(More pics here. Props to FightOpinion for the tip.)

Josh Barnett‘s appeal of his denial of licensure in the state of California was postponed for a fourth time yesterday, after Barnett failed to show up to the hearing. The Babyface Assassin had a good excuse, though — he was busy beating down Bob Sapp at an Inoki Genome Federation pro-wrestling event in Tokyo. Though Barnett’s attorney appeared at the hearing, it wasn’t good enough for the California State Athletic Commission, which rescheduled his case until April 20th. Said Barnett’s attorney, Michael J. DiMaggio:

(I’m not going to lie to you Stephan, that’s probably going to leave a mark.)

Though he appeared to be headed for a loss anyway, Stephan Bonnar is not happy with the way his fight against Krzysztof Soszynski ended at UFC 110, and it’s hard to blame him.  After an accidental headbutt caused a nauseating cut on his forehead which lathered the mat with blood, the fight was stopped and K-Sos was awarded the TKO victory with just minutes left in the fight.  Ideally, a fight that’s stopped due to a headbutt should go to the scorecards rather than being declared a loss for the fighter who was just fouled, but hey, what do you expect in Australia?  No place that produced Hugh Jackman and Errol Flynn is going to play by your silly rules.

But the best part about this story – or the worst part, if you’re Bonnar – is that he now has a scar on his forehead shaped oddly like a ‘K.’  As in, the first letter of K-Sos’s name.  It’s like he was branded by his enemy in defeat.  From now until the day he dies, when his body will presumably be blasted into space because, hell, that’s what we do with everything in the future, at least in my imagination, he will bear the mark of K-Sos. 

And yet, because Bonnar is not the type of guy to give up just because it’s probably the smart thing to do, he wants another go-round with the sharp-skulled K-Sos.  Soszynski says he’s up for it "if the UFC wants it and the fans want it."  I guess this is where we turn it over to you.  Any interest in Bonnar/K-Sos II?  If so, what are the odds that Bonnar can somehow even the score by carving an ‘S’ into K-Sos’s head?  Follow-up question: Do you think he should opt for the ‘B’ instead, just to make it clear that the ‘S’ doesn’t stand for Soszynski?  Short of a custom made signet ring that he sneaks into the Octagon, how would he even accomplish that?

(Aoki vs. Sotiropoulos, Shooto: Champion Carnival, 10/14/06. Props: MiddleEasy. Fight starts at the 4:00 mark.)

Before he was a rising lightweight star in the UFC, George Sotiropoulos was just another Australian prospect trying to make a name for himself. In October 2006, Sotiropoulos found himself in the ring with Shinya Aoki, who had become the 170-pound boss of Shooto earlier that year. As you’ll see, Georgie spent the entire first round desperately defending leg-lock attempts. Clearly outmatched in the grappling department, he tried a different strategy as soon as round two started — he punted Aoki directly in the groin. The Tobikan Judan couldn’t continue, and the fight was ruled a DQ loss for Sotiropoulos. It wasn’t the first time that Aoki was stopped due to a foul, and it wouldn’t be the last. In 2005, Aoki earned a DQ victory over Shigetoshi Iwase thanks to a low blow, and his first meeting with Gesias Cavalcante ended in a no-contest due to some illegal elbows to the back of the head. Bad luck or overacting? And speaking of nasty nut shots…

After the jump: Former American Gladiator/"MMA fighter" Justice Smith kicks a man in the balls as hard as he can, in the name of science. 

Ay dog, we just wanted to let you know that our Wrong Side of Town DVD caption contest ends tomorrow at noon ET, so go here to throw in your final entries for a chance to win.

Bonus, after the jump: Check out the picture we were almost going to use for this contest, before we came across the above shot of Kimbo and the Pimpmidget. No, this is not another caption contest — wasting company time to come up with one-liners for a ridiculous photo of Aleksander Emelianenko should be its own reward.

