(Skoal and balloons. Looks like everything’s coming up Milhouse. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

There’s a reason Amir Sadollah wasn’t fazed when Phil Baroni blitzed him with an all-out assault in the opening minutes of their UFC 106 bout. Really, there are two reasons. For one, it was Baroni, so he had reason to expect that. For another, Sadollah always expects things to go badly. Always.

“That’s kind of my mindset in life,” he says. “Expect the worse and most of the time it’s not as bad. But sometimes it’s worse."

It might sound like a negative way to go through life, but Sadollah doesn’t see it that way. To him, it’s motivating. If he goes into each fight expecting it to be a fifteen-minute nightmare, it will make him bust his ass in the gym and prepare him mentally for the worst-case scenario. Even when he wins, and does so in impressive fashion, as he did against Baroni, he doesn’t like to dwell on the positives, he says.

When I was in Tokyo for the New Year’s Eve Dynamite!! show, I couldn’t help but notice that Gary Goodridge seemed like a man who didn’t really want to be fighting.  He was added to the card at the last minute, matched up against Gegard Mousasi in a fight the promoters obviously didn’t intend for him to win.  His last MMA fight was in November of 2008.  He hadn’t won one since his 2007 K-1 Heroes bout against Jan Nortje.  So what was he doing fighting "Sweet Sassy" on a few days’ notice?

The answer, Goodridge told me when I spoke to him for an SI.com article this week, is surviving.  He was getting paid the only way he knows how, though he wishes he didn’t have to.

"I’m trying to get a job, period," said Goodridge. "My background is in security, police, corrections. I went to school for four years at a college level to learn how to beat people properly. I would love to be a bodyguard, whatever. I’m just looking for a job."

The eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter is set to kick off on March 31st, and Tito Ortiz doesn’t plan on sleepwalking through his second tour of coaching duty like some people we know. As we see on this recent Inside MMA appearance, Ortiz vows to train his guys hard — not just as fighters, but as businessmen:

So will Ortiz be giving seminars on personal branding in between the sparring sessions? ("Nobody leaves this gym until they give me three new t-shirt designs!") Will he make his guys watch old tapes of him on Celebrity Apprentice? As Bruce Buffer points out, Chuck Liddell will probably just show up and be Chuck, so maybe there is an advantage for the TUF 11 hopefuls to work under a master self-promoter like Ortiz. And maybe Tito’s personal attention to his team will make him the surprise good guy of the season…

(Oh. Snap. Image courtesy of twitter.com/johnhowardufc)

— As first mentioned on John "Doomsday" Howard‘s Twitter page, a scrap between Howard and frequent eye-poke recipient Anthony "Rumble" Johnson is nearly set for UFC Fight Night 21 (March 21st, Denver), which will be the UFC’s first broadcast on the Versus network. According to an MMA Junkie report, the matchup was originally planned for last June at the TUF 9 finale, but Howard’s management reportedly turned it down because they didn’t want Doomsday facing such a tough test so early in his career; Johnson has since publicly criticized Howard for the ducking. Howard (13-4) is currently 3-0 in the UFC, and most recently scored a last-second knockout over Dennis Hallman at the TUF 10 finale in December. Johnson (8-3, 5-3 UFC) had a three-fight win streak snapped in November when he was submitted by Josh Koscheck at UFC 106.

— Speaking of welterweights, Ricardo Almeida and Matt Brown are set to get it on at UFC 111 (March 27th, Newark). Following back-to-back decision victories over Matt Horwich and Kendall Grove, Almeida was slated to take on Jon Fitch at 106, but had to withdraw due to a knee injury. He’ll now face off against "The Immortal," who has stopped his last three opponents, most recently TUF 9 winner James Wilks at UFC 105.

(Now that we’ve seen Gray’s sparring partners, his boast about having never lost a round in training seems a little less impressive.)

By Elias Cepeda for CagePotato.com

When Gray Maynard (9-0-1) got matched up with Roger Huerta last September, many picked the former Michigan State Wrestler to steamroll the cover boy and aspiring movie actor. And though Maynard clearly and cleanly won, it was a tough-fought decision victory.

Fortunately for the Xtreme Couture team member, he fully expected a hard fight from Huerta, even if others did not. “He can scramble really well, he’s good inside and he can box,” Maynard says. “You’ve got to give him more credit. He doesn’t quit so you know it’s going to be a tough one.”

