(‘Look guys, no one’s saying "Some Girls" wasn’t one hell of an album. But if we’re talking about the Stones at their absolute best, there’s no way we can not talk about "Beggars Banquet." Pepper spray me if you want, but I’ll be the guy singing "Factory Girl" all the way to the station.’)

MMA’s hardest working anarchist is showing no signs of slowing down in 2010.  Coming off a split decision victory in Tulsa, Oklahoma on January 16, Jeff Monson‘s next challenge will likely come at Shine Fights 3, where he’ll face pathetic mustache owner Dave "Pee Wee" Herman, according to The Rumble.  Despite a year full of legal troubles ranging from a graffiti-related arrest to assault on a grandfather clock, Monson still managed to fight five times in 2009 in a globetrotting effort that took him to Northern Ireland, Japan, and Mexico City, among other exotic locales, like Pensacola, Florida.

Herman is 3-0 since his only career loss to Mu Bae Choi in a Sengoku event last January.  Despite his impressive record and a little bit of hype after his time in EliteXC and Sengoku, he has yet to face really difficult competition.  Sure, he knocked out MMA old-timers Don Frye and Ron Waterman before smashing Jim York, but none of that proves very much at all these days.  A fight with Monson, who’s known as much for being a terror on the mat as he is for his contradictory tattoos (come on, an anarchy symbol and a hammer and sickle? you gotta chose one failed ideology and stick with it, Jeff), so this may be a good chance for us to find out whether Herman is for real. 

The fight is expected to be added to a card already featuring "Ninja" Rua vs. Falaniko Vitale, though no date or location has been pinned down just yet.  Who knows, maybe it will happen in your hometown.  Or the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  Either seems equally likely, while only one has a can’t-miss gimmick to it.

Karo Parisyan‘s struggle with prescription pills may have lead to his dismissal from the UFC, possibly for good, but it hasn’t dampened his fiery temperament any. While at an MMA event to corner one of his fighters, “The Heat” spoke with MMAPrime.tv and really didn’t have many nice things to say about his fighter’s performance that night. You can’t blame Parisyan. He told his guy to keep his hands up high but, as Karo puts it, “he fucked up.”

That might seem harsh, but everyone has their own coaching style.  Some guys pick you up after a loss and tell you that everything’s going to be fine.  Karo is not one of those guys.  He comes from the ‘What the hell is your freaking problem?!’ school of thought.

As for his own career, Parisyan says he’ll be back in action somewhere, some time, though he appears to have no idea how that might actually happen. He’s still got enough name value that some promotion is going to be willing to take a chance on him. Hopefully he’s kicked the pill addiction and can make a real go of it. Otherwise we might be seeing Parisyan on a future episode of “Intervention,” sitting in a hotel room next to Manny Gamburyan as he explains the various ways in which his cousin’s addiction has affected him.

(Randy might want to ask for a DNA test before he puts this one through college.)

Apparently we aren’t the only ones who think it’s a damn shame that the welterweight scrap between Jay Hieron and Joe Riggs is being pushed to the untelevised undercard of Strikeforce: Miami.  The powers that be may not like the fight enough to push Herschel Walker-Greg Nagy or Bobby Lashley-Wes Sims off the Showtime broadcast, but they have arranged to air it live on the official EA Sports website at 9:05 pm EST on Saturday night, reports Sherdog.com. 

You have to admit, it’s an arrangement that works well for everyone.  EA Sports gets another chance to hype their forthcoming MMA video game, and Strikeforce can give a nod to the vets on this card without having to bump the less experienced but more famous fighters from the televised proceedings.  As long as the end result is the chance to see one more quality fight for free on Saturday night, we certainly aren’t complaining.

(Train hard and be ready, because you never know when you might have to choke out a dragon.)

