(ShoXC weigh-ins become an impromptu beach party. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

Last night’s ShoXC card from Fresno, Calif. had its share of interesting bouts, but the big news coming out of the Pro Elite camp is that the company has canceled another show, this time in the form of one its smaller confederates across the pond. Contenders 11, scheduled to take place in the UK today, has been called off. Five Ounces of Pain also reports that Cage Rage — another Pro Elite organization — has suffered a rash of layoffs and is down to only three employees. Somehow during all of this, the Pro Elite stock price jumped from $2.50 to $8.00 a share on Friday, even amid reports that they were canceling their September 20 event. As they say on the internet, WTF!?!

Something is going on with Pro Elite, no doubt, but what? Could it be that Pro Elite executives have discovered oil underneath the grounds where their offices lie, and now they’re going to quit putting on MMA shows altogether and move their families to big mansions in Beverly Hills, complete with indoor plumbing and cement ponds? There is very little evidence for this hypothesis at the moment, but we’re going to go ahead and say yes, this is precisely what is happening. You heard it here first.

As for last night’s show, yeah, well, here you go:

Jared Hamman def. Po’ai Suganuma via TKO (strikes) at 2:34 of round 1
Fabricio Camoes def. Sammy Morgan via submission (rear naked choke) at 0:47 of round 1
Cyrille Dibate def. Jaime Fletcher via unanimous decision
Rosi Sexton def. Debi Purcell via split decision
Ray Lizama def. Keith Berry via TKO (strikes) at 2:15 of round 2
Katrina Alendale def. Melanie La’Croix via unanimous decision
Roberto Vargas def. Ralph Lopez via split decision
Jesse Brock def. Josh Rave via unanimous decision
Lucas Gumaza def. Kenny Johnson via split decision
David “Tarzan” Douglas def. William Jacobson via TKO (corner stoppage) at 1:12 of round 1

- The fight poster for Dream.6 is pretty bad-ass. (SubFighter Forum)

- Talking Rampage, ShoXC, GSP and more on MMA Rated Radio. (MMA Rated)

- Forrest Griffin and Mac Danzig land acting gigs. (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Kenny Florian’s younger brother set to make amateur debut. (Fightline)

- UFC 83 DVD outsells Boston Celtics and Ric Flair, kind of. (MMA Payout)

- A little old school Matt Hughes-Dennis Hallman action. Real old school. (MMA Scraps)

- It’s Beer O’Clock, are you properly outfitted? (Holy Taco)

- Four steps to becoming a rich jerk. (Wall Street Fighter)

- “Iron Man” deleted scenes feature hot girls, not so much Iron Man. (Screen Junkies)

If there’s a worse sign for an MMA company than canceling a scheduled event just over a month out, we don’t want to know about it. Neither does Elite XC. The Fight Network is reporting that the organization has canceled their planned September 20 event in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not postponed. Not rescheduled. Straight-up canceled. They still have plans for an October 4 show on CBS, so this is far from a death knell for Elite XC, but it’s not something to celebrate, either.

There’s no official word just yet on exactly why the event is being canceled, but it would seem to be at least partially related to their troubles putting together the somewhat baffling Jake Shields-John Alessio bout. After all the hype around Shields on the last CBS show, it didn’t seem to make much sense to give John Alessio a crack at his title. Add to that the fact that Alessio said the fight was too soon for him to reasonably take, and what you have is a non-bout and a non-event.

Poor Elite XC. Maybe this is the best thing for them at the moment. Their fighter stable is already a little thin, and when you try to stage a show every month you only make things more difficult. Focusing all their efforts on the October 4 CBS show is probably the best idea.

Who knows, maybe this will even improve the chances of Elite XC allowing Shields to take on Matt Lindland in Affliction. Don’t hold your breath, though. We worry about you when you do that.

With the recent bookings of bouts between Martin Kampmann and Nate Marquardt as well as Jason Day vs. Jason Lambert, the lineup for UFC 88: Breakthrough (September 6th, Atlanta) is now complete. Here’s what we’re looking at:

MAIN CARD
Chuck Liddell vs. Rashad Evans (light-heavyweights)
Rich Franklin vs. Matt Hamill (light-heavyweights)
Karo Parisyan vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida (welterweights)
Dan Henderson vs. Rousimar Palhares (middleweights)
Martin Kampmann vs. Nate Marquardt (middleweights)

UNDERCARD
Thiago Tavares vs. Kurt Pellegrino (lightweights)
Tim Boetsch vs. James Lee (light-heavyweights)
Dong Hyun Kim vs. Matt Brown (welterweights)
Roan Carneiro vs. Ryo Chonan (welterweights)
Jason Lambert vs. Jason Day (middleweights)

So, no title match, and no highly-touted new faces to watch out for. But we do get to see a couple fighters who were victorious in their Octagon debuts try to survive against much stiffer competition. Rousimar Palhares, who scored UFC 84′s Submission of the Night bonus for his armbar of Ivan Salaverry, will make a huge competitive leap when he takes on Dan Henderson. Similarly, Shooto/Cage Force vet Yoshiyuki Yoshida — who also scored a first-round submission win at UFC 84, at the expense of Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver — will have to step up his game against Karo Parisyan. It’s hard to get excited about the main event, which seems like it was only set up to get Chuck Liddell back in title contention, but Rich Franklin’s return to light-heavyweight against Matt Hamill could be a promising scrap.

Fun fact: Besides Matt Brown and Dong Hyun Kim (who will be meeting in a welterweight bout) everybody on the undercard is coming off of a loss. And then there’s this bit of trivia from Dong Hyun Kim’s Wikipedia page: “Kim’s post-game interview was grossly mistranslated by his translator following the UFC 84 bout. He was also the 2nd Korean fighter to ever fight in the UFC (the first being Joe Son) and the first to actually win.”

Also: The official mini-site for UFC 88 is open for business.

Stephanie Lum of Honolulu’s NBC affiliate KHNL 8 got a lot more than she bargained for when she made a visit to BJ Penn’s gym in Hilo for a segment called “Job Swap.” Penn greeted Lum by slamming her into the cage then taking her to the mat. Later, she was arm-barred into submission by a young boy who just wanted to “see what she was like.” (Or was that “feel what she was like”? Either way, awesome.) As local news fluff pieces go, it’s a success. Though technically, if they were really swapping jobs, wouldn’t BJ be trading puns back in the studio with Howard Dashefsky?

(Props: Bloody Elbow)

(Clearly, this man has much to teach us all.)

Let’s not kid ourselves, the San Francisco 49ers suck. No disrespect, Niners fans, but you know it’s true. They haven’t had a winning season since 2002 and they won just five games last year. They are, in a word, shitty. So what do you do to right the ship if you’re head coach Mike Nolan? Simple, you call on “El Guapo” to help you out.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, Bas Rutten dropped by 49ers training camp to give a motivational speech about how not to be a total pussy:

Rutten, 43, was born in the Netherlands and joked that he doesn’t understand a thing about football unless his friends are there to explain the rules.

“Fighting is easy to understand,” Rutten said. “You just hit the guy as hard as you can.”

But at the invitation of Coach Mike Nolan, the fighter said he planned to teach the 49ers a philosophy he considers universal to all sports.

“My message to them is about how to mentally deal with things,” Rutten said. “Some of what I talk about will be conditioning of the body, but my belief is that everything starts with the mind. You win a fight not with your strength but with your mind.”

Apparently Rutten isn’t the only non-traditional motivational speaker to visit the Niners lately. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer gave a talk to the team about how to screw with the press. We don’t know exactly what Bas had to say to the them, but I think it’s safe to assume that we’ll see way more liver shots from the 49ers this year. You can’t argue with what works.

(Props: Steve Cofield)

It’s official: Vitor Belfort will not face Matt Lindland at Affliction: Day of Reckoning on October 11. The hand he broke on Terry Martin’s face won’t be healed in time, though Affliction VP Tom Atencio sounds just a little suspicious of the whole thing in his remarks to MMA Weekly:

“Vitor is out, I spoke with him I think yesterday and he told me,” said Atencio. “Actually, it was on Tuesday we had a conversation for about an hour or so, and yeah, I guess he broke his hand in two places is what he told me and he had been having 2, 3 and 4 opinions on it. He finally got the opinion that he wanted I guess and they told him to step out for a while.”

This might be just an accident of poor phrasing, but Atencio seems to be suggesting that Belfort went looking for a doctor who would tell him not to fight. That hardly sounds like “The Phenom,” who told a slightly different tale to Tatame:

“Man, I’m doing physiotherapy now and won’t be able to fight at October 11th, I wanna fight with 100%, so I’ll be at the next show to fight for the title”

Belfort also said that he expects to face the winner of Matt Lindland vs. TBA for the currently non-existent middleweight title in Affliction’s third event. Naturally, Atencio cast doubt on that too, saying that the proposed Belfort-Lindland bout would not have been for a title because “it didn’t make too much sense.” He said they may eventually decide to make it a title bout, but for now the task at hand is finding an opponent for Lindland, and guess whose name keeps coming up? Jake freakin’ Shields.

(Cain Velasquez: Don’t be scared, homey. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

— The arraignment of Quinton Jackson (which was supposed to take place today) has been postponed pending further investigation. According to an Orange County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson, “The district attorney’s office is responsible for filing charges and that case is still under investigation based on some new evidence that has been discovered…The recommendations of the police are taken into consideration, but it could be more charges or less charges, depending on what the evidence reports.”

— The Ultimate Fighter 7 winner Amir Sadollah will be back in the Octagon within the next couple months, against a yet-unnamed opponent. He’s moved from Virginia to Las Vegas to train with his old coach Forrest Griffin, and there’s no truth to the rumors of him dropping to welterweight.

— If his knee heals according to schedule, Matt Hughes should be settling his grudge with Matt Serra in January or February.

— The UFC is having a lot of trouble finding an opponent for Cain Velasquez. As Bloody Elbow’s Mchael Rome puts it, “[Velasquez] is very good, but he has no name value yet, so fighters don’t see any upside in facing him.”

— Brock Lesnar is subjected to some pretty dumb questions by the New York Times‘s Freakonomics blog; our own Ben Fowlkes gets a shout-out.

(Props: “Captain Insano X” on the UG)

Though he was supposed to fight at Gladiator Challenge two days ago, Dan “Stevia Soldier” Quinn‘s long-awaited match with Dave Huckaba has been pushed back to September 7th. No worries — that just means he has another month to hype the fight. Though he looks to be in solid physical shape in this video shot last week, Quinn’s narrative is as disjointed (and bizarrely compelling) as ever, as he suggests the use of jackets that only fighters can wear, laments the plight of the “sistas,” orders his fat-ass former teammate Cedric Figaro to get on Stevia immediately, briefly reveals a phobia about axle grease, and re-enacts the famous scene at Juanita’s as an action movie. Quinn’s actually been quite prolific with the video-making lately; he’s recorded four more clips since this one, and they can all be seen here.

Bonus: After the jump, Stevia-hater Dave Huckaba responds to Quinn’s recent videos, and manages to use the word “okay” as much as Dan does.

The good people at famed gentleman’s magazine Playboy have an interview with UFC prez Dana White in their September issue (which drops Friday, August 15) and one of the more interesting nuggets to come out of it are White’s remarks on what torpedoed the HBO deal:

“I pulled the plug at the 23rd hour. HBO was pi**ed off… I would have had to sell out, literally. They would have owned the UFC… I took meetings with HBO’s boxing guys. I’ll tell you, if I had to hear one more time about how many fu**ing Emmys they had won, I was going to dive out the window. I said ‘You won a bunch of Emmys, but I’m kicking your a** on pay-per-view.”

Awesome. Do I believe Dana White actually said that to HBO executives? Not really, but it’s still a good story. As much as people criticized him for not making the HBO deal happen, you have to respect his desire to maintain his autonomy, even if it means not blowing up big time with HBO’s Emmy factory.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dana White interview if he didn’t bash Tito Ortiz:

(Props: MMA Scraps)

When we wrote about American judoka Ryan Reser and his plea for more love from MMA fans, some of you responded with disappointment that there wasn’t a lot of judo on tap during NBC’s Olympic coverage. Here’s a clip courtesy of Korean TV and, no matter what Reser says, I don’t see it catching on the way MMA did. Maybe it’s just me, but the most exciting part of these clips is the announcers losing their minds during the brief bursts of action. Anyway, you people said you wanted to see it. So soak it up, jerks.

From Yahoo! Sports via Bloody Elbow:

“[Fedor Emelianenko is] not the best pound-for-pound fighter, not even close, but he’s one of the four or five best heavyweights…But we all have to thank him for getting rid of Tim Sylvia. He’d been stinking out the joint the last couple of years and Fedor did everyone a favor by beating him so easily and getting rid of him.”