The win was the undefeated lightweight’s sixth consecutive in the UFC and observers wonder how close Maynard is to getting a title shot. Despite one of the most impressive runs in the division and wins over other top guys like Frankie Edgar, the timing hasn’t quite worked out for Maynard yet and he’s yet to be booked for a championship bout.

(Something that could make both these men smile? It could only be one thing: Arby’s roast beef sandwich!)

In all fairness, Dana White said that this would be the week he’d find out how serious Brock Lesnar‘s medical condition really is.  He didn’t necessarily say it would be the week he told the rest of us what he learned.  MMAFighting.com had a little text message convo with DW today, and when asked what Lesnar’s status was the UFC prez replied: "Brock asked me not to talk about it.  I have to respect that."

And so the mystery lives on.  How long will Lesnar be out?  Will he ever fight again?  Why is it so important to him that no one know anything at all about his illness?  Is Lesnar actually a malfunctioning cyborg super soldier, making this a matter of national security requiring the utmost secrecy?  These questions must remain, for the time being, unanswered.  All we know is, if the diagnosis was that he’d be up and cracking skulls within a few months, like his jiu-jitsu coach previously claimed, there probably wouldn’t be a need for all this shucking and jiving. 

You couple White’s reticence with the cryptic missive on Lesnar’s Facebook page, and there’s not much reason for optimism.  We might as well get used to life without Lesnar, at least for the foreseeable future.

("I love the Break.com Videos app, and I love you! Let’s get married!" — Actual quote from Gina Carano)

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re probably a young-ish dude. As a young-ish dude, you spend a great deal of your Internet time gawking at photos of hot chicks and watching videos of incompetent German magicians accidentally slamming nails through their hands. Maybe you have one of those fancy iPhones. And if all that is true, or at least close to true, then you really owe it to yourself to download Break.com’s new iPhone app from the iTunes store.

The Break.com Videos app brings a metric assload of funny right to the palm of your hand. Everything from viral videos of pranks, stunts, sexy girls, epic fails, and original sketch comedy, to handpicked photo galleries — it’s all absolutely free, and worth every penny. Download it here and thank us later.

To make up for this interruption in your normal MMA-coverage service, there’s a brand-new Paul Daley highlight video after the jump that you might be interested in…

(And he was such a nice guy before he started hanging out with those Diaz boys. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

When Shinya Aoki broke Mizuto Hirota‘s arm at the New Year’s Eve Dynamite!! show and followed it up with the old ‘Tokyo Heybuddy,’ that didn’t sit too well with the people from Sengoku.  Not that they had any real reason to think that their lightweight champ would beat the Dream beltholder, but having him utterly destroyed and then publicly humiliated probably wasn’t what they had in mind when they agreed to that portion of the cross-promotional battle.  Now, says MMA Mania, Sengoku officials are asking for Aoki to be punished for his post-fight behavior, which they referred to as "erratic, unforgivable conduct," followed by what they believe to be a mostly insincere apology.

They’re right about one thing — Aoki probably isn’t all that sorry.  The move wasn’t exactly gentlemanly, but it was perfectly in line with the persona he had been cultivating in the lead-up to this fight.  This is the same guy who pretended not to know who the Sengoku champion was, who called the fight a "disgrace" to himself and his family, and who entertained himself at pre-fight press conferences by telling other fighters to shut up when their comments ran a little long for his liking.  If you were paying attention, you could have seen this coming.

(While the ‘Just Bleed’ tribute thrills the hardcore fans on the internet, it’s one of those jokes that doesn’t go over as well with the professional hot chick crowd.)

The thing to know about Tom Lawlor is that he’s just like you. Well, maybe not exactly like you. For one thing, he can fight. For another, he’s sitting on a $100,000 bonus check for Submission of the Night at UFC 100, where he choked C.B. Dollaway unconscious after one of the year’s most memorable entrances. But in other respects, he’s not so different from you.

He’s an MMA nerd who spends way too much time on the internet, posting in forums and pouring over the latest articles. He makes all the same inside jokes, loves all the same viral sensations, and has a great sense of humor, so much so that it’s difficult to get any real information out of him. While talking with him about his upcoming fight against Aaron Simpson on Monday night’s Fight Night card on Spike TV, I eventually gave up trying. It was still a fun conversation though, which is more than I can say for a lot of interviews with pro fighters.

CagePotato.com: So I was looking at your UFC.com profile today, just for fun, and I see you’re practiced in the art of Baboo Baby. Tell me, what’s that all about?

