Attention MMA FightPicker players: WEC 47 goes down tomorrow, which means it’s time to get off your lazy asses and make some predictions. As we do every time there’s a notable MMA event over the weekend, BF and I decided to join the same FightPicker pool in order to compete in an absolutely meaningless pissing-contest over bragging rights. But as soon as we entered Contender Pool 10 #635, we knew that this week wouldn’t be like all the others. Right there at the bottom of the player’s list was Aaron Rampey, FightPicker’s capo di tutti capi. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Aaron is entering pretty much every pool at this point, but the stakes just got a little higher. Will the Bens be able to outgun FightPicker’s point-leader and creep up the rankings themselves? Will it matter, since Rampey has probably learned how to game the system by hedging bets over multiple pools? Be sure to check back in on Monday to see how it all plays out, and read on to see our picks for this week…

Brian Bowles vs. Dominick Cruz @ WEC 47: Who will win?
BG: Bowles. Cruz is a very worthy challenger, but Bowles has been so dominant in his WEC career that there’s really no reason to bet against him.
BF: Agreed. There’s just no way I can go against Bowles, who reminds me of a grown-up Dennis the Menace, only heavy on the menace.

Will Bowles vs. Cruz make it to round 3?
BG: That’s a tough one. Bowles usually doesn’t need more than two rounds, and Cruz has gone to the cards in his last four. But I have to assume that Bowles will impose his will and blow Cruz out like everybody else he’s faced.
BF: Honestly, I’ll be surprised if it makes it to round 2. I think we’re looking at about 3-4 minutes of action, much like your wedding night, BG, only with less sobbing.

(Now there’s a couple of guys you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark boardroom.)

What, you thought that Strikeforce could put together a stacked card on CBS featuring three title fights, one involving former UFC star Dan Henderson, and Dana White would just stand there and take it like a bitch? C’mon, son. As first reported by Dave Meltzer of f4wonline.com, the UFC is planning to set up a counter-programming show on April 17th — the scheduled date of Strikeforce: Nashville — which will likely air on Spike TV. No matchups are official yet, but a welterweight bout between Matt Serra and Mike Swick is in the works. While the Spike event would likely get blown out by Strikeforce’s CBS show in overall ratings, Meltzer explains the reasoning like this:

Good plan, right? There’s just one problem: Scott Coker might not play along.

(We don’t want to tell you what to do or anything, Clay, but a little bit of leave-in conditioner would sure do wonders.)

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

Clay Guida has twice been on the cusp of getting a title shot in the UFC’s ultra-competitive lightweight division, only to come up a little short. On the heels of back-to-back losses against Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian, “The Carpenter” has a chance to get things rolling again on March 21st, when he faces Shannon Gugerty. Clay sat down with CagePotato to discuss training with Greg Jackson, why he’s living in an RV in the desert, and much more.

Clay we’re going to jump right in to the most controversial topic that everyone wants to hear about with you. There was a big stink made last year when you were not included in the UFC 2009 Undisputed video game. With the new 2010 version coming out soon, fans want to know if they will be able to play as either you, your hair, or both in the game.

Oh yeah, we’re in the 2010 UFC game. We’re definitely in it, we’ve got all our sponsors and stuff in it and believe it or not (laughs) THQ actually contacted us this time. We didn’t have to reach out to them like we did for the 2009 game where they dropped the ball. That time around they were very, what’s the word, unprofessional in the way they went about it.

(Some clever son of a bitch is still patting himself on the back for coming up with the title to this video.)

If you need a break from the constant James Toney news cycle, and yet also feel like you still have a lot of unanswered questions after the very disturbing Chuck Liddell naked workout video, boy have we ever got good news for you.  Our friend Steve Cofield, who is constantly scouring the internet for videos of nude male athletes, alerted us to this video of Chad Ochocinco (who non-football fans will remember as that dude who wanted to throw down with Anderson Silva) also working out in nothing but a pair of Reeboks. 

