Dana White last September, on the DAM Show:

DW yesterday, in the Miami Herald:

(Come on. Like you wouldn’t rock that. Props: Quik)

Rise and shine, Potato Nation. Here are some must-read stories to kickstart your bloodthirst…

- The Great Debate: Rampage vs. Rashad From a Technical Point of View (MMA Scraps)

- Dana White Thinks a Lot of UFC Main Eventers Are Nobodies (MMA Fighting)

- Dan Miller’s Back Is Against the Wall Against Michael Bisping at UFC 114 (BloodyElbow)

- Shaquille O’Neal is an unlockable character in UFC Undisputed 2010 (MiddleEasy)

– AKA and Greg Jackson look to expand their brands (FightMagazine)

– The Low Blow Episode 150: Takedown Town (Fightlinker)

- Gegard Mousasi Wants King Mo Rematch On New Year’s Eve (MMANews)

- Dominick Cruz: Champions will get younger and younger (FiveOuncesofPain)

– Don’t Mention Todd Duffee’s Dairy Queen Past (WatchKalibRun)

 
(Wright is Dana’s antithesis: Quiet and unassuming, with a full head of hair)

In case you missed the announcement this afternoon, the UFC announced that they will be opening a Canadian office in Toronto in the coming months and that it will be headed up by former Canadian Football League Commissioner Tom Wright, who will step into his new role as the UFC’s director of Canadian operations, effective May 31.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports)

Of the many things that set UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre apart from his competition, one of the most notable is his willingness to travel great lengths in order to improve elements of his game. While many fighters are content to hang out in one camp, GSP has traveled to Brazil for jiu-jitsu training, spent time learning from the Canadian wrestling team, and regularly leaves his Montreal home base to bang with the all-star team at Jackson’s MMA in Albuquerque or drill his Muay Thai at the Wat in New York. The latest piece of the puzzle is a familiar one: St. Pierre is now working on his boxing with legendary trainer Freddie Roach, at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood. As he told Yahoo! Sports:

“It is time to focus on my boxing. When I get to the other side of my career I don’t want to be one of those fighters who have been hit too many times, so they keep getting knocked out. If you have the opportunity to work with someone like Freddy, you take advantage…I’ve only been here a few days with Freddie and each time I left feeling like I was better.”

GSP plans on spending a week with Roach before taking off to film TUF 12, opposite Josh "Booooooo!" Koscheck. As for Roach, the soft-spoken trainer is beginning to occupy a very unique place in the world of MMA.

Will they be announcing an unlockable Harold Howard police chase sequence for UFC Undisputed 2010?

Has the UFC bought Ontario?

Will Kalib Starnes be the latest inductee into the UFC Hall of Fame?

Will Zuffa be holding an event in Toronto in the near future?

Tune in here live at 1:00 ET to find out.

(Video player after the jump)

(Dude, I told you I was wearing the green shirt today.)

To the average fan, Marc Laimon is the jiu-jitsu coach from The Ultimate Fighter 4 who got in a heated debate with Matt Serra about Royce Gracie’s loss to fellow TUF coach Matt Hughes at UFC 60.

You may recall, Hughes asked Laimon if he was disappointed in seeing Royce beaten like he was. Almost on cue, when the words “It was great,” barely escaped Laimon’s lips, Matt Serra, a Renzo Gracie black belt coincidentally happens upon the conversation and asks, “What’s that?”

Sure, Laimon’s reply of “Matt Hughes’ utter decimation of Royce Gracie,” may have been a bit inflammatory to a guy who runs a Gracie affiliated school of his own, but for Serra to fly off the handle and tell Laimon that he had no right to his opinion of Royce’s performance or fighting in general because he wasn’t a fighter was a bit asinine, considering Laimon’s background as a renowned jiu-jitsu trainer, MMA coach and cornerman. That’s like saying a cancer specialist doesn’t know anything about the disease because he or she has never had it.

(Props: CagePotato reader Mitch C.)
 