(Props: McSluggaCrackedMySkull)

Here’s the thing about Bruce Buffer: Even when he’s not working, he’s still working. During Wanderlei Silva‘s entrance at UFC 110, the Buff could be spotted lurking behind Wandy’s team, grooving to "Sandstorm" like everybody else in the building and looking forward to the end of the night when he could tear off his suit and transform into Party Buffer. We apologize that we can only present this moment to you in animated gif form, but if you turn up your speakers, click here and stare at this thing until your eyes glaze over, you’ll eventually start to feel like Bruce is inside you. Don’t fight it. Let it happen.

(Fight starts at around the 3:40 mark.)

Chances are this was yet another weekend that slipped by without you ever pausing to ask that timeless question, ‘I wonder what that one Power Ranger dude is up to?’ If you had stopped thinking about yourself for one lousy minute and given some thought to Jason David Frank, former Green Ranger and the creator of the Jesus Didn’t Tap clothing line, you might have found out that he won his second MMA fight in Texas on Friday night. Like his first foray into the cage, this one ended in the first round, this time due to strikes against an opponent who was not quite ready for primetime from the look of it.

What Chris Rose lacked in polish he attempted to make up for in sheer aggression, but alas it was not enough. Frank kept the pressure on, so much so that he appeared to knee a downed Rose in the head at one point, and eventually forced the referee to stop the onslaught at the 2:09 mark, much to the delight of Frank’s screaming supporters. Two fights and two victories in less than a month’s time isn’t a bad run, but we aren’t going to get too excited until he agrees to step up in competition and face Lord Zedd in a catchweight bout.

Cain Velasquez and Wanderlei Silva weren’t the only big winners over the weekend. Some of you managed to parlay the goings-on in Australia at UFC 110 into personal success with our MMA FightPicker, and unlike those poor suckers you were able to do it without ever leaving the comforting glow of your computer screen.

But before we get to shouting out some winners, we must answer the question, who was the superior Ben in this weekend’s FightPicker action? The answer is me (BF). I finished sixth in Journeyman Pool 30 #390 with 160 points, which doesn’t sound very impressive until you note that BG finished fifteenth with 130 points, coming in just ahead of Joe Bananas, who we can only assume is the owner of a discount electronics store known for its certifiably insane deals on everything from digital cameras to personal computers.

(When you know you’ve won a fight, you don’t have to run around with your arms raised, making a big show for the judges. You can just lay on the mat, drooling like a champion. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Following a successful debut in Australia this weekend, the UFC handed out $50,000 performance bonuses to the following lucky bastards:

Fight of the Night: George Sotiropoulos and Joe Stevenson, for their main-card three-rounder. Silva/Bisping might have been a closer battle, but Sotiropoulos gave the Sydney crowd what they paid for — 15 minutes of Aussie domination.

Knockout of the Night: Cain Velasquez, for his first-round smashing of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in the headlining bout.

Submission of the Night: Chris Lytle, for scoring UFC 110′s only sub, a kneebar of Brian Foster during the prelims. Amazingly, Lytle has won seven end-of-night bonuses in his last eight UFC appearances.

In other news…

(Photos courtesy of Sherdog.)

Good thing the Aussies aren’t a squeamish bunch, because UFC 110 was one of those events that left a lot of plasma on the mat.  Between the accidental headbutt-induced bloodbath of Stephan Bonnar/K-Sos and the gash on Anthony Perosh‘s head that was so nasty even Cro Cop looked a little ill, it was a real horror movie show inside the Octagon in Sydney.  Fortunately the ringside doctor had plenty of gauze, and the viewers at home had Joe Rogan to inject some humor into the situation…

MMA Minute: UFC 110 Edition – Watch more Funny Videos

What?  Why are you even reading this?  There’s a video with everything we care to say right above this text.  That’s pretty much all there is to it.  Other than that, what do you want?  A poem?  Well you can forget it.  What do we look like, Robert freaking Frost over here?  Just click play.

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

For those of you who have ever wished that you could spend a Saturday night reading live results from a UFC event sprinkled with more "Crocodile Dundee" references than are even remotely necessary, this is about to be an evening you’ll never forget.  UFC 110 goes down at the Acer Arena in Sydney, Australia tonight.  It’s actually Sunday afternoon there, so maybe that means they already know how all the fights turn out.  Man, I sure hope they don’t spoil it for us.  They probably will, though.  Bunch of criminals. 