Daaaaaaamn! You may remember that Dana had previously called Fedor a farce who wasn’t a top five heavyweight, but admitted that his opinion was changed after Affliction: Banned because “Tim Sylvia was a real opponent.” Despite Sylvia’s stinkiness, beating him made Fedor a top-fiver in Dana’s eyes. The optimist in me wonders if Dana is making this mild public praise because hosting a Randy vs. Fedor fight in the UFC is still a possibility, and he doesn’t want the last thing fans hear him say about Emelianenko to be “this dude’s a joke.” If the fight did come together, I wonder what White would say about him then?

Luckily, we already know that Dana’s words mean little to Fedor — particularly because he doesn’t consider himself to be the best pound-for-pound fighter either:

We’ve touched on Lee Murray’s Tito-stomping, depot-robbing exploits in the past, but ESPN dug a little deeper on Tuesday’s episode of E:60, presenting the full story of Murray’s journey from MMA fighter to legendary thief. Part one is above, part two is below; fist bump to MMA Mania.

Related: SI’s story on Murray going to film

As we told you earlier this week, Matt Hughes was not at all impressed with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 87. His blog post about how boring he found the GSP-Fitch fight seemed laced with no small amount of jealousy. That’s somewhat understandable. A guy beats your ass twice, you may have some ill feelings towards him. But now Hughes is trying to claim that after GSP’s fight with Fitch (which Hughes walked out of halfway through) he does not deserve to be mentioned in the pound-for-pound debate. Has anyone told Hughes yet that GSP actually won that fight?

The hilarious thing is that Hughes also says B.J. Penn deserves to be considered among the best pound-for-pound. As in, the same B.J. Penn who Hughes (and GSP) beat. But GSP, who beat Hughes twice, convincingly, gets knocked out of the running for beating a guy who is ranked above Hughes in just about every welterweight top ten list in existence. You following this?

If only Hughes could bring himself to admit that, while he is a legend of the sport who was great in his time, that time is now over and St. Pierre is on top. Is that so hard? Probably, yeah. Especially for a guy like Hughes, whose stubborn unwillingness to believe that anyone could possibly be better than him has served him well in the past. Still, he’s got to let it go. Watching a former champ snipe at the guy who supplanted him is just sad. If Hughes really thought that GSP wasn’t any good, you know what he’d probably do? Beat him. I guess when that’s out of the question you settle for insults.

(Props: Yahoo’s Steve Cofield)

Chris Leben: Evolution of an Icon (Episode 5) – Watch more free videos

When Chris Leben first showed up to a fight with a tattoo of a samurai holding a severed head sprawling across his back, it seemed like he had finally found something to believe in. In this edition of “Chris Leben: Evolution of an Icon” he adds a different belief system to a different part of his body. Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘What could possibly make Chris Leben want a tattoo of the Buddha when nothing about his life or personal ethos seems to be in keeping with Buddhism?’

Fair question, but what you probably don’t know is that traditional Buddhism actually puts a lot of emphasis on coming in smelling like booze and dirty strippers and still putting the stamp on kids. Plus it looks cool, and nothing’s more American than co-opting the religious symbols of other cultures as ornamentation.

Bisping better be worried now. If he gets hit with Leben’s Buddha arm, it’s lights out.

How hard is it for EliteXC to find opponents worthy of going up against welterweight champ Jake Shields? This hard:

Darrick: You just found out that you will be defending your title against John Alessio in about five weeks. What are your thoughts about this match?

Jake: I’m excited to be back at it. I trained all year without getting to fight until July, so I’m ready. I think John will be a good fight, he has good all-around skills and he always brings it. I’m sure he’ll be ready.

Yep, Jake Shields, the #3 welterweight in the world, who recently choked out top ten fighter Nick Thompson in 63 seconds, will next face John Alessio, a UFC castoff who went 0-3 in the Octagon before building up a respectable (though not stellar) 5-2 record in the WEC. Alessio has fallen short every time he’s gone up against high-grade competition — Carlos Condit, Thiago Alves, Diego Sanchez, a recent DQ loss to Brock Larson — so its surprising that he’d be given an immediate title shot after being picked up by EliteXC. But the match illustrates the dearth of talent in their welterweight class; Shields is in a holding pattern right now, waiting for challenges to materialize.

By the way, Sherdog just posted a strange little article about Shields watching UFC 87 at a friend’s house and paying close attention to the GSP vs. Fitch fight; the implied point of the piece was that he really, really, wants to be there. And we’ll probably never know the true extent of Shields’s abilities until he is.

(Props: FiveOuncesofPain)

From The Adam Carolla Show via MMA Mania:

I’d love for the UFC to step up and make the fight [with Fedor Emelianenko] happen. It has the potential to be the biggest mixed martial arts fight to date…It has the potential to do 700,000+ pay-per-view buys which is a helluva lotta money. I think 6-10 [million should be the salary] for each of us and they’re still gonna make a boatload of money on top of that.

Generally speaking, cable operators take half of the revenue for PPV events, which would mean that the UFC gets $22.495 per buyer these days. Though it’s been suggested that the UFC has been able to work out a slightly better deal with its distributors, multiplying that figure by Randy’s estimate of 700,000 buys would mean that the UFC would take in about $15,746,500 from a PPV card headlined by Couture vs. Emelianenko. “Boatload” may not be the right word if you’re taking at least $12,000,000 off the top to pay the headliners. Pay Randy and Fedor $8 million apiece or more, and the UFC’s profit from the broadcast is eliminated altogether. Of course, the equation changes completely if the fight does Liddell/Ortiz-caliber numbers, but its hard to predict if Couture vs. Emelianenko will mobilize the casual UFC fan like UFC 66‘s grudge match did.

In other words, there’s no way the UFC is going to cave to Couture’s asking price. I’d imagine they’re still interested in negotiating — if for no other reason than to take Affliction’s hope of a big-drawing superfight away from them — but they won’t agree to a situation where they’re only breaking even financially. Just as importantly, paying headliners that much money for a single fight sets a precedent that could have even more of their contracted fighters giving them grief about “respect.” We just hope the two sides can eventually come to terms, because if the UFC can’t afford to put this fight on, it’s doubtful that anybody else can.

(TapouT MMA Cage Style Gloves, courtesy of GroundAndPound.)

Somehow, our Rampage caption contest became a fierce two-way horse race between “I bet you my next fight don’t go to no decision. I bet my whole purse, and this big dude on it!” and “disgruntled postal worker on a Rampage? Total cliche.” But in the end, Markdog’s TUF 7 reference picked up a full 43% of your votes, which means MARKDOG IS OUR BIG WINNER!

So Markdog: Please send your mailing address to feedback@cagepotato.com (with size preference: regular or large) and we’ll get those TapouT cage gloves right out to you. Apologies to Charles Fuller — we know how bad you wanted them. Special thanks to GroundandPound.com for providing the gloves, and thanks to everyone who wasn’t an insufferable prick during this contest. I’ve disabled comments on this one because, frankly, I’m tired of your bullshit.

This video of BJ Penn’s experience at UFC 87 (courtesy of BJPenn.com, via Yahoo!) confirms a few things that I’ve long suspected: 1) BJ Penn has more fun than I do, 2) Jesse Ventura (seen sitting stone-faced next to Penn at one point) does not, and 3) everyone in the world — including “Rampage” Jackson — thinks they do a good Hulk Hogan impression, but most of them are wrong.

Where things really start to get interesting here is when Penn enters the Octagon to confront Georges St. Pierre about their superfight. You can hear Dana White asking Penn to let GSP “have his moment here real quick,” and you can also hear the boos from the crowd when Penn steps up to the mic. No matter, Nick Swardson thinks he’s the best fighter in the world, and that’s enough for me.

Below, check out BJ hitting the town with Bruce Buffer, who declares Jon Fitch to be “a tough son of a bitch.” You gotta love the Buff.

Find more videos like this on BJPENN.COM

(Tito and Jenna, still trying to solve that age-old argument about which is the more lucrative industry: fighting or screwing?)

Here’s what you know going into contract negotiations with Tito Ortiz: he is going to insist that you pay him waaaay more than he’s actually worth, and he will genuinely believe that it’s justified. That’s what Affliction is finding out. After claiming he had a “ground-breaking record” contract in the works only to have his statement directly contradicted by Affliction COO Michael Cohen, Ortiz is now actually said to be in negotiations with Affliction, though it isn’t going well.

