("I think it’s cool, but do you think the judge will find it as ironic as we do, Lee?")

It looks like Lee Murray will be behind bars longer than he thought.

According to a BBC report, the former UFC fighter who was named as the mastermind behind the 2006 $85 million (USD) Securitas heist in London had 15 years tacked onto his 10 year sentence today following a brief hearing in Rabat, Morocco where he has been held since being arrested in the North African country for importing drugs, whereupon authorities discovered he was wanted in connection to the UK robbery.

Murray fled England with right hand man and fellow MMA fighter, Paul Allen who was sentenced to 18 years in jail two years after being extradited back to London in 2007 when the pair were arrested outside of a mall in Morocco.

"Lightning" managed to avoid extradition because his father was a Moroccan national, but he couldn’t avoid the stiffer jail sentence he was handed down today.

(The CSAC’s "Dear Chael" letter, and proof that he listed testosterone in his medicals, not that it will help him much. Click images for larger versions.)

That eerie silence you’ve been noticing for the last couple months? That’s the sound of Chael Sonnen not talking. The formerly-outspoken middleweight contender has been mute since his UFC 117 drug test came back funky. That will change on Thursday morning, when Sonnen visits Sacramento to appeal his license suspension with the California State Athletic Commission; coincidentally, Sonnen’s case will directly follow Josh Barnett‘s long-delayed license reinstatement hearing.

FightOpinion found the entire 158-page agenda for Thursday’s session on the California Department of Consumer Affairs website, which you can see in its entirety right here. Chael-related documents take up the majority of the packet, spanning pages 33-144. A couple of noteworthy details…

(Video courtesy TheFightFix)

In the interview above that was conducted after Nate Marquardt’s somewhat uninspired UFC 123 loss to Yushin Okami, Dana White spoke with CSN’s The Fight Fix about the conservative style of Team Jackson fighters.

According to the UFC president, Greg Jackson seems to take normally exciting fighters and make them cautious, unexciting round winners — a trend that fans and pundits alike have voiced their bitter distaste about ad-nauseum recently.

"I have a lot of respect for Greg Jackson. It’s not like I don’t like him or I’m trying to say something bad about him, but there’s a pattern there. The game plans they come up with and a lot of the corner work is very weird. You’ll see guys who are traditionally exciting fighters, but when they go to the Greg Jackson camp they become safety first fighters," White explained. "Why wouldn’t you tell him ‘go for broke in this third round? This is a close fight. At the end of the day, my opinion means nothing. I’m not their corner man. I’m not the trainer. I’m just the promoter. I’m just being honest. There’s obviously some consistency there with the Jackson camp with the safety first."

(“So then I say, ‘Chuck Liddell? Why, he’d get knocked out if a feather landed on his chin.’ Oh, we had quite a laugh and … what? Ah crap, he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?” PicProps: Lutaluta.com)

Admittedly, it’s a little weird that Jorge Rivera went straight from getting stood up by a rotten-tuna-fish-infested Alessio Sakara at UFC 122 into a co-main event spot against Michael Bisping at February’s UFC 127. Who knew working your way up the middleweight ladder was this easy? Still, Rivera vs. Bisping seems like a decent little fight (and Rivera has at least a puncher’s chance, maybe better to actually win) so we’re not going to complain about it. You know who is going to complain about it, though? Michael Bisping of course. The UFC’s European Middleweight Champion is apparently so upset about guys continually calling him out that he told MMA Junkie this week he feels compelled to teach them a lesson by, uh, fighting them.

So I guess calling out Michael Bisping actually totally works.

("Does Jake Shields have a watch like this? That’s what I thought.")

Three years ago, Renato Sobral made a rash decision that would change his career and his life.

Following a submission victory over David Heath at UFC 74, Sobral refused to relinquish the fight-ending anaconda choke despite commands by referee Steve Mazzagatti to let go and he put "The Headhunter" to sleep.

He was subsequently released by the UFC and was fined half of his $50,000 purse by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for the infraction, but the biggest hit he took was to his reputation. 

Sobral was a fan favorite in the UFC, but the backlash he received for that split-second decision followed him and he says he is cognizant of the effect his mistake had on his fan following and he says he has worked to rebuild his reputation.

Sometimes fans forget that fighters, like us, are human and that they sometimes have a bad night, a lapse in judgment or personal issues. They tend to look at athletes as larger than life beings, akin to superheroes who don’t have to deal with the everyday issues that plague mortals like us.