Stick with us for commentary and intricate descriptions of Joe Rogan’s ice-related freakouts, and everything should work out just fine anyway.  Remember to hit refresh often to keep the page current, and remember, when you’re bickering with one another in the comment section, let’s keep the ad hominem attacks to a reasonable minimum. With both Bens indisposed tonight, Chad Dundas of The Rumble checks in to handle the particulars of the live blog.

(Talking UFC 110 betting odds with Dave Farra and Steve Cofield. Such fun.)

- Breaking down UFC 110, and giving a little thanks in the process. (The Rumble)

- Chris Lytle enjoys fighting other humans. (Fight Magazine)

- C.B. Dollaway looking forward to step up in competition. (Heavy)

- Fedor sits down for an extended chat in Kiev. (MMA Share)

- The history of the gogoplata in MMA. (MMA Fighting)

- Wanderlei Silva started training just to get girls. (Fighters Only)

- Cesar Gracie doesn’t get the "fetish" over Nick Diaz’s weed use. (MMA Weekly)

- MMA still not a priority in Ontario. (Bleacher Report)

- Professionals weigh in on Big Nog vs. Velasquez. (Sherdog)

- Tiger Woods is deeply sorry for boning all those chicks. (Scores Report)

- Top 10 Las Vegas sporting experiences. (Ask Men)

- Lil’ Calvin predicts UFC 110. (Asylum)

- How to win an Olympic gold medal in 2010. (Holy Taco)

- Road to the Oscars: Best actor showdown. (Screen Junkies)

- Human dog eats lunch, is kind of creepy. (Break)

- An inspiring moment with our veterans. (All Left Turns)

- Have a night with the boys and still keep your woman happy. (Made Man)

- Old woman beats robber with price scanner. (Nothing Toxic)

(Dammit, that’s the same leather bikini I just put on. One of us is going to have to change, because I am not going to look like an idiot at the Microtel Inn pool. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

Now that Logan Stanton’s career as a UFC Octagon girl is firmly in the rearview mirror, she no longer has to smile and play nice when people ask about the experience. It’s like that time I got fired from Old Navy for my political views (and for stealing a bunch of cargo shorts) – once you get that last paycheck, you can tell the whole mall about how Steve used to peep in the dressing rooms at teenage girls before he became assistant manager and started thinking he was too good for everyone.

Stanton’s version of recent events seems to be that she was never really that into being an Octagon girl anyway, and the UFC is a company that will fire anyone at any time if the mood strikes them. Even the girls’ beloved “Octagon mom,” Leslie Hedges, got let go recently, which Stanton said didn’t surprise her because “the UFC really has no loyalty to anyone.”

High drama.  Bad blood.  Low blows.  Tired clichés.  Everything we were expecting from the upcoming season of "The Ultimate Fighter," all wrapped in one neat little video package.  No surprises here.  Hope you’re ready for a season’s worth of a laconic Chuck Liddell becoming increasingly agitated with Tito Ortiz‘s mouth, while Ortiz tries out one-liner burns that never quite hit the mark they’re aiming for.  If that doesn’t interest you, might as well checkout right now and go watch "Tool Academy 3."  Actually, it’s pretty much the same crap over there, so either way you’re stuck. 

(Some Silva vs. Bisping hype, courtesy of nicktheface.)

Update: In light of the Rothwell/Cro Cop/Perosh situation, which will henceforth be referred to as the saga of Mirko and "The Hippo," just for laughs, we’ve updated the FightPicker questions. We’ve also replaced Sinosic/Haseman with Lytle/Foster, so there’s that too. You should probably go update your picks accordingly. Picks can be changed until 11 pm PST tonight. If, after that point, any more changes happen to make our existing questions obsolete, we’ll just declare those a tie. Sound good?

It’s the Friday before a big MMA event, and as new tradition dictates, it’s time for BF and I to make our MMA FightPicker picks public so that we can bust each other’s balls on Monday morning. Before we get to it, have you made your own picks yet? And have you considered entering one of the prize pools to win an iPod Touch? Not trying to nag or anything, it’s just that we regret the things we don’t do in this life, you know? Anyway…

1. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Cain Velasquez at UFC 110: Who will win?
BG: Nogueira. He’ll handle Velasquez standing, and he’s strong enough on the ground to avoid being squashed.
BF: Strong enough to avoid being squashed, yes. But strong enough to avoid being put there again and again and worked over for three rounds? I have my doubts. Velasquez via decision. Maybe then you’ll realize that it is not 2006 anymore.