Affliction VP Tom Atencio told MMA Weekly, “We’ve got a contract, and it’s just not feasible.”

I think we can untangle that odd syntax enough to infer that what he means is Ortiz has told them how much money he wants and it’s absolutely ridiculous. Color me surprised. The problem is that Ortiz has an inflated sense of what he can bring to an MMA organization at this point. For example, he claims that he’ll do a guaranteed 500,000 pay-per-view buys for Affliction. This is what’s known as “crazy talk.”

Ortiz isn’t that big a star anymore. He only thinks he is. MMA fans have seen him limp along the last few years with victories over an over-the-hill Ken Shamrock and his more recent loss to Lyoto Machida, so it isn’t likely that too many of the hardcore faithful are dying to see “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” back in action.

If his reasoning is that fans of “The Apprentice” are going to plop down forty bucks to see him fight “Babalu” Sobral (who most of them have probably never heard of) in Affliction (an organization they may or may not be aware of), then he’s overestimating the reality TV crowd’s attention span. They’ve forgotten him in favor of Brooke Hogan and Mr. Boston by now.

When the people who paid Matt Lindland $300,000 and Tim Sylvia $800,000 think your expectations are “not feasible,” you must really be off the mark.

(Babalu’s mugshot, because why not.)

For the second time in the organization’s history, Strikeforce will host an MMA event in the posh and jiggly confines of the Playboy Mansion. According to a newly distributed press release, the fight club will return to Beverly Hills on September 20th for a ten-bout card that will be headlined by a light heavyweight title match between Strikeforce champion Bobby Southworth (who last defended his belt in a five-round snoozer with Anthony Ruiz in June) and challenger Renato “Babalu” Sobral, who recently defeated Mike Whitehead via decision at Affliction: Banned. Said Sobral: “He is the protector and I am the hunter. I am already in shape and prepared to take it from him. I want to be the new Strikeforce world champion and if I could become champion while fighting at a venue like the Playboy Mansion, that would make a good win even better.”

Also on the card is Josh “The Punk” Thomson defending his lightweight scrap against an opponent to be announced later, and a middleweight feature between highly regarded Pancrase/PRIDE/Sengoku vet Kazuo Misaki and Joe “Diesel” Riggs (whose last Strikeforce appearance didn’t go so well). And if that weren’t enough to convince you:

Some classic MMA goodness from the ’90s: First off is Andrei Arlovski’s unsuccessful pro MMA debut against Viacheslav Datsik (above), which went down in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the M-1 MFC World Championship on 4/9/1999; props to MMA Fight Girls for digging up the video. Fight starts at the 2:11 mark, and the Pitbull gets put to sleep about six minutes later. Arlovski would return to the cage a year later at the M-1 MFC European Championship, where he smoked Michael Tielrooy and Roman Zentsoz in a four-man bracket and caught the attention of the UFC.

Below is an absolutely insane video of Absolute Fighting Championship 1, a one-day, 32-man vale tudo tournament — yes, 32-man tournament — that took place in Moscow on 9/25/1995. Enormous future PRIDE fighter Ricardo “The Mutant” Morais made his MMA debut that day, stopping four opponents via strikes (all in less than two minutes apiece), before choking out Mikhail Illoukhine in the final. I guarantee it’ll be the most hardcore thing you see all week.

Ben Rothwell confirmed today that he will face Pedro Rizzo on the next Affliction show in Las Vegas on October 11. The bout has been officially signed, Rothwell told CagePotato.com, though it was agreed to on separate terms from his original contract, which means he will be taking a pay cut for this fight but still has two more fights at the previous rate on his existing contract with Affliction.

“[Agent] Monte [Cox] turned down their original offer for this fight, so that’s why he said none of his guys would be fighting on the show. Then they came back with another offer that was better, so we agreed to it,” Rothwell said.

Fighting a legend of the sport like Rizzo is something Rothwell says he’s ambivalent about, however.

“With Pedro, I not only respect his abilities, I watched him as a kid just getting into this sport. He’s one of the most down-to-earth, nicest guys in this sport, so on that level I don’t really want to fight him. But the fighter in me is amped for this. I’m going to go out there and do what I didn’t do against Andrei Arlovski.”

Rothwell said that he spoke with Rizzo at their first Affliction show and they both sensed that they may face each other next.

“I said I was going to ask for Buentello,” said Rothwell. “Then he said he was going to ask for Buentello. And Tim [Sylvia] also asked for Buentello.”

Rothwell criticized a report to the effect that he might face K-1 kickboxer “Mighty Mo” Siliga as completely false, adding that Siliga hadn’t ever been mentioned as a potential opponent.

In this video from RawVegas.tv, Russian stoic philosopher Fedor Emelianenko drops some knowledge regarding the issues of the day, including his thoughts on Randy Couture and his somewhat surprising admission that he is impressed by Brock Lesnar. My personal favorite is when he responds to Dana White’s earlier criticism of him by remarking that the UFC president’s comments are on his own conscience and he’s the one who will have to live with them. These are the moments that make me wonder if Fedor isn’t some being sent from another world in order to teach us all to be kinder to one another. Then I rewatch his bout with Tim Sylvia and I am forced to abandon that theory.

(St. Pierre wants to “do it” — just not right away. Video props to Bloody Elbow.)

In an article written for RDS.ca titled “Jon Fitch est un Terminator” (and translated here by Fightline.com), Georges St. Pierre says he may not return to action until next year:

Many state that my next opponent should be BJ Penn. Nothing has obviously been signed yet, but he is my number one challenger. I believe he deserves a chance to challenge me for my title, but we’ll see what happens on that matter in the next few weeks…

On my end, however, I don’t know if I’ll be stepping back into the Octagon before 2009. I’ve fought four times in the last 12 months. I therefore need some rest. I like the life I lead, but I sometimes need to relax. It’s not the fight as such that’s exhausting; it’s all the preparation that comes with it. I’ve made so many sacrifices to prepare myself. During training camps, I practically do not live anymore. It’s therefore on a psychological level that I need to recharge.

So unless Dana White can bribe/threaten him into changing his mind, the UFC’s New Year’s show may be down one superfight. But no matter when the inevitable meeting goes down, it’s obvious that Penn wants it a hell of a lot more than St. Pierre does. If you watched the end of UFC 87 (video above), you probably picked up on the different vibes displayed by Penn (with his shrill cries of “LET’S DO IT GEORGES, YOU WANNA DO IT!?”) and GSP (who seemingly wants to fight Penn as much as anyone else who “deserve a shot”).

Only 196 entries, guys? Seriously? It would have killed you to break 200?

On the real, though, the response to this one was mind-blowing. There’s no way we can just pick one winner, so we’ll call out our 10 favorites, and leave it up to you. Here are the finalists:

devilmonkey: We all have our cross to bear.

Ouch! That hurts: “and God, why in my time of troubles were there only one set of footprints in the Chili’s?”

Horror Fighter: “Lethal Weapon 5: This Time It’s Different Because the White Guy’s the Old One and the Black Guy’s the Crazy One.” (Ed. note: I chopped off the first half of this entry in the interest of brevity. You understand.)

Matt Herpes: This is what happens when you don’t put Rampage’s dressing on the side.

Savalas: 20 minutes later, the man that Rampage body-slammed tragically lost his food-baby.

baba: After his twelfth Awesome Blossom, Rampage has trouble distinguishing between his steel chain necklace and the waitstaff.

killa: okay…you can have the booth

Dollar Hot Dogs: disgruntled postal worker on a Rampage? Total cliche.

Markdog: “I bet you my next fight don’t go to no decision. I bet my whole purse, and this big dude on it!”

Charles Fuller: man i want those gloves. (Ed note: If you don’t think any of the above finalists are funny, feel free to vote for this one as a form of protest.)

Do your voting in the poll over there on the right, and we’ll announce the winner of those badass TapouT cage gloves (courtesy of GroundAndPound.com) this time tomorrow.

(To the cameraman’s amazement, suggesting she pour water on her boobs actually worked.)

Thanks to his chummy relationship with Octagon girl Arianny Celeste, MMA Rated’s Ariel Helwani got the scoop on what’s going on between Roger Huerta and his former “gal pal” (I read that phrase in Us Weekly while waiting in line at the supermarket and have been dying to use it). It sounds like Roger has done screwed things up somehow:

AH: What did you think of Roger Huerta’s performance against Kenny Florian?

AC: It was OK.

AH: And what about the rumors that you had falling out with Roger. Are those true?

AC: I wish the best for everybody including him but we are no longer on speaking terms. We are no longer friends.

AH: Wow. What happened?

AC: No comment.

AH: Why are you not on speaking terms?

AC: No comment

AH: Some have speculated that Roger and (“That 70′s Show” star) Laura Prepon have a budding relationship. What are your thoughts on that?

AC: I don’t know anything about that.

At the risk of leaning toward celebrity relationship gossip blog territory, I have to admit this makes me wonder. No longer on speaking terms? That doesn’t sound like your average break-up language, even if she wishes “the best for everyone, including him” — which is the type of boilerplate phrase that is certainly not meant to convey any sort of truth. Maybe all the fame and attention has gone to Huerta’s head? That explanation would certainly jive with his outrageous contract demands. At least this means that Arianny is back on the market. Maybe you should give her a call. I think she’d really like you if she got to know you.

(A face made for TV.)

When Kenny Florian told us in our exclusive interview that he hoped to get ESPN’s internet show “MMA Live” onto actual TV soon, we naturally assumed it was just one of those things you say without really meaning it. Kind of like, ‘We should get together for lunch some time’ or ‘I love you.’ But from the sound of it they might really be close to landing a TV slot for the show on one of the ESPN’s:

“I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, but soon,” Florian said. “The next couple of months, we’re hoping to get [MMA Live] on ESPN or ESPN 2, and the sponsors are getting on board as we speak, so we should have a deal very, very soon. We’re all very pumped.”

In all seriousness, we really hope this works out. Not only is it a great step towards more coverage for MMA, but Florian is one of the sport’s greatest ambassadors. You put his suburban Boston mug on TV with the words ‘MMA Fighter’ below them and suddenly it gets a lot harder to call the sport human cockfighting fit only for tattooed bar bouncers. Plus, doesn’t the world deserve to hear about his hellbows?

(Photo taken last night, courtesy of MMA Rated.)

From MMA Payout:

MMAPayout.com has learned that Couture and Emelianenko, along with their respective management teams, have spent a great deal of time together in Los Angeles this week. The purpose of the informal summit is not entirely clear, but one logical goal of the meetings could be the development of a collective strategy moving forward in order to insure that [their] fight takes place, sooner rather than later.

Adding intrigue to the meetings are recent statements from both parties, as well as the UFC, publicly indicating a willingness to discuss resolving their respective differences in order to have the fight take place in the Octagon, perhaps by the end of the year [Ed. note: Well, no]. Speculation within the industry pegs the pay-per-view expectations for the fight around one million buys if promoted by the UFC, which combined with what has become an expensive and protracted legal battle, give both sides ample motivation to come to an agreement.

MMA Rated got visual confirmation of last night’s Randy/Fedor bro-hang, while Sherdog added the following:

Couture, Emelianenko, and their representatives spent “significant” time together, as they met for breakfast and dinner, [a] source said. They were also involved in a photo shoot together, reports the source. While speculation around a future fight promoted by Affliction seems certain to swirl, the source indicated the upstart promotion was not behind the aforementioned shoot.

I wouldn’t read too much into this. Couture and Emelianenko have been extremely friendly in the past, and this could just be a case of two buddies sharing a few meals, hitting the clubs, stocking up on Ed Hardy tees, and laughing about what a fairy Tim Sylvia is.

(Props: MMA Glory via MMA Linker. Apologies for the poor quality.)

The most unsung performance from UFC 87 was that of Jon Jones, the Octagon newbie who began fighting professionally in April. Though Jones’s decision win against Andre Gusmao didn’t make the pay-per-view broadcast, those who saw it were treated to one of the wildest offensive displays in recent memory. Check out the video above, where Jones pulls out every trick in his whoopass bag, including the sick takedown at the video’s 2:14 mark, a spinning elbow at 7:11, a spinning backfist at 7:17, more backfists at 11:54 and 13:05, and the switch-leg flying knee at 16:46. (And of course all those knees to the groin.) Sloppy? Absolutely. But with his wrestling prowess, aggressiveness, and creativity, he could eventually develop into a truly scary fighter.

And also, the opening Mike Goldberg/Joe Rogan exchange at 0:21-0:34? Instant classic.