If you’re waiting until the last minute to make your FightPicker picks for UFC 109, either because you’re the kind of sad sack who always waits until the last minute with everything, or simply because you’d rather compete in a pool against such sad sacks, you should see this first.  It’s a clip from the UFC’s most recent "Countdown" show, in which we see Paulo Thiago at work in his BOPE unit.  Like the nice man in the beret says at the 0:50 mark, "When society needs help, they call police.  When police needs help, they call BOPE."  In other words, BOPE takes no shit off nobody.  Just look at their crazy logo if you don’t believe us.

The awesomeness of all this was not lost on Mike Swick, who wrote on his Twitter: "I have to admit, his segment was badass!  I’m in the gym with blondie and Fitch and he’s rapelling out of Helos with an M4.  Damn you Thiago!"

Just something to think about if you’re caught between picking Swick or Thiago and can’t decide.  One of those fighters has been in the kind of critical situations that "hardens a man’s spirit," while the other has to hang out with this freaking guy every day.  Actually, that’s still a tough call. 

(You know that fight we let you see for free last October? Any interest in paying a lot of money to see it again? Photo courtesy of ESPN.)

After threatening the move for a year-and-a-half, the WEC announced today that it will officially be putting an event on pay-per-view in April, seriously, for real this time. WEC 48 (April 24th, Sacramento), will be headlined by the featherweight title fight between reigning champion Jose Aldo and former champ Urijah Faber, with the lightweight title rematch between Benson Henderson and Donald Cerrone in the co-headlining spot; also, Mike Brown will continue his path back up the 145-pound ladder with a scrap against Manny Gamburyan.

In return, the WEC is boldly asking that you shell out $44.99, or four cents more than the standard price for a UFC PPV show – which feels a little presumptuous, considering the promotion is low on genuine stars and it’s the first time that a WEC broadcast hasn’t been free. Of course, if there’s any WEC event that’s worthy of your money, it’s this one, and hardcore MMA fans know that the WEC may put on the most consistently entertaining events on the planet. Still, is that enough to justify a $45 reaming? In this economy? Check out the poll on the right side of the homepage, and let us know how you feel. Any predictions for how many buys this card will take in?

(For those of you who hate reading, watch me, Steve Cofield, and Dave Farra run through our betting picks for Raw Vegas.)

The UFC’s Seniors Tour kicks into high gear this weekend with the Randy Couture-Mark Coleman main event at UFC 109, which means the gamblers among us have even more variables to take into account than usual. We may not have to worry about Octagon jitters from these guys, but we do have to ask ourselves other important questions, like whose joints are more viable these days? Who starts more sentences with, ‘Back in my day…’? Who will reek worse of Icy Hot at fight time? Perhaps most importantly, who needs that win bonus more?

Some things for you to ponder as we look at current betting lines from across the internet, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Randy Couture (-396) vs. Mark Coleman (+350)
Nate Marquardt (-350) vs. Chael Sonnen (+325)
Mike Swick (-220) vs. Paulo Thiago (+202)
Matt Serra (-130) vs. Frank Trigg (+125)
Dan Miller (+325) vs. Demian Maia (-330)

The breakdown…

(Props: letsfindjesus via Fightlinker)

As much as it seems that Joe Rogan has the world’s most kickass life, there are drawbacks to the kind of fame that comes from UFC color-commentary, stand-up comedy tours, and unconventional game shows. For instance, you sometimes have to deal with your genitals being stared at by sweaty, overweight teenagers, who are so brazen about their locker-room lust that even the presence of a video-camera doesn’t scare them away. Though let’s be honest, if Joe wasn’t a member of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu, that creepy kid would probably be staring at some other guy’s dork, famous or not. But there is a ray of hope: According to a mole we have planted in the gym, Fatty Hogwatcher was recently banished from 10th Planet due to his meat-gazing and many other bizarre offenses. So rest easy, Mr. Rogan — unless this kid decides to move his stalking directly to your house, in which case you’re in for a world of hurt.

After the jump: Genghis Con’s look back at the rivalry between Shinya Aoki and Mizuto Hirota, which ended with Hirota suffering a broken arm and a middle finger in his face. Plus, GSP and Nate Marquardt throw down in the wrestling room at the University of Northern Colorado.

("Cyborg" Santos proves that a female fighter can stop a punch just as good as a male one, and for less money too. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

While the rest of the nation might be slowly inching toward gender equality in the workplace, in MMA a woman still does a man’s job for pennies on the dollar. At least, that’s the situation for women not named Gina Carano, which is to say it’s the situation for all the women actively pursuing an MMA career at the moment. This, among other lessons, becomes clear once we take a good hard look at the official payouts from Saturday night’s Strikeforce event.

Nick Diaz: $100,000 (no win bonus)
def. Marius Zaromskis: $30,000

Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos: $35,000 ($15,000 win bonus and $5,000 "championship" bonus)
def. Marloes Coenen: $2,000

Herschel Walker: $600 (no win bonus)
def. Greg Nagy: $5,000

(Props: Fight Magazine)

Strippers, the government, our immediate family – we expect them to lie to us. We’ve gotten so used to it that we barely even notice it anymore.  We just give them our money and try not to think about what it’s really being spent on. But Robbie Lawler? Him, we thought we could trust. When he told us that he wanted to stand and bang with Melvin Manhoef, when he laughed off the idea of taking down an opponent for the first time in recent memory, we believed him. It seemed like a bad idea, but at least it seemed like a sincere bad idea. Only after the fight do we learn that it was all a ruse.  That lying son of a bitch.

As Lawler admits in this video, he didn’t really want any part of Manhoef’s vicious stand-up. The only reason the fight stayed on the feet at all was because Lawler couldn’t find an opportunity to get it to the mat. Instead he got his leg kicked to pieces and his head rattled a little bit before he managed to land that totally pre-planned, super technical right hand. It worked out for him in the end, but at what cost? With this trust now broken, his relationship with the MMA world may never be the same.

(Talk that shit now, "Nurse Jackie."  Photo courtesy of AllElbows.com)

Strikeforce: Miami drew 517,000 viewers on Showtime this past Saturday night, proving that there are some benefits to putting well-known but largely untested fighters in against outmatched opponents. The numbers may not have been quite as good as the 576,000 viewers who tuned in to see Gina Carano and “Cyborg” Santos go at it back in August, but it was still a marked improvement from the 341,000 that watched the last Strikeforce offering on Showtime in December.

So what made the big difference this time? Was it Herschel Walker’s appeal to the common sports fan? Bobby Lashley’s drawing power among pro wrestling fanboys? The mere presence of Wes Sims, one of MMA’s tallest fighters? There’s no way to know for sure, but we’re going to go ahead and speculate that it was some combination of all three, plus all the people who have sold Nick Diaz weed at some point in the past.

The one somber note to all this is that once again the replay of a UFC event – this time UFC 107 – beat Strikeforce in terms of sheer numbers. Spike TV pulled in 2.2 million viewers with B.J. Penn and Diego Sanchez, though of course they did have the advantage of being available in roughly eight times as many homes. Still, over half-a-million people on a premium cable network in lean economic times is nothing to be ashamed of.  Now if they could only work in some kind of vampire-related storyline they might really draw huge audiences.  Your time to shine, Stephen Quadros.

(After this offer, Canseco tweeted that he’s looking for a tanning salon and 24-hour gym to endorse. Seriously.)

It turns out that there is a good reason why MMA shouldn’t let retired athletes from other sports climb into the cage for a little career rejuvenation, and that reason is named Jose Canseco. Something about seeing Herschel Walker stop Greg Nagy with vicious strikes to the armpit at Strikeforce: Miami made the former pro baseball player/steroid abuser/attention whore think that this is his invitation to once again make a mockery of our fine sport with his helpless flailing.

We’re not going to ask why Canseco would refer to himself as “the bad Boy of the Sports industry,” despite not really being in the sports industry anymore. We’re also not going to ask how he chooses which words to capitalize, if in fact he is making choices at all and not simply mashing the keyboard with the end of a mop and hoping for the best. Instead we’re just going to say, no thanks. Put the notion out of your head right now, because no one is interested in a Canseco-Walker celebrity shit-show. I mean, even if he were to decide to actually prepare for a fight, what idiots would invite him to train with them?

Oh, wait…

(‘And that’s for John the Baptist, you son of a bitch!’)

You’re not really a trend in America unless the New York Times writes a story about you. Sometimes you’re not really a trend even if they do write the story, but that’s a topic for another day. Today we look at this story, in which Times reporter R. M. Schneiderman (who has found the most pretentious way possible to avoid going through life as Ross Schneiderman), visits Memphis, Tennessee to watch the boys from Xtreme Ministries duke it out in local MMA action.

This is something that’s happening a lot now, we’re told. Many evangelical churches “have embraced mixed martial arts,” because they’ve realized that this is something that young men are into, particularly the types of young men who aren’t normally into hymns and abstinence.

According to the article, Xtreme Ministries is “a small church near Nashville that doubles as a mixed martial arts academy,” which makes you wonder why major MMA gyms never double as churches, since it would be a great way for Greg Jackson to get tax-exempt status. The focus on MMA helps these churches rebrand Jesus as more of an ass-kicker and less of a peace-offerer, and that in turn is supposed to help them get more young men in the pews on Sunday.

It’s not often that anyone in the MMA media gets to do a video interview that resembles a WWE promo, but this is probably the closest Ariel Helwani is ever going to get to feeling like Mean Gene Okerlund while on the job. Especially once Paul Daley comes on the scene, all Helwani is missing is a tuxedo and a sweet mustache, as well as perhaps a charmingly befuddled expression. Say what you will about “King Mo” Lawal and his chances against Gegard Mousasi, but the man is an entertainer. Anybody who spends that much time and energy thinking about and studying entrances is okay by us.

The only thing we could really do without is his fixation on his own “haters.” Maybe it’s his weak attempt to paint himself as a pro wrestling-style heel, but talking about how many people hate you is a little like going on a first date and talking about how many psycho exes you have. It doesn’t take long before that becomes an annoying personality trait, and one that doesn’t really achieve the desired end. 

If you really want to be a villain, do it the old-fashioned way.  Try talking some smack about the local sports teams in every city you visit, maybe disrespect a national icon or two.  Or, if you’re short on time, just manhandle Helwani during the interview, calling him a pencil-necked geek and threatening to show his wife what a real man looks like.  Trust me, Ariel has watched enough pro wrestling in his life to know exactly how to play along.

(Sylvia vs. Sims @ Superbrawl 38, 12/12/04. You had me at that intro music.)

According to Wes Sims’s manager Ken Pavia, the A-Hole Show will try to follow up his paycheck-collection at Strikeforce: Miami by taking on Tim Sylvia at an Adrenaline MMA event in Youngstown, Ohio, on March 20th. The bout will be held under special rules, in which spectators will be allowed to throw peanuts at the fighters during the match. Just kidding, but with both men drifting near the low points of their careers, it’s hard to look at this meeting as anything but a freak show — even if it’ll surely be sold as a grudge match between two extremely dangerous tall UFC vets.

Sylvia and Sims fought once before in Superbrawl, following Sims’s 0-3 stretch in the UFC and Sylvia’s loss via broken arm to Frank Mir. It was an easy mauling for the Maine-iac, who won by TKO in a minute and a half. In his last appearance, Sylvia rebounded from a humiliating knockout loss against Ray Mercer (and snapped a three-fight losing streak) by scoring a first-round TKO over Jason Riley at Adrenaline 4 in September. Sims most recently put on a ton of weight and lost to Bobby Lashley, following an exhibition loss to Justin Wren on The Ultimate Fighter 10 last year. Is it even worth asking who ya got?

(Now that Warren will be fighting in the U.S. again, maybe he and long lost brother Jon Gruden can finally reconnect and form some type of relationship.)

In early 2009 Joe Warren seemed like just another decorated amateur wrestler making a hasty leap into MMA after a positive marijuana test derailed his Olympic dreams. But then he beat Chase Beebe and "Kid" Yamamoto in his first two fights, and suddenly the MMA world began to take notice. Now, after a bitter loss to Bibiano Fernandes in the semi-finals of Dream’s featherweight Grand Prix, Warren has signed on to compete in Bellator’s 145-pound tournament in 2010. In this exclusive interview, Warren discusses that decision and much more with Cage Potato.

So what made you decide to go with Bellator?

Well, I’ve been wanting to get back in the states and fight, but I’ve also signed an Asia-only contract with Dream for this next year. I was really excited when I met the people from Bellator and I loved the opportunities they were offering me, like the chance to fight on TV here at home, but still go back and win that belt in Dream. I think we all saw eye-to-eye and I’m glad to be in an up-and-coming organization like this in the states.

(Welcome to Ouchtown, population: you, bro. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

Another weekend of fights yields another instant classic punch-face, this time courtesy of Jay Hieron’s left uppercut. The great thing about the punch-face is that no matter how tough or cool or seemingly unflappable a fighter is, everybody looks like they’re wishing they’d chosen a different career path in that one fleeting moment.

In this case, Joe Riggs seems to be regretting his decision not to become a court reporter. It’s a steady paycheck, reasonable hours, and if anyone happens to hit you in the face while you’re on the job, at least you can be assured that they’ll be immediately tackled by a bailiff. The down side of that job is it’s a lot tougher to convince your co-workers to call you Diesel. We make choices and we live with the consequences, I suppose.