(You take all these precautions in training, and still something bad happens. C’est la vie, old buddy.)

Some ideas are such obviously bad ideas that watching them being methodically put into action is like watching a car crash in slow motion. Certain marriages are like that, as are most of the movies Kevin Smith has made in the last ten years. Now it’s starting to look like the Mirko Filipovic/Anthony Perosh bout at UFC 110 might become MMA’s version of “Jersey Girl.” Only unlike “Jersey Girl” we will all end up watching it.

In the most recent development, a Croation website that looks like a bunch of squiggly lines to us (but apparently makes sense to someone at Fighters Only) is reporting that Cro Cop suffered a cut over his eye in a late sparring session and had to receive several stitches. This doesn’t mean the fight is off, however. Cro Cop reportedly refused to pull out and “let weeks of hard preparation go to waste.” Since there’s no athletic commission to act as the irrefutable voice of reason in this instance, and since the UFC has already demonstrated a willingness to make this fight happen no matter how crazy it becomes, it looks like all systems are still go.

But what about Anthony “The Hippo” Perosh, anyway? What’s going through his head right about now?

(The best part about this Anthony Perosh highlight video?  It’s set to Mötley Crüe’s "Kickstart My Heart.")

Welcome to Bummertown, Potato Nation.  UFC.com informs us that Ben Rothwell has been pulled from his heavyweight clash with Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic at UFC 110 with an undisclosed illness, and in his place will be Australian local boy Anthony "The Hippo" Perosh.  As if one late change wasn’t enough to disappoint the sold-out crowd, the rematch between Elvis Sinosic and Chris Haseman, which was only interesting to Australians to begin with, has been removed from the card completely after Sinosic suffered a shoulder injury. 

But chances are you don’t really care about that.  Chances are you’re wondering, who the hell is Anthony Perosh, and does he have any shot in hell of beating Cro Cop on a few days’ notice?  The answers to those questions, in order, are 1) He’s a 37 year-old jiu-jitsu black belt who is 10-5 with losses in the UFC to notable fighters such as Jeff Monson and Christian Wellisch and wins over no one you’ve ever heard of, and 2) no, probably not. 

Perosh is homeboys with Sinosic (though who isn’t in the Australian MMA scene?), and he appears to be a natural 205-pounder.  His most recent outing saw him win a rare TKO victory over Kym Robinson in November, and before that he went down to a nasty knockout at the hands of James Te Huna in the finals of the Cage Fighting Championships light heavyweight tournament.  This is the point where we say that in MMA anything can happen and blah, blah, blah, but odds are that this guy is headed for the land of wind and ghosts this weekend.  Don’t believe us?  Watch the Perosh-Te Huna fight after the jump.  Then imagine that Te Huna is a heavyweight who once did this kind of stuff to people.  Prognosis: negative.

After watching this video of Jose Canseco in the gym with Nick Diaz and his boys, we still don’t know whether the former slugger is really learning anything about fighting.  All we know is that he has seen what real training looks like when professionals do it, and that he had the foresight to make sure that somebody was shooting video of him while he witnessed it. 

Honestly, this might be a more interesting video if we could remove Canseco from the frame altogether.  Then you’d just have Nick Diaz explaining some of the finer points of the clinch game, which is pretty awesome.  If that’s not enough to hold your attention, there’s also some Fifty Cent to bob your head to.  See?  Something for everyone.  Except Jose Canseco.  He only watches videos if Jose Canseco is in them, which results in him watching a lot of really annoying videos.  Or unintentionally hilarious ones…

(Photo courtesy of wicombatsports.com.)

Much to our dismay, Ben Rothwell says he won’t be rocking an Extenze sponsorship for his bout with Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic at UFC 110 this weekend.  But that’s not the only thing that Rothwell has changed as he hopes for a better outcome in his second UFC fight.  From his preparation to his overall mental state, everything about this time out looks to be different for Rothwell, and he’s hoping the result will bear that out.