A while back Cage Potato reader Eric Stone sent us an email to alert us to a Fedor Emelianenko t-shirt that was so crazy and so unbelievably cool, we at first assumed that we were the victims of an elaborate ruse.  It just didn’t seem possible that this t-shirt, ostensibly promoting Fedor’s training camp in Stary Oskol, Russia, was a real thing in the world.  I mean, just look at it.  It features a drawing of someone (we think it’s supposed to be Fedor, but who knows for sure?) putting a very fearsome dragon to sleep with a rear naked choke.  The drawing looks like something you might find sketched on a talented seventh-grader’s math notebook, and it includes an exhortation to "Train Hard, Be Ready!"

When we confirmed that this t-shirt really is for sale at the Red Devil Fight Team’s official online store, we were all set to pony up the $44.15 to buy one.  Then we read the one and only review of the shirt, which reads: "When will i get my t-shirt? You stole my money!!!!!"

That’s when it all started to make sense.

(Props: Fight Magazine)

Ever since former NFL player and Dissociative Identity Disorder sufferer Herschel Walker announced his intention to become an MMA fighter, the question that still follows him is, why? Why does a guy who’s 47 years old want to start a whole new career in a sport where hungry young bucks will be lining up to make a name for themselves by thumping on his skull? Most of the time in MMA, the answer to this question lies somewhere in the intersection of a desperate financial situation and a longing for attention. But Walker says he’s motivated by neither. He just wants to show everyone that with a lot of hard work, you can do anything.

In this case, ‘anything’ includes beating a 1-1 fighter who oddsmakers have pegged as a +250 underdog. Even Greg Nagy’s trainer isn’t so hot on his chances to beat Walker, who is, by all accounts, a very athletic, extremely hard-working gym rat. This raises the question, what will it really prove for Walker to win this fight? Is beating a handpicked opponent everyone expects him to dominate really going to prove that anything is possible?

Grizzled old-timer Don Frye says letting guys like Walker jump into the sport like this keeps people from taking MMA seriously, whereas Walker will tell you that it’s an inspirational story for all the kids out there.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  It’s nice to see a man chasing his dream at an age when most guys have taken to wearing fanny packs and calling the cops to complain about suspicious-looking teenagers, but it’s also not going to shock the world if Walker beats someone who was more or less brought in to lose.

(‘You really picked me to get knocked out in the first round? Aw, who am I kidding? I can’t stay mad at you. Come give poppa some sugar.’)

Here at Cage Potato, we know that much of the pleasure fans like us derive from MMA stems from the often misguided belief that we know more about it than your average jerk on the street.  We even like to think that we know more about it than your average jerk on an internet forum.  The trouble is, how do you prove this beyond all doubt?  How do you rub your superior intellect in other people’s pathetic faces?  After a lot of soul-searching and sleepless nights, we came up with an answer.  Today we unveil that answer to you, our treasured readers.

We’ve been developing a one-of-a-kind MMA prediction game called MMA FightPicker, and we’re almost ready to unleash it on the world. The official launch date is next Monday, and the game is currently in the beta testing phase, which means we need you to play around with it and tell us what works and what doesn’t. Here’s what to do:

- Go to http://fightpicker.cagepotato.com and sign in with your CagePotato user info or your Facebook login. [Note: if you have trouble gaining access at first, you may need to log out and then log back in with your CP user info.  Also try clearing your old cookies.]

- You’ll start with 20 "PotatoChips" (our virtual currency), which you can use to wager on the upcoming weekend’s big fights. Click on one of the open pools to start making your fight predictions. Heads up: Different pools have different buy-in fees and payout amounts for the winners; if not enough players join the pool in time, your chips will be refunded.

(Photo courtesy of Knoxxgear.wordpress.com)

Good news for those of you who are dissatisfied with your gym’s lack of fighting surfaces and giant truck tires.  As first promised last year around this time, the UFC opened its first gym in Concord, California with 150 more to come in the next five years.  It’s the gym that aspires to be all things to all people.  Naturally, there are punching bags and grappling mats galore, with classes available to members of all ages.  There’s also the normal gym stuff, like free weights, machines, and treadmills where you can get your jog on in between a guy talking on his cell phone and a middle-aged mom walking very slowly while reading Self Magazine. 

For my money though, the highlight of the UFC gym is The Arm Bar.  If you’re the type who loves to linger way too long over a protein-infused smoothie, and you’re also the type who appreciates a fairly lazy play on words, this is the place for you.  A couple more pictures are after the jump.  And yeah, Dana White has seen to it that the walls of his gym reflect his personality.

When last we saw Goran Reljic he was knocking out Wilson Gouveia in his UFC debut to keep his undefeated record intact.  He seemed headed for great things, but then a back injury forced him out of a fight with Thales Leites and he had to keep himself busy by heroically saving unfortunate travelers from the perilous Adriatic Sea.  But after an almost two-year layoff and a little back surgery, he returns at UFC 110 to take on C.B. Dollaway.  Fortunately our friends at Raw Vegas are around to follow Reljic through his training at Xtreme Couture, giving us a glimpse of what happens in the weeks leading up to fight night.  Does it include a lot of sledge hammer and medicine ball work?  But of course.

After the jump, get reacquainted with Reljic’s work in the fight that Gouveia says got a little too personal backstage.

The mere fact that he name checks Roy Nelson in this video is enough to support our suspicion that Jim Rome is an MMA fan, but a Brock Lesnar fan he certainly is not. Of all the possible reasons why that might be the case, Rome’s current issue with Lesnar seems to be that he was not sufficiently humbled by his brush with diverticulosis. It really seems to bug Rome that Lesnar could come so close to seeing his career ended and still come back firing pro wrestling-style one-liners at potential opponents. As if this isn’t the Lesnar we’ve all come to know and, if not love, then at least live with. As if a little hole in his stomach would be enough to turn him into Mr. Congeniality.

This is the same Lesnar who described his recovery as a miracle brought about by the power of his own mind. The antibiotics and dietary changes probably helped too, but that doesn’t sound as cool.

(Props: MMA Scraps)

The bad news is that we have no idea what’s being said thoughout this video.  The good news is that it probably doesn’t matter.  As part of mankind’s ongoing quest to be constantly entertained, some genius apparently decided that we might as well put Fedor Emelianenko in a ring with six silly Korean guys, because hell, we’ve tried absolutely everything else by now.  The weird thing is, Fedor seems to be genuinely enjoying himself.  Look at that smile on his face.  This has got to be way more fun than when he fought Zuluzinho, and not nearly as bizarre, either.

Part two, just in case your Sunday really is that tedious, is after the jump.

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

After a dominant win over Clay Guida, Kenny Florian is setting his sights on UFC newcomer and former Pride champ Takanori Gomi.  In the exclusive talk with Cage Potato, he gives us his thoughts on the match-up, and lets us know how he really feels about seeing his old nemesis Diego Sanchez fleeing the lightweight division.

Fans have followed your twitter posts and saw you yesterday on ESPN’s “MMA Live” talking about fighting Takanori Gomi. Has anything developed further since then? Is the fight officially signed by all parties?

No nothing has been signed as of right now. We’re in talks and its being talked about as a main event of the March Fight Night card in North Carolina. I’m excited with that possibility but nothing has been signed yet. Of course it’s something that I’m willing to sign and I’m sure Gomi will as well when the contract has been delivered.

Were you surprised when it was announced that Gomi was signed by the UFC? He’s struggled since 2006 when he lost to Marcus Aurelio.

(Matt Serra’s UFC 109 video blog is exactly what you want it to be.)

- It’s looking like Bobby Lashley will fight Wes Sims. (The Rumble)

- Chris Tuchscherer says gettting bigger won’t help Frank Mir. (Cagewriter)

- Check out a sweet photo gallery from this year’s Dynamite!! event. (Fight Magazine)

- How Lesnar could have avoided illness with a smarter diet. (MMA Fighting)

- Get to know James Te Huna before his Octagon debut at UFC 110. (Heavy)

- MMA’s competition debate rages on. (MMA Payout)

- Anderson Silva will fight heavyweights if he needs to. (Fighters Only)

- Frank Mir’s cousin wants to be a fighter too. (Bleacher Report)

- Sean Salisbury took a picture of his junk, sent it to people. (Scores Report)

- Rex Ryan eats 7,000 calories a day, and so can you. (Asylum)

- The march of shame. (Ask Men)

- Cute girl belly flops off cliff. (Break)

- 25 clever exam answers. (Holy Taco)

- Beer Tour: Seattle. (Made Man)

- Driver sues NASCAR, says he was rejected for being too white. (All Left Turns)

- 20 celebs falling on their asses. (Screen Junkies)

- Now that’s a cheap shot. (Nothing Toxic)

I spoke to Mike Swick this week for an SI.com article on his attempt to get back in the title picture after the loss to Dan Hardy.  While Swick admits he lost the fight, he says he can’t accept that Hardy might be the better fighter, and wants a rematch somewhere down the line to prove it.  When asked if Hardy deserves the shot at GSP after winning the decision at UFC 105, Swick joined Nate Marquardt, Rory Markham, and a chorus of other observers in saying absolutely not:

"The thing about this sport is, there are so many variables that go into it. He did beat me. And if I would have won then I would have been the No. 1 contender, so you can look at it that way. But just because he won that fight, I don’t think that means he deserves a title shot. He’s only had three fights in the UFC and he’s only had one finish. He hasn’t had the same road that a lot of the top welterweights in the UFC have. Even though he beat me, I have to say he doesn’t deserve it. If he thinks he does, I’m sorry, but he’s wrong."

I also talked to Swick about the newest addition at the American Kickboxing Academy, Herschel Walker.  It’s one thing for Strikeforce and their employees to insist that he has what it takes to hang with the pros, but what has the longtime AKA fighter seen from him in the gym?

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

Two weeks ago former UFC #1 lightweight contender Hermes Franca announced his retirement from MMA competition after losing to Eric Wise by TKO in Iowa. The Brazilian fan-favorite recently sat down with CagePotato to reflect on his career, explain why he’s decided to move on, what’s next, and whether he thinks he might ever get back in the cage again.

Why did you decide to retire, Hermes?

It was a hard decision, it wasn’t good. But right now it is really hard, especially being 35. People don’t always realize that I’m 35. I look young but I’m 35 (laughs). I hurt my knee and tried to come back but I can feel that my body is not the same. To fight at the level I fight at I have to be in excellent shape and go to a good camp and this is expensive. . There are flights, partners to help you train, food, managers, coaches. People don’t realize how expensive it is for fighters training.

What happens when you get two strikers with concrete skulls and very little concern for their own safety together in one ring?  In the case of Mark Hunt vs. Yosuke Nishijima, you get a slobberknocker to end all slobberknockers. 

Nishijima was a Japanese pro boxer who made his MMA debut at Pride 31 on Feb. 26, 2006 against a guy whose ability to take it and dish it right back out has become the stuff of legends.  Nishijima had the speed and conditioning, but Hunt had the power, the size, and the willingness to walk through anything Nishijima threw, regardless of how exhausted he was.  Hunt has made a career out of being the guy who almost no one can put away, but when he came up against an opponent whose ability to endure punishment rivaled his own, you could almost see his frustration turn into awe at some point.

It took about twenty minutes of brutal punishment to settle this one, but before it was all over we learned that a) Nishijima is one tough bastard, and b) Hunt could use a little bit of work on his cardio.  At least one of those things we already suspected.

(It’s all fun and games until you piss off a Canadian. Have we learned nothing from Alanis Morissette’s "Jagged Little Pill" album?)

Brock Lesnar refused to name the hospital in Canada where he received care that he likened to “a third-world country,” but it turns out he doesn’t need to. The CEO of the regional health authority in Brandon, Manitoba has done it for him, and she’s none too pleased with Lesnar’s description of the facilities. Carmel Olson told the Globe and Mail (tip via CP reader Organ Donor) that she took “real exception” to Lesnar’s third-world country remark, and suggested that maybe Lesnar freaked out a little too soon and didn’t give her staff the chance to go to work:

“The attending physician was very qualified and very respected,” she said. “He’s been in the business for more than 30 years. And he has the skills to diagnose a condition such as diverticulitis without a CT scan. …We have checked this particular health record and we are quite confident that the correct diagnosis was given and the best course of treatment offered. We have state-of-art equipment here. We are hardly a one-horse operation.”

Lesnar wasn’t satisfied. He checked himself out and had his wife drive him back to the U.S. in what he describes as a harrowing 100 mph drive that “saved [his] life.” Olson suggested maybe he had another reason for fleeing in her parting shot, adding, “maybe he didn’t like the bill.”

So you think you’re just going to stroll down to Renzo Gracie’s gym, stick a microphone in Matt Serra‘s face, and do some boilerplate interview about how training’s been going, what he expects in the fight, blah, blah, blah for four minutes?  Naw, son.  "The Terra" don’t play that.  Strap in, you mamaluke, because you’re in for fifteen minutes of hilarity.  In this talk with Ariel Helwani, Serra discusses his beef with Matt Hughes, his upcoming showdown with Frank Trigg, the second fight with GSP (where, he seems convinced, Helwani was booing him), and how disappointing it is that you can’t buy one of those Triggonomics shirts anymore. 

This freaking guy, you know what I’m saying?  Forget about it.  There’s not a more entertaining interview in all of MMA. 

The oddest part seems to be Serra’s fixation on "Fox News Fight Game" host Mike Straka.  Apropos of nothing, Serra blurts out at the 8:10 mark, "Straka wears lifts."  Not that it would be surprising in the least, but one can’t help but wonder, how did he come by this information?  Is it true?  If it is true, what does Straka do when he meets a woman while wearing his lifts, and then is forced to drop down four inches when the relationship inevitably progresses to the take-your-shoes-off-so-we-can-have-sex stage?  Do you think he constantly finds excuses to keep them on?  If so, do you think those excuses get really, really weird after a few months?

All good questions, some of which are answered after the jump, and some of which we’ll just have to wonder about.

(Whaddaya know, a traffic accident where the dude with a mohawk wasn’t at fault.)

They say that what goes around, comes around.  While ‘they’ have been proven wrong on everything from love finding a way to the true value of a bird in the hand, it seems a little too fitting that, according to TMZ, "Rampage" Jackson got his slick Audi R8 smashed in Orange County on Tuesday.  No one was hurt, and the accident would appear to be the fault of your stereotypical little old lady, who you can never really yell at even when she does something horribly stupid behind the wheel of the car. 

But it can’t be a mere coincidence.  Why, it was only two weeks ago that Jackson appeared in an Orange County courtroom to answer for his own driving freakout.  He may have gotten off with just probation, but the God of Vehicular Ethics always gets the last laugh.  And he laughs like the guys from "Revenge of the Nerds," which makes it so much more annoying.

In other unrelated stuff happening on the internet:

- 25 lazy security guards. (Holy Taco)
– A totally awesome, totally NSFW spicy gallery. (Break)
– What you learn raising daughters. (Made Man)
– Punchin’ is racin’. (All Left Turns)
– 10 best January movie releases of all time. (Screen Junkies)

(Fried chicken, biscuits, and balloons. If you think the MGM Grand has anything better to offer, you are so very wrong.)

Now that the spring of 2010 is shaping up to be an avalanche of MMA events, we must now stop OMG-ing over the fight cards long enough to deal with practical concerns such as, where the hell are we going to have these things?  For UFC Fight Night 21 on March 31st, the answer is reportedly Bojangles’ Coliseum, which sounds like the punchline to a joke about crass commercialism, but is actually a real place in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

As anyone who has ever flown out of an airport in N.C. knows, Bojangles’ Famous Chicken and Biscuits is what you will inevitably smell as soon as the plane doors are sealed and you realize everyone but you had the foresight to bring some food on this flight.  It’s also the corporate sponsor of UFC Fight Night 21′s host venue, and we very much look forward to hearing Mike Goldberg’s attempt at shouting the name with all the forced enthusiasm he can muster.

As for UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi on April 10, that’s a trickier one.  You see, there’s going to be a venue for that fight, it just doesn’t, you know, exist yet.  As UFC U.K. president Marshall Zelaznik told Steve Cofield, the future site of UFC 112 is currently a gravel pit. 

(Cote, in the process of claiming the center of the Octagon.)

You could forgive a guy for being a little detached from reality after fighting Anderson Silva.  If you’re someone who beats up other dudes for a living and suddenly you come face to face with the distinct possibility that another person is much, much better at this than you, your mind probably has a little bit of a meltdown.  That phenomenon, plus maybe some mind-altering substances, seemed like enough to explain this video. 

But lo these many months later, as Patrick Cote prepares for a return to the Octagon at UFC 113 on May 1 May 8, he still subscribes to an alternate version of what was going on at UFC 90.  Not only does he think he was doing really well against the middleweight champ, he wouldn’t change a thing if they met for a rematch:

"If I fight him again I think I am going to do the same thing, I think I learned that if you’re not scarred of him right away you have a good chance to win and that’s what I did. I was there in the first second of the fight, I took the centre of the octagon and I showed him I wasn’t scarred of him."

Our bro-4-life Ariel Helwani ran down to Renzo Gracie‘s NYC gym to ask the most affable member of Brazil’s first family of fighting why he feels the need to come back at 43 years old to fight in the UFC.  A smiling Gracie attributes it to his irrepressible love of combat, proving yet again that some guys are just born for this stuff and there’s nothing they can do about it.  Gracie refers to the chance to fight Matt Hughes at UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi as "an honor," and says he’s already dropped twenty-five pounds, so now you can kind of see his abs.  Now if only he could get his wife to stop complaining about all the time he spends at the gym, he’d be golden.

If you watch this to the end, you’ll see Helwani asking Gracie to repeat one of his favorite Renzo-isms of all time.  He complies but, much like the "Planet of the Apes" remake, it lacks the fire of the original.  See what we mean after the jump.

(Howler Monkey vs. former sensation, who ya got?)

One of our favorite aspects of Twitter is watching people try, and then inevitably fail, to keep a secret.  It never gets old.  For instance, first the official "MMA Live" Twitter posts a teaser that Kenny Florian will be revealing when his fight with former Pride star and UFC newcomer Takanori Gomi will take place.  Sounds like a reason to watch the show, right?  Then right after that they tell us it’s at UFC Fight Night 21 on March 31st.  So, you know, mystery solved.

In any event, here’s a fight worth getting pumped about.  Florian is coming off his crushing loss to B.J. Penn, (edit: and the ensuing Clay Guida win, duh) but as he told us last month, he’s been working with Firas Zahabi, trying some new things, and itching for a fight.  Matching him up with Gomi right off the bat tells us that the UFC isn’t interested in letting "The Fireball Kid" start slow against some former TUFers and work his way up to the top of the division.  Instead it’s sink or swim, and right away. 

It’s been a couple years since Gomi has looked really impressive, but will his move to the UFC and a little training time at AKA be enough to spark a career renaissance?  Or is Florian too well-rounded for Gomi to overcome in his first Octagon appearance? 

(See? This is why you don’t get into a bling-off with Floyd Mayweather. Or any guy whose nickname is "Money," now that we think about it.)

Though previous reports indicated that the UFC was considering changing the May 1 date for UFC 113 so as not to compete head-to-head with the Floyd Mayweather-Not Manny Pacquiao fight, on Tuesday White told his hometown paper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that the UFC "was going May 1st still."  One day later, it was an entirely different story.  Cagewriter confirmed with White that the UFC has moved UFC 113 to May 8 in Montreal in order to avoid a showdown with a boxing pay-per-view bohemoth and, in classic fight promoter style, White has managed to find a way to interpret this as a sign that boxing is completely ridiculous:

"We were trying to not go the same night as boxing but these [expletive] guys can’t get out of their own way," White told Cagewriter. "I have never seen anything so unorganized, selfish and dysfunctional as boxing. It’s a joke!"

We can only assume that’s an edited quote, and that the full version features White going off on an ‘inconsiderate’ John Mayer for scheduling a concert in Florida on the same night as UFC 109 in Las Vegas, before then turning his ire on the ‘complete morons’ who run Disney on Ice.

(Look on the bright side. At least he’s got bail money? Photo courtesy of FightZoo.com.)

Remember when we said it would make for a better story if "Krazy Horse" Bennett‘s arrest for battery had actually happened at the gym where he trains?  Well, in this case ‘better’ means much, much worse.  According to details on the situation that Sherdog.com acquired from a representative of the FIT NHB gym where the incident took place, Bennett assaulted a teammate with a length of steel during a training session and had to be restrained by other fighters in the gym. 

According to FIT NHB’s Tom Vaughn, "tempers flared" during a sparring session between Bennett and a larger teammate.  After a little scuffle, Bennett got dressed, left the gym, and then came back about fifteen minutes later.  That’s when "he walked down to the training area and pulled out a heavy piece of steel he must have found in the parking lot and began attacking the other fighter (from behind) with intent to do serious damage. He was tackled by two other fighters and disarmed."

(Wow. If that mug gets any meaner we might have to get a restraining order.)

Nick Diaz seemed a little out of sorts on today’s conference call to promote Strikeforce: Miami.  Or maybe that was completely in sorts for Diaz.  There’s no way to know for sure.  When asked to give an opening statement Diaz seemed a bit lost, replying, "Am I supposed to have something to say?"  Later, when asked to give an assessment of Marius Zaromskis‘ skills, Diaz shot back, "Why?  What is this shit?  I apologize.  I just woke up.  I didn’t even know this call was going down."  

Once Diaz got his bearings he managed to describe Zaromskis as "a good fighter," adding, "Anybody who’s going to be fighting at this level is a good fighter.  It’s like an oxymoron." 

It isn’t, actually, but no one was about to challenge Diaz on that after the struggle it took just to get any answer at all.  Fortunately, things got better from there.  Some notable moments:

(Props: Cagewriter)

Not surprisingly, Brock Lesnar‘s dismissive comments about the Canadian health care system riled some people up today, prompting reporters to push him on exactly what went wrong when he was hospitalized in hockey country.  On a UFC conference call following his ESPN appearance, Lesnar said it wasn’t all Canada’s fault, but likened the care he received to "a third-world country," and praised the U.S. system as "a little radical, but we’ve got the best doctors in the world."

The way Lesnar sees it, our system doesn’t need reforming because it is totally kick-ass — an assessment that probably feels pretty accurate when you’re a millionaire at the Mayo Clinic.  True, as recently as 2007 medical bills accounted for 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. (and, of those, 78% had health insurance), but Lesnar is about as far from the poorhouse as anybody in the state of Minnesota, so obviously that’s not his concern.  He needed the best care money could buy, so he needed to be in a place where money could buy it.

As some of our friends on Twitter have kindly pointed out, it’s a little unfair for him to compare some small facility in Canada to one of the best medical facilities anywhere in the world.  But Lesnar isn’t trying to bash Canada.  He just wants us Americans to know that reforming a system where we spend more than any other country in the world, and yet ranked 19th among 19 developed countries when it comes to avoiding preventable deaths is completely unnecessary.  Need proof?  Well, Lesnar will be back in the Octagon this summer, won’t he?

After the jump, Lesnar’s full "Sportscenter" appearance, in case you missed it.

(Markham lands a vicious head kick on Brodie Farber while pondering that age-old question, is it still a tramp stamp if it has a vaguely threatening message?)

It turns out that we aren’t the only ones who are skeptical about Nate Diaz‘s chances to make it in the UFC as a 170-pounder.  Rory Markham, who will welcome Diaz to the division at UFC 111 on March 27, recently told us he doesn’t see the Stockton, Ca. product having a lot of success in the welterweight class, partly because he lacks the punching power, but also because he’s trying to make the jump too soon.

"Moving up and down in weight always seems like a simple fix, but you have to have time to do it. He’s not taking a lot of time to go up, and I think that’s going to hinder him greatly. If you don’t take it slow, you don’t put on the muscle right. I understand his motivation for going up, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea for him. He didn’t exactly carry a bunch of power at 155, and there are some heavy-hitters up here in this weight class. That’s something I know I carry. I can say that whole-heartedly and humbly."

Markham, who’s 1-1 in the UFC and has his own striking power to thank for 11 of his 16 career victories, says he had a somewhat unusual reaction to being offered the fight with Diaz over the weekend.

(Nice try diverticulosis, but no dice.)

Canadian socialized medicine may have tried to kill Brock Lesnar or at least end his career, but after an agonizing few weeks the big man "healed [him]self" and will return this summer to face the winner of the Shane Carwin-Frank Mir fight.  This is what we learned during Lesnar’s appearance on "Sportscenter" today. 

Sitting beside Dana White and wearing a t-shirt laden with all the usual sponsors (Fusion Ammo, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, etc.), Lesnar explained the entirety of his long medical odyssey from an early misdiagnosis to a collapse in Canada that left him at the mercy of lousy Canuck doctors, to his return to the U.S. where good old American doctors prepared to put him under the knife to fix his diverticulosis, which would have cursed him with a colostomy bag and ended his career.  But, after laying for days on end in the hospital and losing forty pounds, he went to get a second opinion, which also called for surgery. 

Lesnar went home, returned to the gym and put some weight back on, and when he came back to the hospital on January 5 it was, "a miracle; they were dumbfounded.  They couldn’t find any signs of any problems in my stomach."

(Some artists work in oils or acrylics. "Krazy Horse" works in mug shots.)

Hope you’re sitting down for this one, Potato Nation, because it isn’t going to be easy to hear.  Charles "Krazy Horse" Bennett, the Pride and EliteXC veteran with ten years worth of MMA experience, has been arrested.  Again.  Sherdog.com reports that Bennett was popped at 6:30 pm on Monday night "on suspicion of felony aggravated battery" at the FIT NHB gym in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he is listed as a team member.  It’s unclear whether that means he was simply picked up at the gym, or whether he actually committed the (alleged) battery there, though the latter would make for a much better story, especially if it happened during a training session.

Obviously, Bennett is innocent until proven guilty, but this isn’t the Horse’s first run-in with the law.  The guy’s been nabbed so many times there is a highlight reel of his mug shot photos, and it’s generally accepted that if you book him to fight there’s always a chance that he’ll miss the date due to being in jail.  His past exploits on the wrong side of the law have included arrests for drug distribution, kidnapping, domestic violence, and battery against a pregnant woman.  Yeah, we know.

After the jump, check some highlights from "Krazy Horse’s" career in legal violence

(Can one gym even hold that much badass?  Magic eightball says, ‘Outlook not so good.’)

As UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre puts on more weight and continues to dominate every 170-pounder in his path, finding sparring partners who can push him is apparently becoming more of a problem.  In a talk with Heavy.com, Tristar Gym owner and longtime GSP trainer Firas Zahabi says that he can’t even put him up against other fighters his own size in training anymore, adding "It’s getting scary.  Georges is getting better and better, believe it or not." 

That’s why he’s looking to add a new face to St. Pierre’s training camp: Strikeforce light heavyweight champ Gegard Mousasi.

Since he mentioned it no less than twice in the interview, we’re assuming Zahabi is serious about getting "The Last Gypsy" in the gym with GSP.  If it happens, we can only hope that the cameras are there to capture it for "UFC Primetime."  Though who are we kidding, St. Pierre-Mousasi is a sparring session worthy of pay-per-view.  Maybe they should just film it and keep it in the can.  That way, if GSP runs through Dan Hardy too quickly, they can go ahead and add it to the broadcast to make the fans feel like they got their money’s worth.  As an added bonus, it seems like the kind of thing that would really, really piss off M-1 Global.