Lawlor: Baboo Baby is a deadly art that I have been granted a rank in. The master is a man by the name of Jack Skellington. It’s somewhere between being a very traditional martial art and being the most untraditional martial art on the planet. I’ve been training very hard in this style. It’s a close cousin to Harold Howard’s old style where he infused jiu-jitsu with karate. It’s also similar to the style that was brought about by Ranger Stott with RIP.

(Photo courtesy of TheSun)

From a recent post on Brock Lesnar‘s official Facebook page:

NEW UPDATE!! Brock has had more problems (we can’t say what they are) and he could be out all of this year if things don’t get better. Brock wants to thank all of his fans for their support and for the nice messages so thanks guys.

Though we’ve yet to see the official update that we were promised this week, let this be your advance warning that Lesnar won’t be returning this summer. In other unconfirmed news…

— SI’s Josh Gross hears that Frankie Edgar will get the next shot at BJ Penn’s lightweight belt in April, regardless of Gray Maynard‘s performance against Nate Diaz at UFC Fight Night 20 on Monday. Edgar (11-1, 6-1 UFC), most recently submitted Matt Veach at the TUF 10 finale, holds wins over Sean Sherk, Hermes Franca, and Tyson Griffin, and previously lost a decision to Maynard in April 2008.

— According to MMA Live host Jon Anik, a match between knockout artist Paul Daley and perennial top contender Josh Koscheck is being discussed for May or June. Between Daley’s recent destructions of Martin Kampmann and Dustin Hazelett, and Koscheck’s wins over Frank Trigg and Anthony Johnson, both guys have a lot of heat behind them right now. Feels like a #1 welterweight contender fight to us…

(Props: EckoMMA)

As longtime supporters of MMA regulation in New York, we’re thrilled that 2010 could finally be the year the sport loses its outlaw status in the Empire State. But there’s a long way to go before we can start celebrating. In this new short film from Bobby Razak and Marc Ecko, a host of fighters and other MMA personalities discuss the legalization efforts and challenges that they’ve faced in New York, as well as in Ontario, Canada. "Legalize MMA" highlights the inherent irony of the MMA regulation struggle in NY — that such a famous fight town, which is progressive on so many other issues, continues to marginalize the most modern and pure form of combat sports. Unfortunately, many of New York’s athletic commission officials remain the least educated about MMA as it exists today, clinging instead to outdated stereotypes of the sport’s brutality. "Madison Square Garden is a validator of great, iconic sports and athletes," Ecko says. For him, as well as interviewees like Frank Shamrock and reporter Ariel Helwani, the building stands as a symbol of the mainstream acceptance that MMA is closing in on, but hasn’t quite captured yet. Part two of the film is after the jump.

(Goodridge vs. Frye, Pride Shockwave, 12/31/03)

So you watched Gary Goodridge’s poor showing against Gegard Mousasi on New Year’s Eve and thought to yourself, why do they keep bringing this guy back?  The answer is a) he’ll fight just about anybody with a few hours notice, and b) there was a time when he thrilled the Japanese fans with his standing and banging.  His final fight in Pride against legendary hard-ass and recent retiree Don Frye was just one such time. 

It was only six years ago, and yet it feels like another lifetime.  All those young bucks who felt like they were on top of the world with their New Year’s Eve victories at Dynamite!! might want to take note.  The good times are good, but they do not last.

It looks like the UFC isn’t going to be depending solely on the drawing power of Renzo Gracie vs. Matt Hughes and the allure of free air conditioning to make their first Abu Dhabi event a success.  In a video posted to his website today lightweight champ B.J. Penn says he expects to make his next title defense on the April fight card.  He doesn’t mention who his opponent might be, but I think we can assume that if Gray Maynard feeds Nathan Diaz a steady diet of takedowns and noogies like we all expect him to in the main event this Monday’s UFC Fight Night, he has a pretty good shot at getting the call.

If Diaz manages to pull out the win however, it would put his current win streak at a meager two, and then we’d like Frankie Edgar‘s chances to get utterly destroyed by a semi-interested Penn. 

So okay, one title fight for Abu Dhabi and a couple old-timers going at it.  That ought to be good enough, right?  Only maybe not.  In an interview with Tatame, Carlos Santos of Team Emirates says that both Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort have contacted him through their representatives to train at his Abu Dhabi gym in the days leading up to the fight.  Does this mean Silva-Belfort will also go down at UFC 112?  Either that, or these guys both just really want to see the Al Hosn Palace without interrupting their regular training schedules.

(A harmless group of dudes enjoying some brews on a Saturday afternoon? Or a VAST CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY??? Photo courtesy of thedraftbarandgrille.com)

Watching pirated feeds of MMA pay-per-view events may seem like a cost-effective alternative to actually spending money on them. But no free ride lasts forever. According to a new story in The Vancouver Sun, the UFC plans to roll out an assault on those who distribute and consume unauthorized content. Said Lorenzo Fertitta during a recent referendum on Internet piracy: “The piracy of live sporting events is illegal, it kills jobs, and it threatens the expansion of US based companies. The UFC is potentially losing millions of dollars a year from piracy.” During UFC 106, Zuffa’s anti-piracy team counted 271 illegal streams of the event with over 140,000 viewers.

Though the UFC isn’t ruling out lawsuits against individual users, stream-hosting websites like Justin.tv will likely be the biggest targets of the new crackdown. "When people start going to jail, people will stop doing it,” Dana White said. “It’s going to be a battle, but I’m ready to (expletive) fight. We’re gonna go after them, we’re gonna go after them hard, and we’re gonna hurt ‘em.”

Unfortunately, someone’s gotta be the first guy to get kicked in the nuts, and those nuts belong to the kind of friendly neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name…

(Rich works on his mean-mug while listening to the latest This American Life podcast.)

By CagePotato.com contributor Mike Russell

Despite several unsubstantiated reports stating otherwise, a rumored match-up between former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin and former number one UFC middleweight contender Patrick Cote at UFC 113 (May 1st, Montreal) is not happening according to both Franklin’s longtime manager Monte Cox and “The Predator."

Cox told Cage Potato yesterday that Franklin plans to stay at light heavyweight when he returns to action following an estimated 6-8 week recovery from a hernia surgery that the Cincinnati, Ohio native has scheduled for next week, and that they have not been offered a fight on the May 1 card.

Responding to the rumor, which was propagated by a posting on The Fight Network website, Cote said he was as surprised as anyone to hear the fight was a go:

(Props: Uppercut Magazine, via CP contributor Elias Cepeda.)

I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.  Here’s UFC president Dana White sitting down and having what appears to be a serious conversation about James Toney fighting in the UFC.  I realize that’s what he said he was going to do after Toney ambushed him at the UFC 108 post-fight press conference, but I guess I just assumed that it would be one of those meetings where he professes a vague interest and then never calls Toney back.  Sort of like what the people at Paramount keep doing to me when I pitch them my script about the dog who learns to fly a plane so he can go find the family that left him for dead in the animal shelter, and then murder them all in their sleep.  It’s a fun summer romp.

DW is asking all the right questions here — can Toney wrestle? does he have any takedown defense aside from an unshakable conviction that he won’t ever end up on the ground? is he familiar with what getting kicked in the leg feels like?  Call me crazy, but when Toney says he knows all about the "front kick, back kick, side check kick, all of that," I’m not 100% convinced.

(It’s a girl! You can tell because of the bow stuck to her head!)

As much as we like to bust Matt Hughes‘ chops about being the Fox News of MMA fighters, Cage Potato would like to extend our sincere congratulations and warm wishes to him and his new baby daughter, Katelyn Mae Hughes, born this past Saturday morning.  Actually, maybe the congratulations are more for his wife, Audra Hughes, since she did all the hard work.  Matt presumably stood by the hospital bed and shouted at her that she ‘has to want it,’ until the doctors finally kicked him out of the delivery room.

We’re not going to pretend to know what it’s like to be a girl growing up in the Hughes household, but we are going to go ahead and speculate that it will probably be tough to get a date when all the boys in school are scared to go to your house and pick you up.  If that’s not bad enough, even when you ace your chemistry test you’ve got Georges St. Pierre‘s kids dropping by to say they aren’t impressed with your performance, and Matt Serra‘s kids fist-pumping in your face at the homecoming dance.  Stay strong, Katelyn. 

(Props: afflictionvideos)

You know, just once I’d like to be referred to as "God" by a long line of hot chicks. Anyway, here’s Georges St. Pierre signing some of his new 2010 calendars last weekend at the Affliction store at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. To quote Todd Duffee, the ladies want to romance him, and the boys want to bromance him. This video is particularly worth watching because it reveals Tom Atencio’s new role at Affliction — awkwardly stumbling through interviews with UFC stars. (It’s cool, because he says he’s drunk!) Later, Randy Couture shows up to tell Tom about his upcoming "Advil and Viagra" fight with Mark Coleman. Semi-related: According to Randy, reports of GSP’s Olympic wrestling bid have been blown way out of proportion.

