(His mouthpiece says "DEATH." His shorts say "CONDOM DEPOT." Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

With Gegard Mousasi and Vitor Belfort‘s weight-related bitch-fest producing nothing positive, Affliction has scrapped the match and moved on. MMA Weekly has now confirmed that Mousasi will be instead be taking on #6-ranked light-heavyweight Renato "Babalu" Sobral at Affliction’s third MMA event (August 1st; Anaheim, California). Not exactly an easy first fight at light-heavyweight for the Young Vagabond, but he’s already 1-0 in the highly competitive Super Hulk division, so don’t count him out. At any rate, the fight against Babalu should tell us a lot about how Mousasi will fare as 205-pounder.

(Please, guys, there are kids watching. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

"I believe I won that fight. I’ll stand behind that for the rest of my life. On the feet, it’s clear I dominated the fight. I didn’t just win, I dominated on the feet. I did not get hit flush on the face or the body one time the whole fight. Dan took me down on several occasions, most of which I was able to stand back up. While I was on the ground, he was not capable of mounting any kind of damage…He had to resort to kneeing me on the back of my thigh because he had no other option and didn’t know what else to do…

Couple that with the fact I was head-butted twice and poked in the eye once. I would think that maybe the first one was incidental. I would assume that after you have a couple head-butts and then you poke me in the eye, perhaps as a referee you’d think about taking away a point. I don’t see how a judge should give him that decision."
— Rich Franklin, still salty about his split-decision loss to Dan Henderson at UFC 93.

(Props: MMA Payout)

Despite his decision victory over Dan Miller at UFC 98, Chael Sonnen must be a little worried about getting dropped from the UFC again because he decided to dedicate a little video time to kissing as much of Dana White’s ass as he can possibly get his lips on inside of four and a half minutes.  Seriously, does Sonnen think a video asserting his almost cult-like loyalty to the UFC is going to save his ass if he loses a couple fights?  Because it won’t, dude.  Dana will still drop you like a bad Pinkberry if it seems convenient.

It’s one thing to thank your employer for the paycheck, but Sonnen stops just short of declaring himself an indentured servant to the UFC.  The fact that they’ve already fired him once and will almost certainly do it again at some point in the future?  Doesn’t even matter to Sonnen, because that cell phone in his pocket and soda in his fridge wouldn’t even be there if not for the genius of Dana White.  If only the UFC prez would hurry up and write that book on business that Chael can’t wait to read.  Maybe somebody should tell him that Warren Buffett kind of already has written a book on business.  On second thought, nah, let’s leave him with his illusions.

Former Playboy model turned fighter LaTasha Marzolla won her MMA debut this weekend in Las Vegas, beating on Christy Tada until Tada’s corner called a stop to it after one round at Saturday night’s Tuff-N-Uff event.  Guess you do learn a thing or two being best buds with Gina Carano.  As you can see, Marzolla isn’t built like the typical female MMA fighter (NSFW photographic evidence here) but she’s still not worried about getting her pretty face smashed in, much to the surprise of Steve Cofield, who had her on his radio show last week.  Marzolla brought along her Xtreme Couture trainer, Shawn Tompkins, and Cofield proved that he really knows women, or at least how to make broad generalizations about what’s important to them with this write-up:

“It takes a unique woman to want to compete in mixed martial arts. So much of a female’s self-esteem is based on looks, to risk having your face disfigured takes some guts.”

Real nice, Cofield.  Everybody remember to tune in to next week’s show to find out what is universally important to your demographic.  After the jump, video of Marzolla from the bizarrely cheesy movie “Ring Girls” for you to watch while you contemplate whether Marzolla’s entrance into MMA means she’s a threat to steal Carano’s unofficial title of ‘hottest female fighter.’

(Be sure to click the "HQ" button for higher quality.)

With my girlfriend and dog out of town this weekend, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. So, I decided to eff around with iMovie and put together the above highlight reel of Kazushi Sakuraba‘s most brutal beatings. (Has there ever been a fighter whose victories were so beautiful and whose defeats were so ugly?) I’m no Genghis Con, and most of the footage was taken from low-quality YouTube clips to begin with, but let me know what you think, and if you have any Sakuraba fans in your life, please pass it along.

(BG)

(Come on, man — think of all the good times you had here! Photo courtesy of daylife.com)

UPDATE, 12:35 p.m. ET: Cro Cop is official for UFC 99.

The UFC’s quest for foreign expansion is hitting some spike-strips, with two big-name fighters potentially slipping out of their grasp. First off, despite his blog-post enthusiasm that led everyone to believe he’d be returning to the Octagon at UFC 99, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic still hasn’t signed a contract with the UFC. As Dave Meltzer explains: