Of the four ex-NFL players on the upcoming season of "The Ultimate Fighter," Brendan Schaub’s football stats are the least impressive.  He never played in a game, and never did much more than practice with the Buffalo Bills before being cut.  But the former University of Colorado fullback is probably the most legit fighter of all the ex-ballers.  At 6’4" and 240 pounds, the guy is a former Golden Gloves champion boxer who trains with Shane Carwin and Nate Marquardt in Colorado.  He’s only been a pro fighter for a little over a year, so he’s still pretty green and his 4-0 record includes wins against people you’ve never heard of, like 38-year-old Johnny Curtis in the above video who says, "I’m in good shape," as if someone has just accused him of something. 

Nevertheless, when I talked to him Schaub made a point of distinguishing himself from the other former football players by pointing out that, unlike others, he isn’t in this just because he needs something to do during his retirement:

"The UFC pushes this whole ‘four ex-NFL players’ story. I didn’t play a down in the NFL," Schaub said. "The difference between me and these other football guys is I’m a born fighter. A lot of these guys sound like their NFL career just didn’t work out so now they’re trying MMA. That’s not me. I really am a fighter."

Is that a shot at Marcus Jones?  Sure sounds like it.  We’re not saying Schaub deserves to be a favorite to win the show, especially with guys like Roy Nelson in the way, but at the very least he’s got serious future potential.  Check out more video evidence after the jump.

(Props to CagePotato reader "Curtis Sample" for sending in a picture of his girlfriend.)

Good times this week, people. It seems we still have a few more 5/7ths of the Current UFC Hall of Fame t-shirts collecting dust in a storage facility in Los Angeles, so let’s hand ‘em out to some commenters who made us go ha-ha this week. And away we go…

El Famous Burrito on "GSP, Cris Cyborg, Nate Marquardt and More MMA Stars Tapped for 2009 ADCC Tournament":
Gunnar Nelson? Awesome! Will he finally get to avenge his loss to Kip Winger?
[Ed. note: Dude, every time I see that guy's name I think the same thing.]

BPD on "MMA Sponsor of the Day: The Fleshlight":
Your move, Condom Depot.

Dojima on "MMA Sponsor of the Day: The Fleshlight":
that must be one huge paycheck for a guy to say the Fleshlight is a replacement to banging real humans… i always thought masturbation should be the silver-lining in a big storm cloud of failed pick-ups, not a pot of flesh-colored gold at the beginning of a rainbow.

ReDx on "Edith Labelle Says She Was Fired For Being “Sick,” Not Hungover":
I heard Fleshlight is hiring.

If your name has been called and you want a t-shirt, holler at feedback@cagepotato.com with your name, size, and address.

Related: Man Crashes Through Store Front To Steal One Sex Toy. King of Kombat lightweight champ Nick Gonzalez better have a rock-solid alibi.

(Sometimes you play the cards, and sometimes the cards play you. Photo courtesy of FullTiltPoker.)

Mike Swick has confirmed to CagePotato.com that he suffered an injury in training, and has been forced to pull out of his #1 welterweight contender match against Martin Kampmann at UFC 103 (September 19th, Dallas). As Swick explained on Twitter, "I got foot swept while sparring this week and lost my legs. Landed on back of my head and neck and suffered a pretty bad concussion."

Replacing him will be Paul Daley, the well-regarded British striker who was slated to make his Octagon debut on the same card against Brian Foster. As Daley allegedly told our least-favorite tabloid: "I came to the UFC to fight the best, and that’s what I am going to do. Kampmann is on a roll with the UFC, but I will roll over him. Semtex is going to explode onto the UFC’s welterweight scene at UFC 103."

Unfortunately for the UFC, they needed the Swick/Kampmann fight to produce a legitimate contender for Georges St. Pierre. Though GSP has no desire to return to action before January, he could be looking at an even longer layoff as the welterweight contender picture gets sorted out. (Logically, Swick would fight the winner of Kampmann vs. Daley, and the winner of that fight would take on GSP sometime in the spring.) The UFC 103 lineup currently looks like this:

You know what’s great about this behind-the-scenes All Elbows video of "King Mo" Lawal‘s destruction of a hapless Mark Kerr at M-1 Breakthrough?  Everything.  Not only does it mix sharp editing and a sweet soundtrack with backstage footage and an awesome shot of Mo knocking Kerr’s mouthpiece across the ring at the end, but we also get to see just how painfully low-budget M-1′s Kansas City event was.  Check out Mo’s locker room.  That thing would make a convict feel claustrophobic.  It’s so small he has to warm up in the hallway, not that it seems to have hurt his performance any.  Seeing this now really makes me wonder how/if Mark Kerr got warmed up for this fight.  Do you think he just sat in his car with his eyes closed, listening to "Desperado" on the tape deck over and over again until the promoters came out to tell him it was time?

On a completely unrelated note, after the jump watch the sucker punch at the end of last night’s Oregon/Boise State game that got the college football season off to an embarrassing start.  If only Boise State had recruited that nice Anderson Silva boy to play free safety, no one would have dared to try something like that against them.

(‘It’s simple,’ Brett Rogers told his trainers. ‘I’m just going to back Fedor up, grab on to his dreads, and keep kneeing that sucker ’til he falls. What? Why you guys looking all sad all of a sudden? Dawg, you crying?’)

Much like Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida, Fedor Emelianenko has an uncanny ability to evoke horrible game plans from the people he fights.  Mostly it’s because, when you fight someone who seems damn near unbeatable at the time, you have to come up with some way of convincing yourself that you’ve found the one brilliant approach that everyone else missed.  The more people/brilliant approaches he’s already destroyed, the fewer there are still available.  And the good ones tend to go quickly, leaving guys like Brett Rogers to rely on woefully inept plans like this:

“There’s loopholes in everybody’s game, and in his game, the way I see it, he can sometimes get a little sloppy.  He is a patient guy, but when he feels that he has to give, he kind of rushes it a little bit. Just on that, I can kinda set him up for a knockout just by faking an injury or something, just jump in and out his offense a little more than not. Hit and move. Hit and move.”

Yeah, you read that right.  "The Grimm" plans to beat the world’s best heavyweight in part by faking an injury.  And he just announced it to the entire English-speaking world, at least one member of which probably knows enough Russian to pass the word on to Fedor.  Keep an eye on those betting odds.  Something tells me that the +475 line on Rogers is about to change.

(Buy the DVD at shop.history.com.)

Back in May, the History Channel premiered a documentary called How Bruce Lee Changed the World, which covered the life, mysterious death, and lasting legacy of the martial arts superstar and fingerless glove innovator; you can get a taste of it here. Now the flick has been released on DVD, and A&E Home Entertainment was cool enough to give us two copies to give away to our readers. But nothing comes without effort. If you want a copy, think up some clever captions to the photo after the jump, which shows one of Lee’s spiritual descendants greeting his next opponent. Please submit your captions to the comments section below by Tuesday at noon PT. We’ll announce the winners shortly after. Be water, my friends, and good luck…

Find more videos like this on BJPENN.COM
(Sorry, BJ, I couldn’t hear you over Dana’s shirt. Props to CageWriter for the tip.)

As first revealed on BJPenn.com, the UFC lightweight champ will return to action on December 12th at UFC 107 in Memphis. Strangely, the name "Diego Sanchez" wasn’t mentioned in the 40-second video update, though Sherdog reports that Sanchez has at least been offered the fight. UFC 107 is also slated to feature the TUF 10 coaches’ battle between Quinton Jackson and Rashad Evans, and will also reportedly feature Frank Mir vs. Cheick Kongo, and Thiago Alves vs. Paulo Thiago. (I wonder if they can get Paulo Alves to referee that fight?)

But wait a minute, weren’t Penn and Sanchez supposed to headline a third UFC card in November, possibly on a network? "Wait and see boys…if I can pull this off," Dana said at a press conference before UFC 102. Well, maybe he didn’t pull it off. Or maybe the unspecified network in question, like HBO in the past, wanted more control over production than White was willing to give up. At any rate, November 7th is currently looking like an open date on the calendar. You hear that, Strikeforce? November 7th. You think you can get your shit together by then?

Yesterday Sean Salmon probed some of his own dark places in a first-person column for MMA Junkie about some of the ways he has screwed up his life in the past.  One of those ways was just this past June when he fought Allan Weickert in a small promotion in Ohio, and he didn’t quite have his mind right.  Salmon wrote that he was a paid sparring partner for the UK’s Wolfslair team at the time and was worried that he might get hurt in the fight and be unable to return to England and keep earning money in the gym.  So when he found himself caught in an armbar in the second-round, Salmon says that he “defended it (only to prove to myself that he couldn’t get it), and then I put my arm back in to give him the win so that I could return to England, healthy.”

If I need to tell you that this admission didn’t sit well with MMA fans, then you obviously don’t know any MMA fans.  What’s worse, now the Ohio Athletic Commission is looking into the matter and there’s even some suspension talk.  Some people will tell you that what Salmon did – or what he said he did (more on that in a moment) – amounts to “throwing” a fight.  Those people are wrong.  What Salmon did was give up.  He quit.  He failed to do everything he could to win.  While that’s not going to help his already-ailing career any, and while telling everybody about it is going to help even less, it’s not illegal or even unethical.  It’s just sad, and kind of dumb.

(‘Okay, now if you’ve gotten to this point, I’m assuming that either you’ve been slammed after being carried across the cage, or else you were the one who did the slamming. Either way, I’m fresh out of ideas.’)

The UFC has spent the last few weeks reacquiring old talent and signing the even older fighters they already have to new contracts that take them beyond their foreseeable athletic futures, so it only makes sense that they’d also go ahead and get former welterweight champ Matt Hughes to re-up.  On his blog Hughes writes that he signed a new "multi-fight deal with the UFC, which is much like my old contract."  We realize that the phrase "multi-fight" is pretty vague, but something about the way the UFC is stocking up on over-the-hill fighters who have no real chance at making a title run, it just seems suspicious.

Hughes said that he hasn’t been given an opponent or a date for his next fight, but that the UFC mentioned one possibility and it was "a person I’ve never fought before."  That rules out Frank Trigg and Dennis Hallman.  Former coach Pat Miletich is still an option, though.  Just saying.

(Photo courtesy of MTV. Yes, Jake was a two-time bully-beater.)

Yesterday we ran an interview with Jason "Mayhem" Miller, in which the Bully Beatdown host vowed to "beat the piss out of Jake Shields" and "smash him" when they fight, and claimed that he does "everything better than him." Well, word got back to Shields, and he’s not too happy about it. The former EliteXC welterweight champ, who’s no stranger to telling fighters that it is in fact they who suck, had this to say to GracieFighter in response (tip via TheGarv):

(Image courtesy of fleshlightfights.com)

If you spend as much time on the Internet as we do, you’ve probably come across the Fleshlight, a flashlight-shaped masturbatory device with a vagina-like opening at one end. It’s the kind of thing that lonely men might use when normal jerking-off loses it’s sense of mystery and romance. (See also: The Japanese Love Egg).

Aaaaaanyway, the self-proclaimed "#1 Selling Male Sex Toy in the World" is getting into the MMA game now, launching a site called fleshlightfights.com. If you go there, you’ll see that they’re sponsoring King of Kombat 7: Judgement Day, a 10-fight card featuring Ricco Rodriguez, Nick Gonzalez, and Cedric Marks. For $9.99, you can buy an interactive stream of the event on September 29th, that allows you to switch between five different camera angles. And if you order before the 22nd, you’ll receive $10 in "Fleshbucks," which I guess can be redeemed towards a new Fleshlight, should you burn through your first one. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, eh? You’re goddamned right it does. There’s just one problem…

Marcus Jones is one of four ex-NFL players to join season ten of “The Ultimate Fighter” on Spike TV.  A first-round draft pick with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jones had the most prolific pro football career among all the ex-ballers vying a for a spot on the UFC’s heavyweight roster, but he didn’t pick up MMA until after his playing days were over.  Now he’s 36 years old and is 4-1 as a pro, trying to prove to himself and others that he has what it takes to hang with UFC fighters. 

Of all the former NFL players I spoke to for an SI.com feature that will run later today, Jones had the most unusual story about how he first got started in MMA, but he also admitted that it was probably a good thing that it took him so long to get into MMA, even if it put him behind some of his peers in the TUF house.

You were a defensive end with Tampa Bay after playing at the University of North Carolina.  Tell me a little about your path through football and how you got into MMA.

Well, I played football from Pop Warner through high school and then into college.  After college I got drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and I played there my whole career.  I played in the league six years, but they gave me credit for seven because I was on the squad for my last year.

And how did you first start training in MMA?

I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh.

I can’t promise that.

(If you’re feeling a sudden urge to put some money on the dresser, that’s no accident.)

Anyone who’s ever called in to work after a night of hard drinking knows that when you’re in that pitiful, vomiting state on the bathroom floor at six a.m., the line between hungover and sick is severely blurred, as is your entire field of vision.  That’s why, particularly if you call in sick the morning after Super Bowl Sunday or St. Patrick’s Day, everyone knows exactly what kind of sick you really are.  But former UFC Octagon girl Edith Labelle says she really was legitimately sick for UFC 100, and substance abuse had nothing to do with her missing the event.  Either the UFC didn’t believe her or didn’t care, because they canned her anyway:

"After the UFC Expo and weigh-ins [at UFC 100], I went to dinner," she said. "Then I attended some of the pre-parties with some of the UFC management, some of the Octagon girls, some of the fighters. And then I started to feel ill — I wasn’t feeling good. So I decided to go to bed. I really wanted to be in good shape for the next day, obviously. Then I started to feel worse throughout the night and the next day.

(Write on his boots at your own peril. Photo courtesy of urdirt.com.)

After winning a unanimous decision over Andre Winner at the TUF 9 finale to score the season’s lightweight contract, former Team U.K. member Ross Pearson is set to begin his post-TUF career at UFC 105 (November 14th, Manchester). MMA Weekly reports that Pearson will take on Aaron Riley, who’s coming off his own decision win against Shane Nelson at UFC 101.

Team U.K. will be dominating the Manchester card, with welterweight winner James Wilks reportedly fighting Matt Brown, lightweight runner-up Andre Winner booked against Roli Delgado, and coach Michael Bisping slated to fight Denis Kang in the co-headlining bout; the card’s main event hasn’t yet been determined. Elsewhere on the card, Team U.S.A. welterweight nemesis DaMarques Johnson takes on German fighter Peter Sobotta, Paul Kelly faces Dennis Siver — another German fighter; do we detect an Allies vs. Axis theme? — and rising welterweight star Dan Hardy will likely fight Dong Hyun Kim. The event is expected to be broadcast for free on Spike.

Related: "I am going to go for the KO like Hendo!…To me he is not ‘cocky Michael Bisping,’ he is just a sack of flesh and bones across the Octagon that I am waiting to pound on." — Denis Kang

(Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

You know what the most painful part of Chris Tuchscherer‘s loss to Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 102 was? Getting place-kicked in the nuts, obviously. But you know what the second most painful part of that loss was? The fact that he was basically forced to keep fighting by inept Portland officials. While fans figured Tuchscherer’s decision to fight on after the illegal groin-shot was simply because he’s a tough son of a bitch, Chris told a different story to MMA Junkie:

(A little protective gear is not a bad idea if you’re Josh Neer’s designated driver.)

File this under ‘A Little Too Convenient To Be Easily Believed,’ but Sean Sherk is reportedly out of UFC 104 with a shoulder injury.  That’s the UFC event that is scheduled for Los Angeles.  Which is in California.  Dammit, do we have to spell it out for you?  Fine, that’s the state where Sherk tested positive for steroids when he fought Hermes Franca at UFC 73, which led to him being stripped of the lightweight title and launching an appeal that shed light on just how inept the California State Athletic Commission was.  Could it be that maybe someone just couldn’t bring himself to fight in Cali again and risk another "false positive"?

Nah, we’re just messing with you.  He’s probably really hurt.  Otherwise, why would he turn down a chance to get back in the win column against Gleison Tibau, who is exactly the kind of fighter Sherk could wrestle to a decision victory against?  Instead, Josh Neer is stepping in to try and put his own boring decision loss against a superior wrestler behind him.  Both Neer and Tibau are 2-2 in their last four UFC fights, so this has ‘Loser Gets Fired’ written all over it.  Whaddaya say, who’s headed to the bread line after this one?

(After being assured several times that it will not steal his soul or condemn him to hell, Mousasi relaxes his usual prohibitions against graven images.)

For a bad, bad man, Gegard Mousasi sure has a lame, lame nickname.  According to Strikeforce, it’s “The Dreamcatcher,” which, as far as we know, is a woven trinket associated with Native American tribes that is often found hanging off the rear-view mirror of a hippie’s car.  In what way is Mousasi like a dreamcatcher?  We have no freaking clue.  Judging by what he told Cage Writer’s Maggie Hendricks, neither does he:

"My friend came up with it, so blame it on him. I don’t like nicknames, to be honest. I have a lot of nicknames. They called me Kingo in Japan, they called me the Young Vagabond, but that sounds bad, then Soldier of Fortune, now they call me the Dream Catcher. He said that’s a good name. It’s original. I read on the internet that people don’t like the name. [Ed. note: Whoops] I’d rather have no nickname, but with my style, you can’t really put a name on it. A good nickname for me hasn’t come up. I told Strikeforce that I didn’t want to use a nickname, but they put it up anyway."

(Props: Machinemen via CRE)

Some must-see vids to get you through the rest of the afternoon: First up, a fantastic Miguel Torres highlight reel that reminds us why he’s one of the most entertaining fighters in the world. After the jump, the UFC 103 extended trailer re-introduces Vitor Belfort to all the TUF noobs out there, sets up Cro Cop vs. Dos Santos as a meeting between an MMA legend and a dangerous up-and-comer, and plugs the #1 welterweight contender match between Mike Swick and Martin Kampmann. "If Swick’s looking at the GSP fight before me, he’s gonna make a big mistake, ’cause I’m gonna fuck him right up," says Kampmann. Also, the Octagon Girls are not quite ready for prime time.

According to InsideFights.com, Phil Baroni will make his return to the UFC at UFC 106 (November 21st, Las Vegas) against cursed TUF 7 winner Amir Sadollah. It will be Baroni’s first Octagon appearance since his submission loss to Pete Sell at UFC 51. After leaving the UFC in 2005, Baroni competed in PRIDE, Icon Sport, and Strikeforce, among other promotions, going 5-5 as a middleweight, then 3-1 as a welterweight. He most recently dropped a decision to Joe Riggs at Strikeforce: Lawler vs. Shields.

Amir Sadollah’s MMA career hasn’t quite lived up to the promise of his storybook run on TUF 7, where he scored stoppage victories over Steve Byrnes, Gerald Harris, Matt Brown, and CB Dollaway (twice), despite coming into the show with a 0-0 professional record. After two separate injuries suffered in training, Sadollah finally made his return to the cage at UFC 101, 14 months after the TUF 7 finale, came in way underweight, and was TKO’d by Johny Hendricks in 29 seconds. Needless to say, both guys have a lot to prove, and the loser of their match will have to decide if he really wants to continue in a profession that’s treated him with so much cruelty. No word yet on whether this match will be on UFC 106′s televised card. Any early predictions?

As many of you know, UFC heavyweight title contender Shane Carwin was a two-sport standout at Western State College in Colorado, winning a Division II national championship in wrestling, and becoming a two-time All-American in football for the Mountaineers, while also earning a degree in Environmental Technology and becoming a two-time Academic All-American as well.  Big deal, right? 

What you may not have known is that Cage Potato co-editor Ben Fowlkes got his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana, where he got, you know, mostly A’s, and was also captain of the writing program’s co-ed intramural softball team. 

So why do you care? Because this Saturday our two alma maters will face one another on the gridiron, and we decided to make a friendly wager on the game, via Twitter (Mayhem was right, it really does kick ass).  Here are the stakes:

(‘Allow me to show you gentleman to your suite, where I’m sure you’ll be pleased with our updated cocaine dispensers and dead hooker storage facilities. By the way, can I interest any of you in some illegal fireworks?’)

If you’re like us, you probably forgot all about former California State Athletic Commission Executive Director Armando Garcia once he resigned amid several different sorts of allegations.  Or if you did ever pause to wonder what he might be doing now, you probably assumed he was either running three-card monte games in a public park or else working the counter at an Avis rental car location.  What you probably did not consider is that he may be working at a casino owned by the Fertittas, who also happen to own the UFC, because that sounds too crazy to be true.

And yet, that’s what GracieFighter.com says Garcia is doing these days.  They claim to have seen him at a recent WEC event, which made them curious about his current job status.  Then they did some sleuthing and said they discovered that he is now the “head of security at the Boulder Station Casino in Las Vegas, officially working for the Fertittas in Nevada.” 

(Don’t look him in the eyes unless you want two handfuls of poop thrown at you. Photo courtesy of MTV.)

A year ago, Jason Miller was just another fighter with colorful hair and ridiculous ring entrances. Now, he’s the host of a hit MTV series, a video game character, a budding actor, and a frequent target of loose women. We chatted with Mayhem yesterday about his vida loca, as well as his (possibly) upcoming fight with Jake Shields in Strikeforce. As usual, Mayhem did not disappoint…

*****

CAGEPOTATO.COM: Hey Jason, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. What have you been up to this week?
MILLER: Come on man, check my Twitter, what’s wrong with you! I’ve been at EA Sports in Orlando getting bitmapped into their machine so that I appear as myself in their video game, doing the moves that I do and making the sounds that I make when I get hit, which was really funny.

Why do you love Twitter so much? You seem to be obsessed with it.
Yeah, Twitter kicks ass because it gives me an outlet for all the crazy thoughts that constantly pop into my head, and if I can share those and get the rest of America on my wavelength, then I guess I’m doing my part.

Bully Beatdown is now in its second season. I love the show, but do you ever want to say to these bullied people, “Hey, grow a pair, and learn to defend yourself instead of going to a reality show to solve your problems”?
You want me to bully the victims into getting tougher? Some of these people just aren’t tough. It’s just the way of the world, and they have a right to not be bullied and picked on constantly. I’m happy to entertain the masses with the fact that there’s always somebody out there who’s tougher than you, and can kick your ass.

(Demian Maia won’t be going for his second-straight 87kg tournament sweep at this year’s ADCCs. Photo courtesy of GracieMag.)

On Monday, we oohed and aahed over the lineup for the 2009 ADCC Submission Fighting World Championships, which, according to its official website, was slated to feature a horde of MMA stars. (Urijah Faber is now listed in the under 65.9kg category, by the way.) Well, it’s time to debunk some rumors. First off, Demian Maia:

Then, more bubble-bursting from a couple of our twitter-buddies…

(Props: MMA Share)

This is one of those rare crazy armbars that works exactly like it was drawn up, and it’s pulled off by a judo guy, no less.  How often does that happen?  Probably a little more often where there’s a gi to hold on to and the guy you’re doing it on has more experience with throws than submissions, but we still think it’s pretty cool.  The throw that follows it is also not bad, as long as you don’t mind giving your back to your opponent as soon as you hit the mat.

You know what’s far less cool, though?  You will after the jump.

(It takes so little to inflate a boxer’s ego these days.)

When Ray Mercer knocked Tim Sylvia the hell out back in June we thought it was just good, harmless fun.  Well, not harmless to Sylvia or his already-declining career, but harmless for MMA in general.  After all, when has seeing Big Timmy get flattened not made for quality entertainment?  But it seems like the conquest might have gone to Mercer’s head, because now he thinks the entire MMA world is ducking him.  What’s worse, he’s making certain assumptions about the character of the entire sport and its fighters based on his experience with Sylvia, which is a little like saying that all children are retards just because the kid who lives upstairs from you has Down syndrome.  Just check out what the 48-year-old Mercer had to say to EastSideBoxing.com:

J.S: So have you anything else in the pipeline – either in boxing or in MMA? People are still talking about the way you iced Tim Sylvia in what was it, nine seconds?

R.M: (laughs) Yeah, I’m willing to take anything that’s offered to me, you know. But those MMA guys, they don’t seem to want to fight me. I don’t get it. I thought they had heart, and yet they won’t fight me and I’m nearly 50-years old, man!

("I must break you. Right after I get a few more of those doughnuts." Photo courtesy of ShoSports.)

Brett "The Grim" Rogers on his upcoming matchup with Fedor Emelianenko:

"I feel that I’m a different fighter for Fedor; Fedor hasn’t felt the power that he’s about to get. You see what I mean? It’s definitely gonna be a fun fight, man. He’s talented, but the same things he’s skilled in, I’m skilled in.* It’s just we just gonna see who’s more hungry.**

Basically, a fighter for his size, his weight, just the way his aggression, when he takes top he’s good at controlling the top position. So, I’ve been trying to work with guys that can kinda mock him***; he may have that, a couple pounds less than me… But if he’s expecting to take top, and hold top, it’s not gonna happen.**** I’m definitely gonna re-position myself whenever I get in danger and hopefully get back to the feet and finish it off." —

* Seriously, Brett? Are you really suggesting that you can draw as well as the Last Emperor?

** You mean who’s literally more hungry? Because you both come across as very hungry people. Big eaters, is all I’m saying. Come to think of it, a pie-eating contest between the two of you would probably be a lot more competitive than a cage-fight.

*** There’s only one guy who could possibly take on that job.

**** It might happen. It’s probably going to happen.

(Props: TATAMETV)

When we first saw that video of Anderson Silva’s fighter impressions we didn’t think it was anything more than an amusing party trick. But it turns out that the Spider’s gift for mimicry has a real-world application: He can use it to impersonate people that his teammates will be fighting. The above clip shows Silva doing his best Randy Couture in a sparring session with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira before UFC 102. It’s just another reason why you’d want to be on Anderson’s team, rather than going up against it — though personally, we think Randy should sue Silva for libel over the way he threw those kicks at the 0:27 and 1:47 marks.

Semi-related: Anderson Silva’s dumbstruck reaction to Nate Marquardt calling him out at UFC 102, after the jump.

The ability to look at someone with a straight face and say a bunch of stuff that is so demonstrably untrue as to be laughable is a special kind of gift.  Either you have it or you don’t.  Jerry Millen has it.  Watch this interview that he did with The Garv and see if your head doesn’t hurt by the time it’s all over.  Over the course of six minutes Millen attempts to portray the UFC as a greedy, money-hungry organization in opposition to the Robin Hoods of MMA, M-1 Global and Fedor Emelianenko.  Several times he criticizes the UFC for not pursuing what he acknowledges would be a bad business plan for them, at one point saying, “If you really care what the fans want, how much money do you need?”

(Once you feel the warmth and security of those big gloves around your hands, it’s almost impossible to go back.)

Earlier today K-1 announced eight fights for their September 26 event in Seoul, South Korea and, wouldn’t you know it, Alistair Overeem’s hand has healed up enough to allow him to take on Peter Aerts in what will be the opening round of this year’s Grand Prix. 

Overeem was the number one choice in a fan poll designed to choose the final three GP participants, coming in ahead of second-place choice Melvin Manhoef, who’ll be taking on Remy Bonjasky in the tournament, and third-place selection Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, who won’t be fighting at all because he has a UFC contract and a damn MMA career to focus on.  We can’t help but feel that there’s a lesson somewhere in all this that Strikeforce ought to be learning.

(Rising and falling: Nate Marquardt and Randy Couture. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Following UFC 102, we’ve updated the middleweight, light-heavyweight, and heavyweight pages in our Power Rankings section. Some notable changes:

– Nate Marquardt moves up to #3 in the 185-pound rankings after his knockout of Demian Maia (who drops to #9). Gegard Mousasi leaves the middleweight list (he’s here now) and Vitor Belfort sneaks in at #10 to fill the gap.

– Thiago Silva replaces Renato Sobral as the #10-ranked light-heavyweight following his KO of Keith "Sardine" Jardine.

– Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira moves to #3 on the heavyweight list, while Randy Couture sinks to #10. That’s what happens when you go two years without winning a fight.

Check ‘em out and let us know how you feel.
(BG)