As far as getting people to talk about your low budget ads, this clearly works.  When it comes to actually getting me to purchase a pair of shoes, I can’t think of anything less effective.  Wait, yes I can.  They could have gotten Roy Nelson instead.

By CagePotato contributor Jonathan Snowden

Thousands of MMA fans will turn on their television Saturday night, looking for some manly action like WEC 47 or Road House and come up empty. That’s probably because they foolishly purchased DirecTV, not knowing that the provider would soon cut Versus, home to ice hockey, second-rate racing leagues, rodeo, and cage fighting.

Luckily, that’s about to change. Sources close to the situation tell CagePotato that the dispute will come quietly to an end next week, with DirecTV subscribers once again able to purchase Versus as part of a special sports tier. While it won’t come in time for this weekend’s WEC card, MMA fans with DirecTV should have the opportunity to purchase the channel by the time the UFC runs its first event on the network later this month.

(Above image courtesy of twitter.com/mmaweeklycom. Below images courtesy of TapouT.)

No MMA fighter embodies the underdog spirit of Little Mac better than Jens "Lil’ Evil" Pulver — which is why his new Punch-Out!!-themed signature shirt from TapouT is so badass. Pulver throws down this Saturday night at WEC 47 in Columbus against Javier Vazquez, who will hopefully be wearing a turban that flashes when he’s vulnerable. You can buy Jens’s walkout t-shirt here for the sensible price of $28.

Previously: Clay Guida’s UFC 107 Walkout T-Shirt Is F*ckin’ Rad

Here at the Potato, we realize that many of our readers are longtime boxing fans, while others among you still haven’t gotten around to watching “Rocky IV” yet (spoiler alert: it’s awesome). With that in mind we realized that some of you might be wondering, what’s this James Toney dude all about? Is he good or something?

The short answer to that question is, he used to be. He also used to be much leaner and quicker, but hell, so did Kirstie Alley. It still doesn’t do her any good in the present day. The things about Toney that have endured into his early forties are his ability to take a punch (in 83 pro fights, he’s never been knocked out), and his complete willingness to say outrageous stuff. The big difference now is that the outrageous stuff is a lot harder to understand, and he makes up for his slower hand speed by being harder to hit.

How will that translate into MMA? Well, if he tries to slip punches by bending over at the waist all the time, not good. That’s great for boxing, but just begging for a kick or knee to the dome in MMA. He’ll also have to learn all new footwork if he wants to stay upright against a decent grappler. Of course, there’s also the issue of conditioning, which is impossible not to mention once you’ve seen what the guy’s physique has looked like at times. Check out some Toney highlights after the jump and ask yourself, when we factor in the stopping power of his side check kick, could I see this man counter-punching his way to victories over experienced MMA fighters?

(Via Rampage Jackson’s Twitter, with the message: "A gift from the UFC. Wanna make a black man happy? Get him a ride!!")

Here’s a question for you, Potato Nation.  Say you’re Dana White and you’ve got yourself yet another problem with "Rampage" Jackson.  Seems he’s running his mouth about how he’s done with the UFC, was never really all that into MMA to begin with, and just wants to finish his contract so he can forget this noise and go be the biggest movie star since Jim Varney.  What do you do to talk him down off the ledge and get him to play nice again?

As those of you who have been following MMA for any length of time already know, DW knows only one foolproof way to make his fighters happy and it’s, Buy the dude a car.  Why?  Because people love cars that they didn’t pay for.  And judging by Jackson’s response — which would fall into the realm of harmful stereotype if we said it, but sounds perfectly reasonable when ‘Page says it — it totally worked. 

Who says you can’t fix every interpersonal problem with material goods?  Something tells me Dana White is one hell of a father.