You changed up your training some for this fight. What did you do differently and why did you decide to do it?

I moved my training full-time to Wisconsin, where Duke Roufus is my coach. Instead of only getting him part of the time, now he’s got full control over everything. It’s definitely for the best. There’s a lot of good energy here. I’m not trying to be negative, but the past couple of years that good energy wasn’t there for me. I wasn’t as passionate about training. It was a job and I was doing it because I had to, not because I wanted to. But when I came back here I was working harder and having more fun. That’s what you need. I’m just trying to keep getting better.

With the help of our buddy Josh G., CagePotato has been officially recognized by that ultimate source of online knowledge, Wikipedia. Gone are the days when our only presence on that site was a reference to how cursed Phil Baroni’s wife is. Now we’re ready to be listed alongside such thought-provoking topics as Other Roles Played by Martin Lawrence on the TV series Martin and the Lloyds Bank turd. As you can see from the screen-cap above, there are still some doubts as to how serious of an operation we are. So if you have anything positive to add to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CagePotato (preferably sourced to a respectable third-party), send your suggestions to feedback@cagepotato.com and we’ll get ‘em up. This should go without saying, but page-vandalism won’t be appreciated, even if it’s funny page-vandalism. Do us this one favor, okay?

(Skip to the 2:18 mark to see Bisping seeking solace in the arms of his Twitter followers)

In Michael Bisping‘s latest video blog from Australia he pauses for a moment to get one thing straight: it’s not his fault that things have gotten personal between him and Wanderlei Silva.  For reasons that are either totally understandable or utterly baffling (depending on your own personal take on the guy), Bisping seems to have become the guy that fans and fellow fighters love to hate.  He doesn’t see why, and insists he never wanted to get into a feud with Silva, who he calls "a bit of a bully." 

It is at this point where we are forced to feel something resembling sympathy for Bisping.  It’s a fleeting feeling though, and it passes as soon as we see the moment from the press conference in part two of the video blog where Bisping tells Silva, "You do need to win fights in this business, Wanderlei, and you haven’t been doing that lately."  Yep, there goes that sympathy.  All better now.

Check it out for yourself after the jump, including the odd moment where this fight is referred to as "perhaps one of the most eagerely anticipated bouts in UFC history."  I guess at this point we’re just spouting hyperbole and hoping that no one is listening too closely.

(Joe Stevenson and George Sotiropoulos break down their main-card matchup. Props: YouTube.com/UFC.)

— During a UFC 110 press conference held yesterday in Sydney, UFC president Dana White announced that the winner of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Cain Velasquez could potentially get the next shot at Brock Lesnar‘s heavyweight belt. "Mir and Carwin are going to fight for the interim title because that fight was already made before Brock said he was coming back," White explained, "[but] the winner of this fight [between Nogueira and Velasquez] puts them right in the mix because something could happen to either Shane or Mir in that fight where they couldn’t fight Brock, so the winner of this fight would fight Brock."

— After the UFC’s first trip to Australia sold out the first day, White stated that Australia could be an annual stop for the UFC. Also, a season of TUF hosted Down Under is "absolutely possible."

— Wanderlei Silva and Michael Bisping‘s professional rivalry is getting personal. At yesterday’s press conference, Silva said "We’re going to have a great show, and I’m going to kick your ass." Bisping took it in stride, but later needled Silva about his recent losses. Silva told Bisping to shut up, and said "100 percent of the guys that talk to him, (talk to me and say) kick him…Everybody don’t like him." To which Bisping responded, "That’s nice. Fortunately, I couldn’t give a [expletive]." In an earlier interview, Silva said that seeing Quinton Jackson in Bisping’s corner will only make him more motivated to beat The Count: "Maybe I’ll beat the one and then after, the other. Two for the price of one."

(The tag line is "Who wants to die first" — just like that, without a question mark. That’s how you know these guys are serious.)