After making a solid profit on Heavy Artillery, the Gambling Enabler is ready to let it ride on UFC 114. Are you ready? Or are you too chickenshit to claim what’s yours in this life? Seriously, if you don’t have the balls to make hypothetical online wagers on UFC fights, then LEAVE NOW BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT YOU. Odds are only being offered on seven matches from the #114 card, but that’s enough to make us a little cash, so lets take a look at the numbers courtesy of MMAMoneyline…

Rashad Evans (-115) vs. Quinton Jackson (+105)
Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (-540) vs. Jason Brilz (+375)
Michael Bisping (-185) vs. Dan Miller (+160)
Todd Duffee (-430) vs. Mike Russow (+325)
Diego Sanchez (-220) vs. John Hathaway (+185)
Amir Sadollah (-130) vs. Dong Hyun Kim (+120)
Efrain Escudero (-400) vs. Dan Lauzon (+350)

Now then…

(Props: rusquote via Fightlinker)

Just a month after he scored a first-round TKO over Eddy Bengtsson via mind-bullets, nomadic heavyweight Aleksander Emelianenko was back in the ring this weekend at an Azerbaijan Pankration Federation event, proving absolutely nothing against another middle-of-the-food-chain European opponent. This time it was Miodrag Petkovic (29-12-1), a 40-year-old Serbian who holds wins over Igor Pokrajac, Tim Hague, and Travis Fulton. I wish we had a better video of this — perhaps, one that shows how Petkovic originally ended up on his back, and didn’t include another fight tacked onto the end of it, and didn’t look like it was edited together by Azamat Bagatov — but the basic gist is, Aleks spent the majority of the fight smashing Petkovic from the top until the ref stopped the fight at the 3:00 mark. It was Emelianenko’s eighth consecutive first-round victory. But of course, quantity is no replacement for quality. Did he forget about his plan to come to America and beat everyone in the UFC?

(Don’t look into his eyes, Wand. You’ll be paralyzed like thousands of ladies in the past have been before you.)

In a recent interview with TATAME, Wanderlei Silva said that he is progressively getting more comfortable with fighting as a middleweight and that he doesn’t plan on retiring any time soon.

“I want to keep on fighting for the next six years, at least until I’m forty. This division change was good, I had to change my diet and I’m feeling just fine”,

(Video courtesy DailyMotion/TheReem.com)

Apparently the beginning of the video was shot in the parking lot of an open casting call for The Hills Have Eyes 4.

The production value of the latest edition of these series of mini-documentaries is stellar, as usual.

I never noticed them before, but check out the wicked stretch marks caused by Alistair’s growth spurt  (around the 6:20 mark).

As a bonus, we get to see Strikeforce commentator Mauro Ranallo doing his best Muhammad Ali impersonation with an impromptu freestyle rhyme counting the ways he loves Ubereem.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

"Athletically, I’m pretty much where I’m gonna be — I’m 24, I’m probably in the prime physical peak of my life — it’s the mental side of the game that I really have to develop and work on."

So says Todd Duffee (6-0), the impressive-looking heavyweight prospect who has acquired just seven seconds of professional MMA experience since 2008. Duffee’s blitz of Tim Hague at UFC 102 caught the attention of the MMA world, but his momentum was doused due to a back injury suffered in November. Now, the Xtreme Couture member is set to make his long-awaited Octagon return on the main card of UFC 114 against Mike Russow (12-1, 1 no-contest).

Both guys are known as finishers: Duffee has defeated all of his opponents by KO/TKO, with just one fight making it out of the first round. Russow’s unanimous decision win against Justin McCully at UFC 102 broke a seven-fight streak of stoppage victories, all of which came in the first two rounds. And yet, all of the heat is on the side of the 24-year-old. As he told UFC.com: “Here we have one of the most over-hyped fighters going against one of the most underrated in the heavyweight division. I am highly hyped. Am I overrated? I don’t think so. But I’ve been over-hyped by that seven-second knockout."

We’re about to find out if the Duffee-hype is justified. Russow will be an incredibly tough opponent, and a noticeable step up in competition. But if Duffee juggernauts his way through him, will anybody be that surprised?

(Cyrille the Snake’s early kickboxing highlights. Props: Gorgeous PX)

UFC 114: Rampage vs. Evans goes down this coming Saturday in Las Vegas, with two new faces casting their fates to the wind in the prelims, both of whom have peripheral connections to TUF 9. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Get to know the guys below, and swing by MMA Fightpicker to make your UFC 114 predictions…

CYRILLE DIABATE (LHW)
Experience: 16-6-1 record competing around the world for promotions like Cage Rage, 2H2H, PRIDE, and ShoXC. Has won nine of his last ten fights, with eight of those wins coming via stoppage in the first two rounds.
Will be facing: Luis Cane (10-2 w/1 no-contest, 3-2 UFC)
Lowdown: A veteran kickboxer and mixed martial artist, "The Snake" has been putting the hurt on people since the ’90s. Diabate spends part of his time training at Team Quest in Temecula, and appeared on TUF 9 last year as Team USA’s striking coach, but is doing most of the preparation for this fight in his native France. Standing 6’6", he tends to rely on his endless reach and striking prowess, but says he’s been concentrating on wrestling recently to become a more complete fighter. He hasn’t lost an MMA match since September 2006, when he was nearly stomped to death by Mauricio Rua at PRIDE Final Conflict Absolute.

(I’m not your mommy and no, I won’t read you a bedtime story)

Whenever most fighters are asked whether or not they were hurt by a heavy punch, solid kick or vicious knee, they usually lie through their teeth and deny the shot had any effect whatsoever.

Jake Shields, isn’t like most fighters.

When asked in a recent interview with FiveKnuckles.com, if the pair of right hands that dropped him twice in the first round of his title defense against Dan Henderson at Strikeforce: Nashville in April had any effect, Shields was quick to admit he was in trouble and survived on pure instinct alone as he wasn’t sure about much more than the fact that he knew he was in a fight.

(Yager went a bit overboard with the pranks by soaking Kyacey’s boxers in Alpo)

In the latest installment of The Ultimate Fighter 11 "The Aftermath" post-episode interview series Kyacey Uscola revealed that he was attacked by pit bulls while on a stroll outside the confines of the TUF house following his loss to Kris McCray and they nearly turned him into Cris Cyborg.

(Props: tj.labs)

We’ve reached the mid-way point in our fighter t-shirt design contest, and the submissions are rolling in nicely; many thanks to everybody who sent in designs. To re-ignite your competitive fires, we’ve posted some of our current favorites, which continue after the jump. Please send your entries to feedback@cagepotato.com by Sunday, 5/30, at midnight ET. Voting on the finalists will begin the next day, and the top vote-getter will score that FLO TV Personal Television, with access to the pay-per-view broadcast of UFC 115. So get crackin’…

(Props: Brian R.)

(Props: Stevicus. Click here for larger version.)

(“Hey sweetheart, you ever seen the missing frames from the Zapruder film? Would you like to?”)

If MMA folks sometimes seem a little suspicious that The Man is out to get them it’s because there was a time in the sport’s short history when The Man really was out to get them, and not just in the Rampage-Jackson-on-the-55-Freeway kind of way. A number of factors, including efforts by finagling lawmakers to kill MMA in the late ’90s and the glut of misinformation about the sport that still percolates in many mainstream media reports, have created a bit of a bunker mentality among its hardcore supporters.

At this point, when events fall apart, judges issue hinky decisions or another fledgling organization goes under, some of us are all too quick to assume that it’s the work of sinister forces beyond our control. Whether true or not, MMA’s past is rife with rumors of secret plots, backroom deals and widespread collusion.

In light of that, here are CagePotato.com’s Top 10 MMA Conspiracy Theories. Many of them you’ve probably heard before, but perhaps a few will be new to you. Some are ludicrous, while others probably contain a kernel of truth. At least a few are enough to make a man question everything he thought he knew about life and the universe around him.

The truth is out there, motherfuckers.

(Props: MMA Fighting.)

It’s been nine months since Renato “Babalu” Sobral lost the Strikeforce light heavyweight title via short-and-sweet first round TKO to Gegard Mousasi last August. If you think that sounds like a lot of time to sit at home ruminating on the defeat, you’re right. Babalu is understandably pumped at the opportunity to step in for training partner Jason “Mayhem” Miller against Robbie Lawler next month and expresses some frustration to Ariel Helwani in the above video that it’s taken so long to get back in the cage.

Also interesting to note, Babalu seems to direct his annoyance at Showtime, not Strikeforce itself, so that should further stoke debate about who’s really wearing the pants in the fight company’s relationship with the premium cable channel. An excerpt from the interview after the jump.

(Georges St. Pierre schools Montreal Canadiens enforcer Georges Laraque in a friendly grappling match last week; action starts around 4:03. Props: danieltricolore)

Sorry for the delay on this, link dump fanatics; we were experiencing some technical difficulties on Friday afternoon. Anyway, here’s some interesting stuff to go with your morning coffee…
 
- The scariest fan at Moosin: God of Martial Arts. (MiddleEasy)

- Exactly What is Strikeforce Hoping to Accomplish with Challengers Events? (MMA Fighting)

– DREAM light-heavyweight grand prix slated for July 10th show; Aoki vs. Kawajiri also possible. (Sherdog)

– UFC’s third Fan Expo to coincide with UFC 118 in Boston. (MMA Junkie)

– Josh Koscheck goes out partying, tries on a cop’s helmet. (TMZ)

- The LaRosa fable unravels at Moosin. (CageWriter)

– Enson Inoue discusses his love of gangster MMA. (Fight Opinion)

– Who wouldn’t want to watch a cartoon series about two guys playing video games and insulting each other? (Fightlinker)

- Mike Russow – Aiming to Derail the Duffee Train (UFC)

– The 10 Best Trash-Talkers in MMA. (Bleacher Report)

(Insisting that it lacked the subtle social commentary of the original series and citing only sporadic appearances by one character in particular, Silva could never reconcile himself with “Joanie Loves Chachi.”)

Given that the average Brazilian MMA fighter can hold a grudge long enough to make the Count of Monte Cristo look like a goddamned amateur, it should come as no surprise that Thiago Silva hasn’t exactly gotten over suffering his first career loss to Lyoto Machida at UFC 94 last year  … or that the fighter took such glee in seeing his rival get knocked out earlier this month by Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.

Silva told Tatame.com this week that he respects Shogun, so was pleased to see him finally emerge from UFC 113 with the 205-pound strap around his waist, but I don’t think we’re reading too much into it to say there are also some lingering bad feelings about Machida bubbling underneath the surface. Silva’s (fully sic’d) comments are after the jump …

("I got your Atlas Stones right here, bitch." Props: YouTube)

For Tim Sylvia the best case scenario at “Moosin: God of Martial Arts” was simply, don’t screw this up. The worst case scenario? You lose to shit-talking sideshow Mariusz Pudzianowski and your career is over. Basically, it was a no-win situation for the former UFC heavyweight champion in Massachusetts on Friday night, but that’s the harsh reality when you fuck around and get knocked out by Ray Mercer. Fortunately for Sylvia, he managed to stave off the angels of (professional) death for at least another day, dropping the professional strong man with an uppercut and finishing him with strikes on the ground one minute, 40 seconds into the second round.  

Though it seemed academic once they got in the cage, victory wasn’t a foregone conclusion after Sylvia weighed- in at 305-pounds earlier this week. The Maineiac’s cardio was understandably in question, but it quickly proved to be much higher than that of Pudzianowski.  It took only a few minutes for the Polish carnival barker to turn the shade of deep purple usually reserved for a Hulk Hogan tan job or the latter stages of a Mark Coleman fight.  Maybe that tune-up bout in Poland just two weeks ago wasn’t such a great idea after all, eh Pudzi? After the jump, all the gory details …

("Limited government, fiscal responsibility and a literal definition of the Constitution. I don’t know what’s so hard for you to understand about this, Kevin.")

While the Strikeforce broadcast team was busy reminding us how “old school” Kevin Casey’s one-dimensional, jiu-jitsu-only approach was on Friday night, they forgot to mention that Matt Lindland wasn’t exactly born yesterday, either. If Casey fought like it was 1993, as Mauro Ranallo suggested at one point, then Lindland fought like it was 1996 and the results were very much the same as if the main event of “Strikeforce: Challengers” had actually happened 15-years ago.

And somewhere, Michael Schiavello wept …

W-1 president Jack Batemen contacted Cagepotato today to inform us that Ivan Menjivar will now be facing Aaron "Blood Spiller" Miller instead of Shad Smith at the promotion’s June 19 "Judgment Day" event. 

As we reported today, the fight will be Menjivar’s first in more than three and a half years.

A native of El Monte, California, Miller is a King of the Cage veteran with a record of 8-6. He is a former two-time Division 1 CIF wrestler and trains out of Gracie Barra Honolulu.

Menjivar (20-7) is a veteran of the UFC, IFL, K-1 Hero’s and the now defunct Canadian TKO organization. A talented featherweight who has faced a lot of talented fighters in his career including Georges St-Pierre, Urijah Faber, Matt Serra and Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro, "The Pride of El Salvador" fought most of his career above his natural weight class.

According to Batemen, the venue for the event has also changed from the Pierre Charbonneau Centre in Montreal to the Coliseum de Laval in Laval, Quebec.

(The phrase "brick shit-house" comes to mind.)

As first reported by Sherdog, Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem has tested negative — that’s right, negative — for anabolic steroids and drugs of abuse, based on independent testing administered by the promotion, so you can stop making snide remarks every time you see him at GNC. It’s a vindication not just for Overeem’s reputation, but for the reputation of horse meat as a viable source of protein in an athlete’s diet. (If only this country wasn’t so closed-minded, you know? We’d all be eating horses, swelling up to 265, and beating the living crap out of people. I digress, but seriously, LIFT THE BAN.)

Said Scott Coker: “When the commission [in Missouri] said they’d only be random testing, I didn’t want there to be an ounce of doubt and have all these critics say, ‘Ah, Alistair didn’t get tested, Feijao didn’t get tested.’" Thus, every fighter was subject to in-house testing the night before Heavy Artillery. Antonio Silva, Joey Villasenor, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante and Antwain Britt also passed their drug tests; results are still pending for Brett Rogers, Andrei Arlovski, Roger Gracie, and Kevin Randleman. Let’s hope Kevin didn’t try the old "urine from a live animal or dead human" trick again.

By CagePotato contributor Dallas Winston

"Worlds Collide" was shaping up to be Shine Fights’ most high-profile and successful event to date — but it turned into every promoter’s worst nightmare. First, a legal injunction courtesy of Don King put the kibosh on the historic main event between Ricardo Mayorga and Din Thomas. Then, the event was canceled altogether by the North Carolina Athletic Commission when certain fighter safeguards were deemed insufficient. In the end, both fans and fighters were left demanding answers.

Though it was initially reported that Shine’s matchmaker Ron Foster would be resigning from the organization after the fiasco, that may no longer be the case. We caught up with Foster to get his take on exactly what went wrong with Worlds Collide, his current standing with the company, and how he’s been responding to the criticism.

Note: Keep in mind that Foster is only speaking from his position as matchmaker for Shine Fights, and his statements shouldn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of Shine Fights as a whole.

CAGEPOTATO.COM: Let’s start with Don King. Many feel that the contractual issues that were upheld by the judge should have been foreseen and fully addressed by Shine before the main event was even advertised. What can you tell me about Shine’s response to the injunction before it was upheld? Did you feel you were fully protected by your legal team, or did you know that there was a risk his legal endeavors could jeopardize the main event?

RON FOSTER: Before we moved forward with the Mayorga thing, Shine did have lawyer look over everything to see if, legally, the fight was able to take place. A lot of money and time was put into Mayorga to get this fight to happen. I’m not so sure that [Shine Fights CEO] Devin [Price] would have taken the risk if he thought it would bite us in the butt at the end.

As far as the legal team, of course they thought it was a slam dunk on Shine’s part. But unfortunately, this time it didn’t work out in our favor. Court is like blackjack — you just never know what you are going to get.

CP: Since Mayorga was announced as a Shine acquisition way back in the 3rd quarter of 2009, there has also been a lot of speculation about the timing of the incident, and theories that Mr. King may have strategically put the legal process in motion with a timetable that would leave Shine with no time to react or find a replacement. Do you have any opinions or insight on that?

RF: I think that this was 100 percent personal. Don King is a piece of shit and has screwed people over for a living. As far as the replacement, there is no way we could have replaced Mayorga in this fight. Even if we had more time, it would have been better to just drop the fight.

(Back when Dana still hadn’t perfected his menacing glare)

Cage Potato has learned from a source close to the fight that Canadian mixed martial arts pioneer Ivan Menjivar will step into the cage for the first time since 2006 to take on King of the Cage veteran and one time Felony Fighter Shad Smith at W-1: Judgment Day June 19 in Montreal.

(If they were the same guy, this would be a fantastic ad for Trimspa. Photos courtesy of Sherdog.)

Last June, we saw Tim Sylvia’s alarming weight of 310.6 pounds as proof that he didn’t take his fight against Ray Mercer as seriously as he should have. Well you all can put your concerns to rest now, because according to yesterday’s Moosin: God of Martial Arts weigh-ins, the Maine-iac has hacked off a full 5.6 pounds since that brutal loss, suggesting that maybe he’s leaving that last rib on the plate when he goes out and orders three slabs of ribs. We’re proud of you, buddy. In all seriousness, this isn’t a physique competition, and Mariusz Pudzianowski didn’t really impress anybody in his last fight, which took place just two weeks ago. But Tim’s unwillingness to get below 300 pounds (and his doughy, Wes Sims-like build) may be a sign that his heart isn’t really into training these days. After the jump: Full weigh-in results for tonight’s Moosin show, plus a video of Roxy Modafferi and Tara LaRosa getting all chummy before their fight. Have you made your Moosin picks on FightPicker yet?

(The ending of Hornbuckle vs. Carl. Props: YouTube.com/BellatorMMA)

By DL “Bellat-Whore” Richardson

Chances are that if you watch Bellator, you’re going to see something new. Unless you’re Jordan Breen, you’re probably going to see a fighter or two you haven’t watched before. You may see something silly, like Matt Major’s sweet man-panties at Bellator XVI. Or it may be something exciting, like a 360 degree spinning guard pass and punch from Ryan Thomas at Bellator XV. This is part of the excitement of watching a Bellator event: the joy of discovery that many MMA fans just don’t get very often these days. Sure, we may be surprised by the results of fights — that’s why they have gambling on MMA — but most of us have a rough idea of what to expect when we sit down to a Pay Per View. Not so with the BFC. Bjorn Rebney has managed to catch lightening in a bottle, putting on interesting cards on a weekly basis with up-and-coming talent that deserves the exposure.

Bellator XIX went down in Grand Prairie, Texas last night, with the welterweight tournament semifinals and a featherweight SuperFight on tap. Results after the jump. Also, a concise explanation as to why they call it “the jump.”

(Video courtesy of AmoebaMusic)

UFC lightweight Mac Danzig stopped by Amoeba Music in Hollywood, CA to pick up a few items recently and while he was there he filmed a segment of their What’s in my Bag? interview series.

It’s no surprise that the fighter, photographer, philosopher and devout vegan has some eclectic taste in music and films.

Every guy is guilty at one time or another of pretending to like something they don’t to impress the girl they’re dating, but Danzig takes the term "taking one for the team" to a whole new level by faking a genuine love of Grace Jones’ "music."

If you are too young to remember Jones, she was an amazonian-like model-turned avant-garde singer and actress whose popularity peaked in the 80s with film roles such as Zula in Conan the Destroyer and Bond Girl May Day in A View to a Kill. 

(Don’t worry, Scott. Jake has it on 21-day buy-back)

According to Josh Gross’ latest column for SportsIllustrated.com, Strikeforce 185-pound champ Jake Shields’ manager and father, Jack Shields says that the promotion has yet to bother to contact them to attempt to negotiate a new contract.

"The time is ticking. We’d like to move forward as soon as possible,"the elder Shields told Gross on Monday. "I’d like to be negotiating right now."

Strikeforce reps blamed their busy event schedule for the delay, but a source told Gross that they have actually considered releasing Shields before an exclusive negotiating period expires in three weeks. Even after that period ends, the promotion still has the right to match any offer made by any other promotion, but the fact that they are pretending Shields doesn’t exist and discussing life after he leaves the organization essentially all but says they are conceding he will not be back.