(Props: KahL-One)

Though putting it together nearly killed him, our buddy Kahleem Poole has completed a video tribute to Wanderlei Silva that might be the best Axe Murderer-highlight we’ve ever seen. Not only is the fight footage edited together in an unconventional way (diggin’ those split screens), but it also gives a sense of the warm-hearted person that Wandy is when he’s not trying to destroy his opponents. The climactic montage of his late-career losses from 5:00 to 5:42 isn’t played for sympathy; defeat waits for every warrior. Check it out.

After the jump: A quick ‘n’ dirty look at Cristiane Santos‘s reign of terror.

(Image courtesy of twitter.com/Randy_Couture)

Guys, we had the craziest dream last night. We dreamed that the UFC signed James Toney to a multi-fight deal and he was actually training with…HOLY SHIT, NOOOOOOOOO! This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening!

Anyway, here’s some more notes about the aspiring porn star known as Dark Gable…

— Toney’s UFC contract would still allow him to box. Said Dana White: "If we promote him and he does well and that raises his profile and he gets a [Vitali] Klitschko fight and makes a lot of money for himself…I’d be cool with that."

— Randy Couture wants to fight Toney first. Seriously, he mentioned it twice on Twitter. Putting a UFC legend against somebody who’s 0-0 in MMA would definitely fall under the category of "almost criminal, not to mention impossible to get sanctioned in the U.S." Not that the UFC would need to set up the fight in the states… 

— What’s more, this is the caliber of fight that Toney expects to get during his run in the Octagon. As he told Yahoo!, “I’m a main event fighter and I’ve been a main event fighter since before a lot of these punk-(expletive) fighters were out of the crib. Don’t give me that (expletive) about fighting on the undercard. People want to see James Toney and I’m going to give them what they want.”

(Friends forever. Or until somebody steals from somebody else like a total scumbag. Sorry, alleged scumbag. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

As much as we were hoping that James Toney would get smart and head down to Greg Jackson’s New Mexico gym for a little MMA 101 and some positive reinforcement/visualization sessions, it seems like he has other plans. MMA Junkie reports that Toney has tapped Juanito Ibarra to help him transition from boxing into MMA. You remember Ibarra, right? Dude with the hat, used to train “Rampage” Jackson, then allegedly screwed him out of a bunch of money, which led to ‘Page living on energy drinks until his mind went all looney tunes on him and he ended up face down on the pavement after police chased his monster truck through the streets of southern California? And once Jackson dumped him he reportedly offered to train other UFC light heavyweights to beat his former fighter?  Yeah, that’s the guy.

Ibarra says that he and Toney “have good personal chemistry,” adding, “I just don’t jump in with anybody.”

We’re not sure if that means Ibarra is one of the few people on the planet who can actually understand the words coming out of Toney’s mouth these days, or whether it just means that they don’t actively hate each other. We don’t mind saying that Toney could have done better (and, you know, less sleazy) in his search for an MMA trainer, but as long as he keeps one hand on his wallet and demands to see an itemized list of training camp expenditures, he should make out okay.

(Apparently it doesn’t even matter if no one can understand a single word you say, either.)

Well, it’s happened. According to a report on FiveOuncesofPain.com, which was then confirmed by MMAFighting.com, the UFC has signed heavyweight boxing champion James Toney to a multi-fight deal. I’m going to give you a moment to process that information before we move on…

First of all, let us be the first to say, Are you fucking kidding us? Then let us follow that up with, You’re fucking kidding us, aren’t you? Once that’s out of our system, we have to admit that while we publicly supported this idea, we never thought it would really happen. Now that it has, all we can do is stare out the window in numb silence, a tepid puddle of drool collecting in our laps, while our minds spin with all the possible opponents the UFC might put him up against first.

(Yoshihiro "Kiss" Nakao — still pretty creepy. Photos courtesy of src-official.com.)

A day after WEC 47 pops off in Columbus, Sengoku will be holding their latest event at the Sumo Hall in Tokyo, Japan. Unfortunately the card won’t be broadcast live on HDNet — they’ll be airing it next Friday at 8 p.m. — but we’ll be sure to put up videos of the best fights by Monday. Check out the complete eight-match lineup, via japan-mma.com:

8. Jorge Santiago (21-8-0, champion) vs. Mamed Khalidov (20-3-1, challenger), for SRC Middleweight Title
7. Akihiro Gono (31-15-7) vs. Diego Gonzalez (13-3-0), welterweight
6. Maximo Blanco (4-2-1) vs. Chang Hyun Kim (15-5-0), lightweight
5. Marlon Sandro (15-1-0) vs. Tomonari Kanomata (15-4-5), featherweight
4. Yoshihiro “Kiss” Nakao (8-2-0) vs. Henry "Sentoryu" Miller (6-9-0), heavyweight
3. Yuji Hoshino (16-7-7) vs. Nick Denis (9-1-0), featherweight
2. Kiuma Kunioku (34-22-9) vs. Leonardo Santos (6-3-0), lightweight
1. Shigeki Osawa (4-1-0) vs. Kyung Ho Kang (4-2-0), featherweight

Some important points…

($19.99?! Well, now it’s just not financially practical for me to tear it off my body every time I wear it, so what’s the point? Props: Cagewriter)

One of the many great things about the era of the internet is the ability of one moment or idea to take off and become a force all its own, no matter how fleeting or trivial it might have been. I’m not just talking about ghost riding the whip here, either. Take Tom Lawlor’s most recent UFC entrance where he channeled Hulk Hogan at Fight Night 20 in an effort to let the audience know that he was a) a real American, who b) fights for the rights of every man. Pretty sweet, right? In homage to that entrance, Tri-Coasta is offering up this t-shirt so all you Lawlormaniacs can show your support.

But after checking out the shirt and thinking through the possible ramifications of buying/wearing it, we are once again forced to ask ourselves, is this awesome or not awesome? Join us after the jump.

(Props: YouTube.com/WEC)

This Saturday’s WEC 47 card presents a bantamweight title fight between two guys who have more similarities than differences. Champion Brian Bowles and challenger Dominick Cruz both came from underprivileged backgrounds, but put their lives on an upward trajectory thanks to athletic competition, specifically wrestling. Both are undefeated at 135 pounds, and have dominated their opponents with a relentless, well-rounded attack. Cruz says this matchup is one of "power vs. speed," but both competitors bring plenty of each. The only real difference is their finishing percentage. While Bowles has stopped all eight of his professional fights, Cruz has gone the distance on his last four (scoring unanimous nods on all of them).

Bowles’s shock upset of Miguel Torres last August reminded us of another changing-of-the-guard in the WEC: Mike Brown’s dethroning of Urijah Faber in 2008. In both cases, the challengers used solid fundamentals and raw power to overcome flashier, risk-taking champions. But as Mike Brown himself learned, it isn’t easy to hang on to the belt when there’s always another younger, hungrier challenger coming up behind you. Could this be the year that Dominick Cruz breaks out?

After the jump: Junior Dos Santos discusses his 3/21 matchup with Gabriel Gonzaga, and promises that you’ll see his jiu-jitsu skills one of these days.

Behold the sparse, no-bullshit poster for Strikeforce: Nashville, which clearly takes its design cues from this. Tickets for the April 17th event — priced from $25 to $195 — go on sale to the general public on Friday. Pre-sale begins today at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT for Strikeforce Insider members.

Speaking of Strikeforce, Mauro Ranallo passes along the rumor that the Overeem vs. Rogers fight in May could be for Strikeforce’s heavyweight title, as Fedor Emelianenko’s status with the organization grows hazier. Facepalm, bro. If Fedor can’t make it work with Strikeforce, his only available option is to track down Josh Barnett in Dream. And after that? Is Zuluzinho available for a rematch?

(If you think the Dream promoters won’t throw this kid in there with Barnett, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention.)

Josh Barnett has officially signed with Dream, according to MMA Weekly, and is gearing up for a return to non-scripted fighting action on their March 22 event.  There’s just one problem.  As he mentioned on his Twitter yesterday, nobody seems to want to fight him.  Or maybe that’s not true.  Maybe there are people who want to fight him.  They’re just, you know, a little busy at the moment.

Of the non-UFC, non-joke heavyweights out there who might actually give Barnett a fight, there just aren’t too many people with an empty dance card.  Alistair Overeem and Brett Rogers are both betrothed to one another, as are Andrei Arlovski and "Bigfoot" Silva.  Fedor Emelianenko and Fabricio Werdum seem headed for a May date, but even if the M-1 boys are throwing a wrench in those plans by angling to get a higher price tag for Fedor, it seems unlikely that Dream could convince Werdum to take a fight with Barnett on a couple weeks’ notice in the meantime.

Aside from some of the more ridiculous options (no offense Bob Sapp, it’s just, well, you know…), that doesn’t leave a lot of meat on the table for Babyface.  Whaddaya say, any huskier members of the Potato Nation feel like stepping up on short notice and making a few extra bucks?  We’re not going to lie to you, it’s probably going to hurt.

(At least he’s got a sense of humor. That’s the second best thing to have in a fight with GSP. The first? Excellent takedown defense.)

At this point, we have to assume that Dan Hardy knows he won’t be the fan favorite heading into his title fight with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 111. As a 5-1 underdog, he won’t be the betting favorite either, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still have a little fun. The problem is, there’s really not that much trash you can talk to GSP. Not only are there very few evident weaknesses in his game, but as a person he’s almost painfully non-offensive (unless you happen to be B.J. Penn). So what does Hardy do? He goes after the people who say he hasn’t earned his shot at the champ. Fortunately for him, there is no shortage of them.

On his blog at ThisIsNottingham.co.uk, Hardy took aim at his critics and held absolutely nothing back.

On Mike Swick: “It’s funny Swick is now moaning that I didn’t deserve this shot. Swick should have kept his mind off me and on his last opponent, Paulo Thiago, and maybe he wouldn’t have been beaten again.”

It looks like the UFC has already decided who Michael Bisping‘s next opponent will be in the wake of his close decision loss to Wanderlei Silva last month. According to MMA Junkie, the British middleweight is tentatively scheduled to take on Dan Miller at UFC 114 (May 29th, Las Vegas); the event will be headlined by the light-heavyweight bout between Quinton Jackson and Rashad Evans. Coming off of back-to-back unanimous decision losses against Chael Sonnen and Demian Maia — neither of which was particularly exciting — Miller could be facing a true must-win scenario here. Bisping has a bit more job security due to his popularity in the U.K., but a loss to Miller (which would be his third in four fights) could permanently derail him as a title contender. Any predictions on how this striker vs. grappler battle will play out?

(Props: BloodyElbow)

We know what you’re thinking: At some point, CagePotato should stop referencing the 2008 sci-fi thriller Cloverfield, and move onto more current films like Avatar or The Bounty Hunter. To which we’d respond, "Look, he’s blurry and enormous, what do you want from us?" This recent pic, lifted from John Hackleman’s Facebook account, shows that the Chuckbelly is still in full-effect, despite Liddell’s recent naked-squat regimen. But before you start laying down money on Tito Ortiz for Chuck and Tito’s third meeting in June, we should point out that Tito’s been going through some undisclosed personal stuff that may be at least as distracting as a bloated stomach. Then again, Chuck’s been hanging out with The Situation lately, and if that’s not cause for concern, we don’t know what is.

Update, 11:21 p.m. ET: Chuck looks good from the front, and Dana White is pissed. See for yourself after the jump.

(I don’t know Marcus, I thought some of those photos were quite fetching.)

Marcus Davis has deleted his Twitter remark wishing Dan Hardy death via AIDS, and attempted to explain away the “Dark&Bad taste” comment by pointing out that Hardy was at least partially responsible for some unflattering photoshops of him. To what extent Hardy is to blame for the exact homosexual nature of those efforts is debatable, but what seems pretty clear is that, at least in Davis’s mind, those were worse than wishing death upon someone. Just when you think he might have realized that it’s a bad idea to get into this sort of thing at all, he follows it up by tweeting, “Would it have been better if I said hit by a car?”

When you really think about it, that’s a tough one. Getting hit by a car doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as being killed by a car, so there’s that. But if we assume that Davis would also wish for Hardy to die of his injuries, what then? At least someone who gets AIDS has a chance to say goodbye to their family and gain a new perspective on the circle of life and other such bullshit before they pass. The person killed by a speeding Audi doesn’t ever get the opportunity to set his past wrongs right. Then again, he also doesn’t have to suffer in hospital rooms or get all weak and lesion-y like Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia."

And thus has a man nicknamed “The Irish Hand Grenade” plunged us into a philosophical quandary with a couple of garbled sentences. Really makes you wonder what Jean-Paul Sartre could have accomplished if he had lived to Twitter.

(What, you think this is over, KJ? Naw homey, it’s just beginning.)

Lately you may have seen us criticizing various proposed rematches as “completely unnecessary” and wondered out loud, ‘Are there any rematches you jerks do want to see?’ Our answer to this is a) you’re the jerk, jerk, and b) as a matter of fact, there are approximately ten, and here they are:

10. Wanderlei Silva vs. Chuck Liddell

(UFC 79, 12/29/07)

Technically, these guys are in different weight classes now. We realize that. We know that Silva cut down to middleweight after ridding himself of fifteen pounds worth of facial scar tissue, and Liddell has slipped into the ‘old guy who can only fight other old guys’ division, right alongside Matt Hughes.

But other than that minor barrier, there’s no reason not to have these guys reprise their memorable 2007 battle just for the pure hell of it. Neither one of them wants to quit fighting, and neither is going to become a world champion again. The only suitable option left is to find interesting fights against competitive opponents who won’t murder them. In this sense, they are exactly what the other has been searching for.

By CagePotato contributor Elias Cepeda

Released in 2007, Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart took readers across the globe and inside some of the best camps in the world to access and understand the physical realities of professional fighting. The captivating and often personal tale became a national best-seller, and now Sheridan has followed it up this year with The Fighter’s Mind, which delves into the psychology of competing through conversations with everyone from Randy Couture to top neuroscientists. Sheridan sat down with CagePotato.com to discuss his new book.

CAGEPOTATO.COM: What is this book, A Fighter’s Mind, about to you?
SAM SHERIDAN: Well, A Fighter’s Mind sort of came out of conversations I had with the Victory Belt publishers, Erich Krauss and those guys. They had taken on fifteen or twenty contracts and they were looking for writers to help them. They said, “Hey, do you want to write one of these books?” Like BJ Penn’s “Book of Knowledge,” or whatever. I looked at it and said to myself, “You know, I’m not really interested in doing a technique book. There are plenty of questions I want to ask these guys. But most of these questions have to do with the mental game.”

I’m not really interested in Randy Couture’s Greco clinch trip takedown. I’m not so interested in diagramming the steps to that. I’m interested in Randy’s mental strength, and his ability to gameplan and his ability to stick to a gameplan. He can take a guy and put him the one place that, well, take the Gabe Gonzaga fight. Randy took Gonzaga the one place that he’s going to beat Gonzaga. I mean, anywhere else, Gonzaga is going to have his lunch, pretty much. He’s too big, he’s too fast, he’s too rough. But holding him against the cage, Gonzaga doesn’t know what to do and Randy basically drowns him right there, he just mashes him up. It was an amazing example of how having the right gameplan and sticking to it can allow you to beat somebody that should beat you.

So that was where it came from for me. I started thinking, “I can’t believe nobody has written this book. Why hasn’t somebody written this book?” It was a way to re-pay the fighters and my friends who had helped me in the first book, who are wondering about these things. Because I think a lot of guys wonder how Randy does his thing or how Marcelo Garcia thinks about Jiu Jitsu. A lot of people wonder that stuff but they don’t get a chance to ask it, so this was my gift back to fighters, friends and trainers that were so good to me in A Fighter’s Heart.

While the date of Fedor Emelianenko‘s return is still uncertain, Strikeforce is moving ahead with plans for a monster CBS card in Nashville on April 17th, which is expected to feature three title fights. Along with the headlining middleweight title scrap between Dan Henderson and Jake Shields, MMA Weekly has reported that Gegard Mousasi will defend his light-heavyweight belt against top contender Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal. Mousasi, who is riding a 15-fight win streak, hasn’t officially defended his Strikeforce strap since winning it from Renato Sobral last August, but has scored wins over Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou (in a Strikeforce non-title fight) and Gary Goodridge (in a Dynamite!! 2009 squash match) since then. King Mo is 6-0 in his relatively short MMA career, and wrecked Mike Whitehead at his Strikeforce debut in December, but is facing a massive leap in competition against the Young Vagabond.

Also on the Shields vs. Henderson card, a lightweight title fight between Strikeforce champ Gilbert Melendez and DREAM champ Shinya Aoki has been booked, according to Sherdog; Aoki’s title will not be on the line. Melendez recently regained the Strikeforce belt in a rematch against Josh Thomson. Aoki became DREAM’s lightweight champ by submitting Joachim Hansen last October, then followed up that performance by breaking Mizuto Hirota’s arm.

Meanwhile, in the heavyweight division…

Spike TV has released the full roster of fighters for the eleventh season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” complete with this handy video to help you match faces to names. At the very least they’ve found some guys who look interesting – some in the sense that they have faces like old catcher’s mitts and so must be pretty tough, others in the sense that they just seem like colossal jerks (looking at you, Nick “The Promise” Ring).  But are any of them good enough to be prematurely declared the next Anderson Silva? Do any of them have the potential for complete psychological breakdown that Junie Browning brought to the show? And who, I ask you, will be their “Linderman”?

We don’t know the answers to any of those questions (despite being an MMA news source), but we did learn some interesting factoids about the guys from a press release sent out by Spike TV earlier today. For instance:

(Uh-oh.)

Yeah, that’s Marcus Davis on Twitter, publicly stating that he hopes Dan Hardy dies of AIDS.  And yes, it does appear to be his official Twitter account and not a fake.  He has over 10,000 followers, links to his official website, mentions biographically correct information about himself from time to time, misspells a few words but not so many that it could be an attempt at humor, and for the most part remains just as tedious as most MMA fighters on Twitter.  In other words, if it’s a fake the guy has been playing it really cool up until now.  If that was all a ruse just to make this one AIDS comment and blow his cover, we’re going to have to say that he just wasted a lot of time.

The comment was made in response to a fan (BIGfield948, who we assume is still pissed that Bigfield69 was taken) after he expressed a desire to see Davis/Hardy II in the U.K.  The missive you see above is Davis’s response, so it’s not as if this was taken somehow out of context.  The question is, if we accept that this is really Marcus Davis and he really did say that he hopes Hardy dies of AIDS, what conclusions can we jump to in an irresponsible, reactionary fashion?

(If you see the old Wandy, please call our missing-legend hotline at 1-888-AX-MURDR.) 

“I’ve rededicated myself, I’m completely remotivated. I just need to get back the old Clay — getting them to the ground, going from my strikes to putting them on their back and making them panic in there.” — Clay Guida

"This fight you’ll see the old Wanderlei, he never steps back, always forward, forward. This is the real Wanderlei." — Rafael Cordeiro on Wanderlei Silva

"I’m not really worried about who I’m fighting. I’m fighting me right now. I’m fighting against myself, trying to be the old me." — Jens Pulver 

"I’m putting [Forrest Griffin] on his back. Back to the old Tito Ortiz, man, my ground and pound where it’s lethal…they’ll be carrying him out on a stretcher." — Tito Ortiz

****

For as long as there have been losing streaks in combat sports, we’ve had to suffer through the creaky cliché of fighters promising to return to their "old" selves. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one gladiator in ancient Rome shuffled off to an epic poet after a loss and said, "Yeah, I might have gotten run through with a javelin in my last fight, but I’ve been training hard and you’re all going to see a return to the old Heropoulos, giving the fans at the Colosseum what they paid to see — me disemboweling Christians with a trident." And for some reason, the sound-bite is being employed more and more these days (see above), which is why we’d like to send it on a one-way ferry ride to Ban Island, where it will hopefully never be heard from again. The reasons are quite simple, really…

(His body is in the ring, but his mind is still back in the locker room, trying to come up with an eight-letter word for ‘Movie opening.’)

Contrary to what you’ve seen on the internet lately, Josh Barnett is not content to spend the rest of his life trading mean faces with Bob Sapp and roughing up hapless foes in regional grappling tournaments. He really does want to fight for real again, or so he declared on his Twitter recently, but the problem is that he can’t find an opponent. At least, he can’t find a heavyweight opponent willing to meet him in Japan, which is sort of his only option at the moment since he can’t seem to get right with the athletic commissions back home in the U.S.

Barnett told fans he’d heard a “rumor” that both Tim Sylvia and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva (both of whom have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their past) had each turned down fights with Babyface in Dream. How much fact there is in that rumor, we can’t really say, but it wouldn’t exactly surprise us to hear that “The Maine-iac” is more or less done fighting quality opponents and has decided instead to crush whatever cans Monte Cox lines up for him.

(Let’s hope that when Evan Dunham fights a friend, he stops after he hears the first crack.)

by Cage Potato contributor Matt Kaplan

The potential UFC 115 lightweight match-up between Evan Dunham and Tyson Griffin – both from the Xtreme Couture camp – has MMA’s spirited fan base once again weighing in on the topic of teammate vs. teammate.

As expected, reactions range from the pragmatic (‘It’s their job to fight.’) to the more provisional (‘No way, unless it’s for a title or a title shot.’). Neither a title shot nor top-contender status is on the line for Dunham vs. Griffin, but UFC brass has nonetheless matched two training partners against one another, just like it has said it would.

As the debate over teammate vs. teammate continues to spiral off into its natural oblivion, I reached out to a few fighters – including Dunham and Dan Lauzon, who is set to face former training partner Efrain Escudero at UFC 114 – to get their thoughts about having to stand across the cage from a guy they usually have in their corner.

(Holy freakin’ crap.)

First off, our sincere apologies to anybody who tried to collect their chips or make pool selections in MMA FightPicker yesterday — we were having some technical difficulties, but everything’s back to normal. The winners’ chips have been added to their accounts, and you should now be able to make your picks for this week.

Second, we’d like to give an astounded round of applause for Aaron Rampey, last week’s point-leader, who ended up winning nine pools this weekend, increasing his PotatoChip total by nearly 1,000. That’s what we call aggressive play; you’ll have to take some serious risks yourself if you hope to catch him. Also on the FightPicker leaderboard, brade1584 crept back up to the #2 spot, while Milwaukee Made, Me, and Half Amazing now round out the top five. Congrats to all of y’all.

So how did they do it? Well, we already told you how Friday’s Strikeforce fights played out; the first question about Prangley vs. Amoussou wasn’t counted since the match ended in a technical draw. As for MFC 24, the Edmonton event sounded like a bangin’ time, with all four main card bouts ending in KO/TKO. In the main event, Yves Edwards closed out a tentative first round by knocking Derrick Noble down with a straight right then finishing him with strikes on the ground. Before that, Tom "Kong" Watson put out Travis Galbraith’s lights with a head kick in the first round, while Dwayne Lewis finished Ryan McClain with strikes from a crucifix position in round 2.

Here’s what’s cooking on FightPicker this week…