Don’t ask us where we got them, but we recently came into possession of a box of Wrong Side of Town DVDs, which don’t even hit stores until next Tuesday. (I know, I know, this crazy life we lead.) But instead of flipping all of them on the underground bootleg market, we’re going to skim five off the top and give them to you, our loyal and long-suffering readers. Hit us with the plot synopsis, LionsGateShop.com:

To win a copy of the flick, all you have to do is come up with a clever caption to the completely unrelated photo after the jump — which shows Kimbo Slice posing with the World’s Tiniest Pimp — and post it in the comments section below by Tuesday at noon ET. Finalists will be announced later that day. This is your moment, people. Grab it with both hands.

(Dammit Ken, this is why we begged you to get a real attorney. No matter what he says, watching every episode of ‘Judge Judy’ does not qualify Big John to give legal advice.)

If we’ve learned anything at all from receiving UFC press releases over the last few years, it’s that the world’s top MMA organization is not the most gracious of winners. Whether they beat you in a ratings battle or a game of hangman, they’re probably going to gloat about it in a press release. The latest opportunity for internet chest-thumping comes in the form of a legal victory over UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock, who lost his lawsuit in a Nevada court today and now gets to have his nose rubbed in it by Zuffa’s PR staff. Because apparently laboring on far past his prime wasn’t enough of an indignity.

You may recall that Shamrock sued the UFC when they refused to give him another fight following his post-beatdown retirement after a third loss to Tito Ortiz. Shamrock thought he should be able to unretire and have the UFC honor the old contract, while the UFC thought he should go get his face smashed elsewhere. Turns out Judge Susan H. Johnson agreed with the UFC, which means Shamrock won’t be getting a fat payday after all this legal wrangling. Instead, just to make his life even worse, he may be getting a bill:

(Props: MMA Scraps)

Now that Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic is on the verge of making his possibly glorious, possibly disastrous return to the cage against Ben Rothwell at UFC 110 this weekend, we might as well take a look at the man’s softer side. Granted, he’s a bad-ass Croatian fighter, so his soft side isn’t even really all that soft.  It’s more of a malleable metal than a bowl of jello, really, but that’s not the point.  The point is, if there’s one thing Cro Cop respects it’s kids who kick other kids in the head.

(Props: UFC.com via Card)

"The guy who won’t stop ’til you’re done, and the guy who can’t be stopped" — so says Dana White in the latest installment of Countdown when describing the UFC 110 main event between Cain Velasquez and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. It’s a matchup that seems to hit almost all the buttons. Besides the Irresistible Force/Immovable Object dichotomy, you’ve got the young up-and-comer vs. the war-weathered veteran, the ground-and-pounder vs. the submission artist, the American vs. the Brazilian. Nogueira is feeling as strong as ever thanks to his new S&C coach and his training at the stacked Black House gym. Velasquez is ready to fight the big names he’s watched since the sport was young. But is he ready to beat them?

Meanwhile, another Brazilian legend, Wanderlei Silva, faces a must-win situation against British star Michael Bisping. Bisping and his camp respect Silva, but Wandy’s UFC bonus checks and BJJ black belt don’t mean shit to them. We learn a few things about Silva in this show: He’s back with his original trainer Rafael Cordeiro, and looking to recapture the "old" Wanderlei Silva. He started his own gym partly because nobody wanted to train with him at Xtreme Couture. His fans are really his friends, and the fighters he develops are really his family. He snores, which is something his funny little manager knows all about.

(This matchup was briefly considered as a replacement bout until Sims was deemed ‘non-competitive’ after it was revealed that the guy in the sweatshirt had taken six weeks of jiu-jitsu classes a few years back.)

As much as we hate government intrusion into the private lives of citizens – particularly those citizens among us who just want to date that cute sixteen year-old chick with the glasses who works at the movie theater without those arbitrary ‘age of consent’ laws getting in the way – but there are times when it’s obviously necessary, such as in the case of the completely unnecessary Tim Sylvia vs. Wes Sims rematch. The Ohio Athletic Commission, in its infinite wisdom, has decided not to sanction the bout for the March 20 Adrenaline event in Youngstown, on the grounds that “the fight was not going to be competitive at this time.”

That’s right. Tim Sylvia, who got knocked out by Ray Mercer last year, can’t fight Sims, who “sucks” too much to even get in the same cage with "The Maine-iac." Forget the one-sided loss to Bobby Lashley and his attempts to sell Kimbo Slice’s skull cap from TUF 10, now Sims has officially hit bottom.

Not that we’re complaining, mind you. Whatever prevents this fight from bringing the overall integrity of the sport down with it, whether it’s an act of God or a heavy-handed athletic commission, we’re all for it. Now let’s see what the Ohio commission can do about those age of consent laws.

(Proof that being a bad-ass does not prevent you from looking like a stereotypical tourist in a foreign country. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

This weekend’s UFC event down under is a tricky one for your old pal the Enabler. You see, years ago I promised my sponsor that I wouldn’t bet on any more Australian sporting events. It’s a long story that I’d rather not get into right now, so let’s just say that it involved a high-stakes netball match and a ’92 Pontiac that wasn’t exactly mine to lose.

But this is different. This is the UFC. Surely I can make an exception here, right? Not even that lot of criminals can fix a fight in the UFC. Not like those crooked netball games. The tastiest betting lines on the internet come to us courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (+105) vs. Cain Velasquez (-110)
Wanderlei Silva (-130) vs. Michael Bisping (+130)
Joe Stevenson (-240) vs. George Sotiropoulos (+218)
Keith Jardine (+140) vs. Ryan Bader (-135)
Mirko Filipovic (-135) vs. Ben Rothwell (+130)

Happy hump-day, Potato Nation. We have a couple of important MMA FightPicker-related announcements to make this morning. First off, FightPicker now has a fan page on Facebook, where you can get updates on the game, chat with other players, and make your weekly picks. Do us a solid and become a fan, okay?
 
Secondly, and more importantly: The first FightPicker prize pools are now open for business! If you go to the Open Pools page you’ll see three new pool categories at the top. Here’s how they’re set up…

iPod Touch Pool Unlimited: Buy-in is 250 PotatoChips. There is no player limit to the pool, so your odds of winning decrease with every new person that enters. The winner of the pool* will take home an iPod Touch. (Street value: $199)
iPod Touch Pool 25: Buy-in is 500 PotatoChips**, but your odds of winning are greater because we’re capping the entries at 25 players. Once this pool fills up, we’ll start another 25-person pool, repeating as necessary. The winner of each 25-person pool will score an iPod Touch.
iPod Touch Pool 10: Buy-in is 1,200 PotatoChips; entries are capped at 10 players, so your odds of winning are pretty damn favorable. Once this pool fills up, we’ll start another 10-person pool. The winner of each 10-person pool will score an iPod Touch.

* To prevent ties, we’ve added a tie-breaker question to these pools, so make sure to answer it if you enter one of them. If there’s still a tie even after the tie-breaker question is factored in, the prize will go the first-place-scorer who entered the pool earliest.

** By now, some of you are wondering how the hell you can enter these pools with your miserable stake of 34 PotatoChips or whatever you have left at this point. Well, if you really want an iPod Touch and you feel confident in your picking abilities, you can purchase chips here. Throw in a few bucks (which supports the site, by the way) and you’ll be good to go. Or, spend the day filling out surveys, whichever’s easier.

Questions, comments, concerns? Holler at us in the comments section, and please enter a UFC 110 pool this week if you haven’t already. Good luck!

(Skip to the 2:35 mark for the good stuff. Props: MMA Share)

A spinning backfist knockout is a lot like an open container of alcohol.  It’s really great in the places where it’s allowed, but a good way to have your night ruined in the places where it isn’t.  Unfortunately for "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung, the "It’s Showtime" event in Prague is the kind of place that frowns upon such displays of 360-degree backfistedness, even if the Czechs don’t exactly have their own word for it.  Guess we’ll have to add it to our list.

The sad thing is, to us it’s a highlight reel knockout.  To them, it’s cause for a disqualification.  Much like gun laws in the U.S., the legality of various strikes can change just as soon as you cross the border into a new place.  That’s why you always call ahead first.  I learned that lesson the hard way after my soccer kicks and head stomps did not go over well at my cousin’s wedding in Arizona.  I’m just saying, why even have an open bar if you don’t want to have any fun?