(Fight starts at the 2:37 mark. Everything before that is really, really annoying.)

Former Power Ranger Jason David Frank made his MMA debut in Houston, Texas this weekend, where he faced Jonathan Mack in the main event of the Lonestar Beatdown.  Mack seemed to be getting the upper hand early on and even wobbled Frank with a good left hook.  Where he went it wrong, it seems, is in taking the fight to the mat after doing so well on the feet.  It didn’t take long for Frank to lock up an omaplata and wrench it until the ref had to literally shove him off his opponent.  Not terribly sportsmanlike behavior from the guy who’s responsible for the Jesus Didn’t Tap clothing line, but hey, there’s a reason the company isn’t called Jesus Stopped Immediately After You Tapped.

After the jump, Frank breaks down his own performance in a post-fight video interview.  If, like us, you were hoping that everything he says would be as badly dubbed as the Power Ranger TV shows, get ready to be disappointed.

(Marius Zaromskis had no idea getting kicked in the face was so unpleasant. If you’ll excuse him, he has some apologies he needs to get to. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

Who’s up and who’s down after a weekend of fistic goodness on Showtime? The Potato Index’s arbitrary numerical rankings system is here to tell us, so everyone gather ‘round and pay attention.  We are in no mood to repeat ourselves.

Nick Diaz +137
Stockton’s finest does it again, deflecting “The Whitemare’s” assault and putting him away with relative ease. Flushing the THC out of his system must have been harder than the actual fight, and way less fun. Strikeforce says “Mach” Sakurai is likely next for Diaz, despite his two-fight losing streak and general recent decline. Guess a fight with Jay Hieron would just make too much sense.

Marius Zaromskis -73
You can’t fault the guy for a lack of aggression. His early blitz almost panned out, but Diaz’s height and reach advantage helped him stay out of range and wear Zaromskis down. We’d still like to see more of him in Strikeforce, though. Any guy who brings the fight like Zaromskis will always have a place in MMA.

(Before and after: There are 16 differences and two incredibly thick eyebrows in the above photos. Can you spot them all?)

First off, we’d like to send some hearty back-slaps to everybody who helped beta-test MMA FightPicker last week. We think we’ve caught all the major bugs, and the game is pretty damn healthy at this point. So without further ado, allow us to announce the official launch of MMA FightPicker. If you head over to fightpicker.cagepotato.com right now you’ll see a new set of pools offering action on this Saturday’s UFC 109 show. Place your predictions on the outcome of Couture vs. Coleman, the likelihood of Demian Maia picking up another Submission of the Night bonus, and 11 other questions, and try to claw your way up the leaderboard, which currently includes a player named "OctoAbortion" [Ed. note: Nice.] and Ben Fowlkes’s wife but not Ben Fowlkes himself. After you make your selections, the real work begins — please tell every fight fan in your life about MMA Fightpicker, either through Facebook or through the ol’ word-of-mouth. We want to make this thing gigantic, but we won’t be able to do it without your help. Thanks so much for your continued support, Potato Nation. Now get pickin’!

Once again: If you’re seeing an "Access Denied" page while trying to log into the game, please log out of your CagePotato account then log back in. Clearing your cookies may help as well. If none of that works, e-mail us at feedback@cagepotato.com.

(Rex Ryan: a jowly, unkempt Johnny Cash for the modern age.)

If you watched the Showtime broadcast of Strikeforce: Miami on Saturday night then you probably saw the cageside interview with New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, where his comments were partially drowned out by the chorus of boos from the Florida crowd. Or, if you got up to make yourself a sandwich and wonder why they hadn’t opted to try and squeeze in another fight from the undercard, maybe you missed it altogether. Regardless, the crowd at the BankAtlantic Center had more verbal abuse in store for Ryan throughout the night, and at some point he evidently got fed up and resorted to that great intellectual equalizer, the obscene gesture. This was naturally followed by the media storm, and ensuing hollow apology, all within just a little over 24 hours.

Fifty years ago, if Bear Bryant had gone to a boxing match and responded to a fan’s jeering with a middle finger, one gets the sense that it would not have been news. For one, nobody would have been there to snap a picture with their cell phone. For another, the fan on the receiving end of the finger would probably have just been glad to get away without being punched in the mouth.

But we live in a different era. Ryan has already apologized for the gesture, calling it “stupid and inappropriate,” and the Jets have issued a statement on it. There’s also a very real possibility that he’ll face a fine from the NFL as a result of all this, though his players seem to think it was pretty awesome: