forty-dollar check made out to the Registrar’s office.

10. You’re a wrestler whose fights always go to a judges’ decision.

-Ben Fowlkes

Our friend Ariel at MMARated did an audio interview with Travis Lutter shortly after he was cut by the UFC, and if you’re curious about where “The Serial Killer” goes from here you should give it a listen. Lutter still sounds a little dazed by his layoff — and bitter that he was cut while other two-time-losers like Kendall Grove are still in the mix — but there were some interesting revelations. For example:

— After his dismissal, Lutter e-mailed Dana White about the $36,000 that Xyience still owes him. That e-mail has not yet been returned.
— When he said that fans of MMA suck, he was specifically referring to the ones that send him hate mail; according to Travis, the only person who deserves that kind of hate mail is Osama Bin Laden. [ed. note: I know, right? If only we had his address!]
— Since his firing, he’s been called by the IFL and HDNet/Affliction; he’d love to fight Matt Lindland.
— Lutter still doesn’t know why he gassed against Rich Franklin. He also hasn’t watched the fight yet, because he doesn’t feel like it.
— He says “y’know” more than maybe anyone else in the world, ever.

If you’ve still got love for Lutter, listen to the interview at MMARated.com.

(Are you a Mayhem Monkey?)

Since all you guys did was bitch about it last time, we’re going to leave the decisions in your hands from now on. Below were our favorite comments from this week. Take a moment to digest them and then vote for your favorite in our new homepage poll on the right. The winner gets a Triumph United t-shirt of their choice. Okay? And the nominees are…

“The first time I ever saw Kimbo I was surfing for porn and I saw his various appearances @ inthevip.com. If you told me that a couple years later that dude would be on the cover of ESPN, I’d call you crazy. Actually I’d say I didn’t know who he was and deny the fact I was looking at porn.” — Jeff on Kimbo’s ESPN Cover Shoot

“When discussing Mark Hunt, it’s customary to precede his name with ‘noted fatty fatty fat fat’ so that people remember which out-of-shape guy you’re talking about.” — Jemaleddin on Quote Stew: Bisping, Quarry, Hunt + More

“YAMMA veteran. Doesn’t that make your skin crawl a little when you type it?” — Vrax on Patrick Smith Is a Sex Offender

“I think Chris Leben is showing a lot of growth here as a human being….and I also think he will make a fine prison prostitute….that guy is going to earn somone a lot of soups and cigarettes.” — BIG CHRIS on Chris Leben in Jail, But Only on a Technicality

“The Mad Monkey, is this the one that had pinpoint bleeding all over his freshly waxed unibrow in the serra/gsp pre-fight family interviews? You want to get that done 24 hrs in advance buddy (not that I would know anything about it).” — tony@rbd on Nick Serra, The Mad Monkey

“these arent rankings. these a fans thoughts on who they think is good. iv never seen so much crappy rankings by a nuthugging blog before. garbage.” — clitwizard on ‘Power Rankings’ Update of DOOM!

Voting ends at 5:00 p.m. ET. Git ‘er done.