Bonus, after the jump: The badass new trailer for Spike’s Best of PRIDE.

(Mike Guymon highlight reel, courtesy of JokersWildFA.)

Two promising welterweights will be making their Octagon debuts against each other at UFC Fight Night 20, which goes down this coming Monday (1/11) at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia. Allow us to introduce you to…

MIKE "Joker" GUYMON (WW)
Experience: 11-2-1 record (all wins by stoppage), primarily competing in King of the Cage, where he is the reigning welterweight champion. Last fought in October, when he earned a fourth-round TKO over Quinn Mulhern. Hasn’t lost since a split-decision against Pat Healy at an IFL event in June 2007.
Will be fighting: Rory Macdonald (see below)
Lowdown: With a decade of experience in the game, Mike Guymon has been one of MMA’s most respected ambassadors, serving as one of the original members of the TapouT crew and running his own fight school in California. In December 2008, the 35-year-old captured KOTC’s welterweight title with a fifth-round submission victory over Anthony Lapsley; Guymon has successfully defended his belt twice since then. In August, he made news for a near-tragic suicide attempt/armed standoff in Orange County following troubles in his personal life, but has found peace through re-committing himself to the sport that he loves: "I wanted to prove to people that it’s possible to get in the ring after trying to commit suicide. I sometimes need 16 hours a week of therapy to deal with this thing. But this is living proof not to give up and that good things will happen.”

(A paper press pass on a piece of rope, and all the in-depth access you’d expect from such a document.)

In Japan you should never take anything for granted.  That stuff for sale at the outdoor fair that looks like beef?  Don’t assume.  Go ahead and ask.  Go ahead and be the dumb foreigner, because at least you’ll be the dumb foreigner who knows what he’s putting in his mouth.  If you don’t ask, you’ll end up stopping midway through your first bite with the distinct feeling that you are eating some part of an animal that you never planned on tasting outside of an extreme survival scenario. 

That’s when you might want to ask the nice Japanese teenager sitting next to you if she knows what it is.  Unable to find the English words, she’ll do a translation search on her cell phone before proudly telling you, "Guts!"  See?  You wish you had asked first.

This is one of many things I learned while in Tokyo for the Fields Dynamite!! New Year’s Eve event.  Another is, this is something that every MMA fan, if they have the means and the opportunity, should experience at least once before they die.

Yesterday we showed you a Randy Couture spoof video from last weekend’s MMA Awards that depicted the former UFC champ as having an admirable/slightly insensitive ability to joke about his many marital failures.  That seemed all in good fun, and then we saw this one, starring Junie Browning as the world’s worst life coach.  It’s one of those things that’s funny because it’s true — Junie really has managed to screw his life up with impressive speed and efficiency, despite several second chances.  It’s also one of those things that’s uncomfortable because it’s true, and true as of really recently.

It was less than three months ago that Browning was fired from the UFC after being charged with assaulting and threatening to rape the staff of a hospital where he was brought after what appeared to be a suicide attempt.  Now he’s doing funny voices, pretending to be on drugs (that was pretending, right? guys?), and joking about his bi-polar disorder in a video featuring a cameo by would-be local weatherman Dave Farra?  And here we thought things had gotten just about as bad as they could get for "The Lunatic." 

There’s a point at which self-deprecation becomes self-mockery.  It’s hard to say exactly where the line is, but when you are making light of criminal cases that are still pending against you while wearing an ironic D.A.R.E. t-shirt, it’s very possible that you’ve crossed it.

(Props: FightersOnlyMagazine)

"I’m hoping in April I get a chance to fight Mousasi next. That’s the fight I want…I know I’ll put on a show and I’ll win that fight…Anything can happen in MMA when you’re dealing with two guys that train hard and want it. So, I’m not worried about the fans [doubting me] ’cause the fans ain’t fighters. They’re fans, they just watch. So they should just sit back and watch in April and see what happens. King Coker, I hope he can give me that fight…I don’t know if I deserve it yet, but if the fight makes sense, let’s make it happen…

When I had the opportunity to fight Travis Wiuff, I watched his footage twice and I was like ‘got him.’ And I have that feeling right now. I’ve watched Mousasi’s fights, a lot of his fights, and he’s been fighting for a while, and I think he’s hit his peak. He won’t improve too much…I think he’s been winning off of just being a smart fighter and more technical than other fighters. I want it ’cause I know I’mma win it."

— Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal invites the haters to keep hating in this recent video interview, where he makes his intentions known regarding Gegard Mousasi‘s Strikeforce light-heavyweight strap. With a record of 6-0 over mostly uninspiring competition, it seems like Mo should have to complete an intermediate step between fighting Mike Whitehead and fighting the Last Gypsy. But with Strikeforce’s 205-pound class as thin as it is, Mo’s personality could make him marketable enough to sell the fight. Still, I wonder what Lawal could have possibly seen in Mousasi’s fight tapes that would make him think "got him." For the record, Mo’s Wikipedia page currently lists his division as "Moneyweight."

(From left to right: Focused, calm, stoic, and sleepy.)

To the unfamiliar, the above poster simply shows four shirtless white guys with eerily similar expressions. To us, it’s cause for celebration. As previously reported, UFC 111 (March 27, Newark) will be the first UFC event since #100 to feature two separate title fights on the same card; coincidentally, Georges St. Pierre and Frank Mir were part of that event as well. Tickets go on sale to Fight Club members this Thursday, newsletter subscribers on Friday, and to the general public on Saturday.

In a related story, Brock Lesnar‘s health status will be updated this week, which means we’ll soon find out whether he’ll be coming back this summer to fight the winner of Mir/Carwin, or if his career will be on ice for even longer — like, permanently. So basically, here are the possibilities we’re looking at, from most atractive to least attractive:

(Faber works out on a public tennis court and scares the hell out of the local kids in Fight Magazine’s latest video project.)

Urijah Faber had a rough 2009.  He rebounded from his shocking upset loss to Mike Brown with a submission win over the increasingly beatable Jens Pulver, then lost a second fight to Brown that resulted in some seriously messed up mitts.  A 1-1 year with a little hand surgery might be no biggie to some fighters, but considering that Faber had beaten the hell out of everyone in his path from October of 2005 up through June of 2008, you can see how that many bummers in a row might have been a new and unpleasant experience for him. 

This Sunday Faber jumps back in against 27-year-old Brazilian Rafael Assuncao, who is 15-1 and currently riding a nice little six-fight winning streak of his own.  His only loss so far was a somewhat suspect decision against Jeff Curran who, it should be noted, Faber beat by submission back in 2007.  Obviously, the WEC has to be hoping for a Faber renaissance in 2010, since he’s still one of the most recognizable names they have.  Assuncao is not exactly an easy win for anybody at this point, but Faber needs a victory like Mizuto Hirota needs a cast and some Vicodin right now.

After the jump, relive Assuncao’s scrap with Curran and ask yourself, could this man get Urijah’s year off to a very bad start, or is he fodder for a brand new "California Kid" highlight reel?

(These two guys could be brothers. Brothers with very different attitudes toward tanning.)

What do you do if you’re Strikeforce and you’ve just signed one of the most terrifyingly aggressive strikers of the modern era?  If you’re smart, you toss him against another heavy-hitter right off the bat and see whose head is still on their shoulders afterwards.  That seems to be the plan with new Strikeforce signee Melvin Manhoef, who will reportedly be taking on Robbie Lawler at Strikeforce’s Miami event on January 30.  There’s no official confirmation from Strikeforce on this just yet, but we know that they do owe Lawler a fight after he got shafted out of his chance to beat up Trevor Prangley in December, and Manhoef barely had a chance to break a sweat when he popped Kazuo Misaki at Dynamite!! on New Year’s Eve.

In fact, Manhoef was asked about the possibility of facing Lawler at his post-fight press conference in Tokyo, and he seemed game even if he didn’t appear to know too much about Lawler.  Said the Dutch striker:

(Props: The TrainWreck)

If you thought Benson Henderson’s performance against Donald Cerrone was the craziest display of submission defense/pain tolerance in recent MMA history, you need to watch the above video, which shows the second and final round of Bogdan Cristea‘s decision loss to Daisuke Nakamura at M-1 Challenge 5 (7/17/08). Nakamura, God bless him, does everything he can to finish this fight. He bends Cristea’s leg in a kneebar, then transitions to an equally nasty-looking heel-hook. He tries one armbar, then another, then a kimura. Cristea shakes them off, and when the fight goes back to the feet, he actually puts Nakamura in trouble with strikes.

At the 3:31 mark, Nakamura tries a flying armbar to get the fight back to the ground. Cristea escapes (obviously), so Nakamura transitions into a straight armbar that would have finished any other opponent. Cristea shakes his finger "no." As the fight ends, we learn that Cristea was previously hit by a car and left for dead, and nearly had his arm amputated. And if he didn’t let a car rip off his arm, he certainly isn’t going to let some little punk in a black Speedo do it. Bogdan Cristea’s enormous balls: We salute you.

(Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

About two weeks before Thiago Silva‘s UFC 108 showdown with Rashad Evans, rumors began popping up that Silva had suffered an ankle injury in training, and the UFC was paying him extra money to stay on the cursed card and save the main event. Silva’s manager, Alex Davis, immediately set the story straight with MMA Junkie, saying "That report is completely false. Thiago is 100 percent and he’s busy preparing for this fight. Not only has the UFC not paid any extra money for Thiago to fight through an injury, but to the contrary, in my 10 years of dealing with the UFC, (matchmaker) Joe Silva and the staff have always said it’s better to pull out of a fight if you’re hurt rather than lose a fight because you’re injured."

But now that Silva lost his fight, Davis has come back to say that "100 percent" might have been overstating the case:

(Props: MMA Scraps)

As if to prove that he has an excellent sense of humor about his inability to stay in a long-term monogamous relationship, Randy Couture jumped into the role of a fictitious divorce attorney for our amusement.  The acting isn’t great, but it is funny.  At least, it’s funny as long as you aren’t one of Couture’s ex-wives or children, and that’s such a small audience anyway so who cares if traumatic events in their lives are mined for a cheap laugh?  Certainly not us.  The day we value individual feelings over humor is the day we hang it up for good.

After the jump, proof that Dynamite!! 2009 was not Shinya Aoki‘s first time snapping a dude’s arm and generally not giving a fuck afterwards.

(James Toney: the worst-case scenario of Thomas Jefferson’s dream.)

…he’d like to put your mind at ease in this interview with FightHype.com:

“They talking about ground game? That don’t mean nothing to me dog. Number one, I ain’t going to allow none of them boys to lay on top of me like a lil’ fag, you know what I’m saying? I ain’t going to the ground; that ain’t happening, you know what I’m saying?

…I know a lot of them thinking they would fuck me up and they gonna shoot in on me and all of that, but I ain’t going to the ground; that ain’t happening. I got one of the best mixed martial arts trainers in the world, which is my daddy. You know what I’m saying? He is one of the original death fighters. They fought to the death like in them movies, but it’s a matter of time. I will be ready to go.”

You know how when you’re a kid and your parents tell you things that might be exaggerations of the truth, or even just outright lies, and they don’t see any harm in it as long as it makes for a good bedtime story and gets you to go to sleep so they can have ten peaceful minutes alone at night to sip brandy and stare out at the driveway?  It’s possible that James Toney‘s dad took things a little too far with his yarns about fighting to the death, like in them movies.

With his one-year steroid suspension coming to an end next month, UFC Hall-of-Famer/Juggalo wrestler Ken Shamrock is ready to get back out there and prove that he can still circle the cage for a few minutes, fall dead to the mat after getting punched, and collect his paycheck. And get this: Some attention-hungry new promotion is actually giving him a shot at a championship belt.

MMA Fighting passes along the news that International Unlimited Fighting‘s debut event (March 6; Cancun, Mexico) will feature a five-round light-heavyweight title bout between Shammy and Seth Petruzelli. If you’ll recall, Shamrock was originally supposed to face Kimbo Slice at EliteXC: Heat in October ’08, but pulled out at the last minute due to a cut over his eye, and was replaced by Petruzelli, who went on to knock Slice out in 14 seconds. It’s unclear how the IUF will be able to spin that bit of shared history into the inevitable grudge-match angle. If anything, Petruzelli is probably thankful to Shamrock for providing him with the opportunity to make his name off of Kimbo on network television. We can only hope that Shamrock calls Petruzelli a pink-haired fruitcake and threatens to beat him into a living death.

Petruzelli — who will win this fight in the first round, assuming there’s no pre-fight drug test that would bar Shamrock from competing in the first place, and since it’s being held in Mexico I’m assuming we’re all good — last competed in August, when he scored a first-round TKO over Chris Baten.