Karo Parisyan shattered that facade recently and proved that no matter how pissed off Dana White may be at a fighter, the door is never closed to a possible return to the Octagon.

We recently sat down with the former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion ahead of his December 4 bout with Dan Henderson and we broached a number of subjects including whether he thinks about going back to the UFC, what his family thought of him becoming a fighter and the trend of round winners in MMA.

Check out what Babalu had to say after the jump.

(Props: GollyIE)

…and just to get the taste of vomit out of your mouths, here’s the extended trailer for UFC 124: St. Pierre vs. Koscheck II (December 11th, Montreal). The supporting card looks very promising, but it’s sort of unfortunate that the other two fights being featured here are Thiago Alves vs. John Howard and Mac Danzig vs. Joe Stevenson — considering all four fighters are coming off losses. Meanwhile, UFC 124 will also host two fights featuring guys on the upswing: Jim Miller (five-fight win streak) vs. Charles Oliveira (undefeated wunderkind) and Sean McCorkle (mouthy Internet celebrity) vs. young veteran Stefan Struve, who he’s been beefing with for months.

Still, Thiago Alves gets the best line of the video: "When you’re fighting the Pitbull, it’s over. No afterparty for you." And GSP guarantees a stoppage victory. "Get in, get out, and leave," he says. "That’s what the crowd wanna see, and that’s what I wanna do."

(Props: carlostlfilms via Jess Liaudin)

Hope you guys didn’t just eat breakfast. In what might be the worst viral video for Coke Zero ever recorded, the above clip shows Eder Jones celebrating a victory at a PRIME MMA event in Brazil by barfing all over the mat. The first wave at the 0:07 mark isn’t so bad, but when Jones gets his arm raised by the ref at 0:21…good God, that’s nasty. This is why you should be glad that Alessio Sakara pulled out of his fight at UFC 122. Nobody wants to see the Octagon defiled by rancid chunks of tuna.

("It’s not you, UFC, it’s me. It’s all my fault. I’m ugly and useless and deserve to be hit until it sinks in.")

You would think that seeing the MMA world in an uproar over your questionable firing for one somewhat uninspired performance would provoke you to speak out about your feelings on the matter.

Either Gerald Harris is angling for a quick return to the Octagon or the former UFC middleweight is suffering from a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Whatever the reason, the former CagePotato TUF 7 blogger seems to have accepted his undeserved firing and has shouldered the brunt of the blame for the UFC’s decision to let him go.

"I messed up. I had the biggest opportunity in the world, and I didn’t seize the day. I didn’t take advantage of the situation I was in. I don’t feel sorry for myself in a sense of being cut. I’m more disappointed with my performance than anything. That’s what hurts me the most. I didn’t show enough initiative to win the fight," Harris told MMAJunkie. "If it was a [preliminary-card] fight, I probably wouldn’t be in that much trouble, but they gave me the opportunity of a lifetime (on pay-per-view), and I blew it. I really blew it. I have nothing to blame it on. I’m not blaming it on the choke. I had a great training camp. Everything was great other than the fight. I have no excuses, none at all."

("…and your breath smells like poutine and maple syrup.")

Sometimes it just seems like Josh Koscheck throws insults like darts at a dartboard hoping that one will hit its mark. 

In a recent interview with Fighters Only, the brash American Kickboxing Academy product lobbed another salvo at upcoming UFC 124 opponent, UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre.

When asked by FightersOnly.com editor John Joe O’Regan about whether or not GSP is guilty of playing it safe like his much-maligned AKA teammate Jon Fitch has been criticized of doing for the majority of his fights, Koscheck said that he is and that the reason why is the same as what people have been pointing as being Brock Lesnar most glaring weakness: he doesn’t like getting hit.

"If you look at when little Matt Serra was on top of him pounding him, he tapped out. So I believe that Georges has quit in him and you just have to take him to that point," Koscheck explained. "Nobody has been able to do it since those two but I plan on doing it on December 11th.I believe he hasn’t been hit since Matt Serra. That was a good crack. His chin hasn’t been tested and I think Georges has quit in him. If you look at the first Matt Hughes fight where he arm barred him, he was tapping before it was even tight."

I always figured that calling MMA "the world’s fastest-growing sport" was mainly a promotional slogan, based more on allegorical evidence than actual numbers. So is the title deserved, or is it hot air? Using data mined from the Simmons Research Database, MMAPayout.com has published a new report breaking down the growth of the UFC in the United States over the past three years, compared to other major sports leagues — as well as information on age and gender demographics. We recommend checking out the whole thing if you have time, but here are some highlights:

– The UFC actually is the fastest-growing sports league in the country, pretty much by default. From 2007-2009, the NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, and MLS (that’s soccer, you guys) actually suffered losses in their fan bases. The NHL’s fan base grew very slightly. By comparison, the UFC increasing their total number of fans by about 14% (and 30% among "avid" fans) seems like a monumental achievement.

("All in all, I prefer chest-biting." Photo courtesy of Esther Lin/Strikeforce.)

In the wake of Valentijn Overeem’s mildly disappointing injury withdrawal over the weekend, we racked our brains trying to come up with logical heavyweight replacements to face Antonio Silva. Strikeforce, however, took the opposite approach — drafting one of their light-heavyweights and hoping for the best. The promotion confirmed today that reformed bad boy Mike Kyle would be facing Bigfoot on the televised portion of this Saturday’s "Henderson vs. Babalu" card. Huh. That’s an odd one.

To be fair, Kyle has competed at light-heavyweight and heavyweight throughout his career, and has gone 5-0 with 1 no-contest in his last six fights. But his record — especially under the Strikeforce banner, where he’s never won as a heavyweight — suggests that he’s best suited for 205. Competing at light-heavy last year, he scored an upset TKO over current champ Rafael Cavalcante, and made another LHW appearance in July, choking out Abongo Humphrey. The last time Kyle competed for Strikeforce as a heavyweight, he was quickly choked out by Fabricio Werdum.

(Video courtesy YouTube/MattNYY2)

If TUF 6 graduate Matt Arroyo’s fighting career doesn’t pan out, he may have a future as an impersonator.

The 28-year-old who was dropped by Zuffa after back-to-back losses has been inactive as a fighter since his last Octagon appearance against Dan Cramer at UFC 94: St-Pierre vs. Penn 2 in January of 2009. He has competed in BJJ competitions since then, but it seems like he’s been spending the majority of his time away from the cage working on ‘is riddum.

More MMA notables’ doing some other impressive impersonations after the jump.

(Sometimes the metaphor is just … too perfect. PicProps: Showtime)

So … not to be overly cynical … but we find it pretty hard not to start snickering from the very first line of USA Today’s recent holiday weekend interview with the Strikeforce CEO, when the newspaper boldly (read: blandly) proclaims: Scott Coker is approaching 2011 with optimism.

Well yeah, no shit. We’d be stoked about the new year too if we’d just witnessed our MMA company spend much of 2010 looking like a scared stray dog trying to work its way across a busy four-lane highway during rush hour traffic. Just to recap, this year Strikeforce — among other fails — staged an enormous brawl on national television, watched its awesome-sounding middleweight tournament go tits up before it even got past the planning stages, gave its middleweight champ to the UFC, stood dumbfounded when Fedor Emelianenko fucking lost to Fab Werdum, gaped while two Brazilian dudes nobody has ever heard of captured gold in two different weight classes, showed a complete and total inability to book the right fights and continued to slap itself on the proverbial forehead while suffering the whims of its largely absentee heavyweight champion.

Somehow, the stray dog made it to the other side of the Interstate but frankly we’d rather hit our own dick with a hammer than endure a year like the one Strikeforce just had. So forgive us if we can’t quite take Coker at face value when he implies that 2011 is “about more than surviving” for his company. It’s actually all about surviving and as much as the boss promises a 33 percent increase in Strikeforce programming next year, we can’t help but notice that for the bulk of this interview Coker just sounds like a dude who is taking it one day at a time.

Mike represented the Potato Nation last night on MMA Sucka Radio’s third instalment of their State of the Union MMA media-centric series where he added his commentary on a variety of hot topics.

The roundtable discussion also featured the 209s rising MMA videographer/editor Layzie the Savage and host Trevor Dueck.

Check out MMASucka.com here, a sample of Layzie’s work below and give the show a listen.

(Video courtesy YouTube/LayzietheSavage)

Clear your schedules, Potato Nation — this coming Saturday, the Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale (Spike, 9 p.m. ET/PT) and Strikeforce: Henderson vs. Babalu (Showtime, 10 p.m. ET/PT) will both be competing for our attention. If you haven’t visited our MMA FightPicker game in a while (which you can also play on Facebook), please swing by and test your prediction skills against your fellow fight-fans; this week’s pools include questions related to both events. For those of you who already made picks over the weekend, keep in mind that Strikeforce’s recent run of bad luck and Leonard Garcia’s withdrawal from the TUF 12 Finale have altered things a bit, so revisit your pools and make any necessary changes. The current list of FightPicker questions is after the jump. Good luck.

(Props: Gofightlive via Fightlinker)

Since nobody likes to get right back to work after a four-day weekend, we figured we’d ease you back into your time-wasting routine with a few ridiculous MMA videos. First up, a three-second KO at an Evolution AMMA event that’s notable for what happens after the knockout. The losing fighter is so dazed that not only does he grab onto the referee in confusion, he manages to successfully score mount. Early stoppage, if you ask me.

After the jump: During a 2007 bout in Brazil, new UFC acquisition Maiquel Falcao continues to beat on his opponent long after the fight is stopped. Could this be a bad omen for his UFC career? (And where was that intensity at UFC 123?) Also, video of Bob Sapp‘s latest sad kickboxing match, Saturday night in Sweden, in which the Beast takes a dive at the absolute earliest opportunity.

(Propers: YouTube/Legiostaff)

Shaky camera work? Check. Chair awkwardly placed in front of a full-length mirror? Check. Poorly translated subtitles? Check. Odd excuse for why you missed weight/pulled out of a fight/didn’t win? Triple check. Having run down our checklist, we’re confident that Alessio Sakara’s explanation of why he withdrew from his scheduled bout with Jorge Rivera at UFC 122 earlier this month meets all the requirements of a standard postfight mea culpa video. To hear Sakara tell it, it was not the weight cut but rather some bad tuna fish that knocked him out of action just hours before the event. Since he was on an all tuna diet for at least a week before the fight, there aren’t a lot of other possibilities, the fighter says.

(Nothing awkward about that. PicProps: MMAZone.nl)

It is with a heavy heart that we must bring you news that Valentijn Overeem – the older but slightly less impressive brother of Alistair – withdrew from his scheduled fight with Bigfoot Silva over the weekend after suffering an elbow injury in training, according to multiple reports. We know, it’s an epic bummer for those of you who were really looking forward to seeing the two middle-of-the-pack heavyweights slug it out on premium cable television. Seriously though, try to pull yourselves together. After this latest injury, Strikeforce is going to have to make some tough decisions and you’re not gonna wanna miss it.

As of this writing, none of our intrepid internet brethren have yet been able to contact anyone at the snakebit promotion to find out how it will cope with the news of a second fight being redacted from its scheduled televised lineup due to late injury. When Herschel Walker dropped out of his glorified sparring session with Scott Carson last week, Strikeforce scrambled to boost middleweights Benji Radach and Lucas Lopes into a light heavyweight bout to fill the void. What will it do now that Overeem is out? Try to find a heavyweight willing to step in against Bigfoot on less than a week’s notice? Press on with just four televised fights, one of which is already a last-minute replacement? Elevate a bout from the typically D-list undercard? We’re not seeing a lot of great options here.

("So … you holdin’?" PicProps: Some dude’s blog)

It was pretty clear back in April that Dan Henderson came to Strikeforce: Nashville fully intending to knock Jake Shields out in the first round. When that didn’t quite happen, it looked to a lot of people watching at home like Henderson just took an “ah, fuck this” attitude to the next four rounds. In conceding a unanimous decision loss, Hendo sent Shields cruising to the UFC on a high note while simultaneously raising a lot of troubling questions about his own future in the sport and exactly what Strikeforce got when it signed the 40-year-old former Pride champ to a deal after Big DW passed on him.

Now, Henderson says it wasn’t boredom or lack of training that made him look like a guy who’d rather be back home in California wolfing down fish tacos and watching the tide roll in for the final 20-minutes of his promotional debut.  It was, uh, the pain pills. Yeah … not sure if this makes it better or worse, but Hendo recently told MMA Weekly that the meds he was taking for his aching back turned his weight cut to 185-pounds for that bout into a real doozy and that it left him feeling not quite himself by the time he stepped in the cage.

(Video courtesy YouTube/JoeRogan.net)

– Floyd Mayweather Jr. accused of assault with a deadly weapon; could be upgraded to attempted murder if investigation yields evidence (lvrj)

– Nog bros have new online game and it’s addictive (middleeasy)

– The fab 15 – lightweights (fiveouncesofpain)

– Indiana Jones teaches proper table mysteries (screenjunkies)

– KahL One’s MMA expo highlights (thegarv)

– Michelle McLaughlin photos (holytaco)

– Akiyama’s sexy Maxim cover (fightersonly)

– Paulo Thiago knows it’s do or die time in his next bout (tatame)

– Britney Palmer photo shoot (mmafix)

– Yves Edwards recalls his first fight (mmafighting)

– Despite partnership with UFC, USMC won’t let Marine compete on TUF (mmavalor)

– Tyson Griffin considering drop to featherweight (thescore)

– Yankees and Jeter still $80 million apart (scoresreport)

– Lindland wants to punch a hole in Lawler’s face; statistics say, "pfft!" (mmajunkie)

– Use Linkedin to get a job (mademan)

("See Brett, if you just marry them first, they can’t be compelled to testify against you." PicProps: XtremeCouture)

With each new piece of news that emerges, it’s starting to feel more and more unlikely that we’ll ever see Randy Couture in the Octagon again. After a 12-month period that saw him go 3-0 in the UFC – with wins over Brandon Vera, Mark Coleman and James Toney  — and score significant screen time alongside Mickey Rourke’s man boobs, Steve Austin’s emotive grunting and Sly Stallone’s extremely troubling facial hair in “The Expendables,” Couture’s been playing it pretty coy these days about his status as an active fighter. Even though he won’t be making an official retirement announcement, he says he’ll only strap on the 4-ouncers for future fights that are “interesting” (read: winnable) enough. Now the 47-year-old’s non-fighting schedule could keep him busy until the Spring of next year.

Couture appeared on local Las Vegas radio recently – no family commitments to keep him occupied during the holidays, you understand – to reveal he’s landed a role alongside fellow baldster Bruce Willis in a movie that will film in early December and that he hopes everybody else can clear their calendars in time to crap out an “Expendables” sequel in March. With all that going on, Couture will have a very limited window in which to squeeze in any actual MMA before he turns 48 next June. Still, he maintains that if the UFC brings him something juicy, he’ll give it a sniff.

Every year, a handful of MMA fighters ascend from obscurity to contendership, from prospect status to championship gold — from nothing to something. In honor of The Warrior’s Way, which hits theaters next Friday, we’d like to salute MMA’s breakout class of 2010, whose careers exploded this year, and who are all poised for even larger accomplishments in 2011.

PHIL DAVIS

Notable 2010 victories: Brian Stann (unanimous decision, UFC 109), Alexander Gustafsson (submission R1, UFC 112), Tim Boetsch (submission R2, UFC 123)
Between his pink shorts, action-figure physique, and aggressive grappling, Mr. Wonderful has become an unmistakable figure in the UFC’s light-heavyweight division. A year ago, he was a relatively unknown 4-0 prospect trying to re-invent himself as a cage-fighter after a brilliant collegiate wrestling career at Penn State, which culminated in a 2008 NCAA title. Davis made his Octagon debut this February, and has since sent four straight opponents back to the drawing board, beginning with former WEC champ Brian Stann, and ending with a Submission of the Night performance against Tim Boetsch. Having proven himself against gritty veterans and promising rookies, we’re about to find out if Davis can keep his dominant run going against the next level of UFC contenders.

COURT McGEE

Notable 2010 victories: Kris McCray (submission R2, TUF 11 Finale), Ryan Jensen (submission R3, UFC 121)
Court McGee’s life is an object lesson in never, ever giving up, no matter how dire the circumstances. A former drug-addict who was declared clinically dead after an overdose in 2005, McGee got clean and devoted his life to MMA. His stint on The Ultimate Fighter 11 this year was almost cut short after he lost a bum decision to Nick Ring, but McGee re-entered the competition as an injury replacement, and went on to choke out James Hammortree, Brad Tavares, and Kris McCray to earn the season’s middleweight trophy. In his first post-TUF test at UFC 121, he survived getting bombed out on by Ryan Jensen in the first round, and turned the momentum around when Jensen began to fade in round two. In the end, Jensen was tapping like the rest of them, and Court McGee had secured his reputation as one of toughest (and most likable) bastards TUF has ever produced.

(Radach and Lopes will step in with just nine days notice.)

With heavyweight Herschel Walker forced out of his planned December 4 Strikeforce bout with WEC veteran Scott Carson due to a deep cut he sustained training with Daniel Cormier on Friday, a light heavyweight scrap between usual middleweights Lucas Lopes and Benji Radach has been put together at the last minute to help fill in the dwindling Henderson vs. Babalu fight card.

Earlier in the week yet-to-be matched up Jesse Finney, who was originally slated to face Scott Smith before "Hands of Steel" was instead matched up with Strikeforce newcomer Paul Daley, was forced to bow out of the event due to an eye injury.

Sources close to the situation told CagePotato.com Thursday that Lopes (19-10), who is one of Finney’s training partners and holds a win over UFC standout Thiago Alves, has agreed to face Radach on the card. Radach (20-5), whose record includes wins over Murilo Rua and Gerald Harris, hasn’t fought since being knocked out by Smith last year, but he is a crafty veteran Lopes would regret taking lightly. 

Another source we spoke to informed us that Strikeforce was unable to find a suitable opponent in time for Carson, so the 4-1 veteran whose return to MMA after a nine-year absence in June was spoiled by a first round knock out by Lorenz Larkin.

("COME AT ME, BRO!")

Happy Thanksgiving, Potato Nation! If you’re reading this right now, you should probably consider disconnecting from the Internet and spending time with your family. If you came here to escape those horrible people, brother we can relate. (*Pours another glass of scotch*) Let us know what you’re thankful for in the comments section, and keep up-to-date with this grab-bag of UFC headlines…

– Replacing the unfortunately injured Jose Aldo at UFC 125 against Josh Grispi will be Dustin Poirier, an 8-1 featherweight prospect who just knocked out Zach Micklewright in 53 seconds earlier this month at WEC 52: Faber vs. Mizugaki. Chris Leben vs. Brian Stann will now be the event’s co-headliner, in support of the Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard lightweight title fight.

– Coming off an ugly knockout loss against George Roop at WEC 51, "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung has his win-or-go-home fight booked, as he’ll be taking on Rani Yahya at Fight for the Troops 2 on January 22nd. It’ll be the only fight on the card where you won’t be able to chant "U!S!A!" in support of at least one of the fighters. Expect a lot of fans in the arena to make trips to the bathroom.

(Photo courtesy CombatLifestyle.com)

Ken Pavia is a firm believer of the old adage, “Everything happens for a reason.”

When he inadvertently became an MMA agent six years ago, it was a result of the sport finding him and not the other way around, but looking back he says he’s thankful that it did.

Working as a traditional sports agent since graduating from the University of Miami School of Law and opening his first agency, Pavia says that he always had an eye for talent and would often put his skill to use outside of his practice, which caught the attention of an early MMA media pioneer.

“I had a men’s league softball team in Huntington Beach. I was acting as a pseudo-General Manager for the team and I had pretty much the best players from every team who competed on our team. There were probably 500 teams in the leagues and our team always made it to the ‘A’ league championships every year. The umpire for the league came to me and asked me how it was that I came to have all of the best players from all of the teams on my team and I told him I was a mainstream sports agent,” Pavia recalls. “He was told me, ‘I have a website that covers MMA.’ By coincidence, I was a fan and I bought UFC 1 and we chatted a bit about the sport and he told me to check out his website. That was [Sherdog.com founder] Jeff Sherwood. We struck up a friendship and have been great friends ever since. That was probably 10 years ago.”

(I can’t see why two GQ-looking guys stuck out in Morocco.)

The man who admitted to being former UFC fighter Lee Murray’s right-hand man in the Securitas depot robbery four years ago that netted "Lightning" and his team the equivalent of $85 million USD, was sentenced on Monday to 18 years behind bars for his part in the mega heist.

0-0-1 former MMA fighter Paul "The Enforcer" Allen, who was handed over to British authorities in 2008 after being arrested in Morocco with Murray in 2006 pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to possess a firearm and was sentenced to nearly double the years in jail as Lee, who was identified as the mastermind behind the spectacular robbery.

The well-planned out heist that saw Murray, disguised with a prosthetic nose and chin and dressed as a police officer kidnap the security depot’s manager and his family at gunpoint before cleaning out a number of vaults from the previously thought to be uncompromisable money storage depot.

Apologies to those of you who patiently waited all day yesterday for our weekly rumor feature, which has been making us tons of new friends in the industry, believe me. After the jump, you’ll find five juicy items, mostly pertaining to guys getting screwed out of money. As usual, four are complete fabrications, and one is 100% on the level. Can you solve the mystery? Can we avoid getting sued for one more week? Time will tell!

("A statement? I got your statement right here.")

The Dutch newspaper, de Telegraph is reporting that badboy K-1 standout Badr Hari was released from prison in Amsterdam yesterday after serving less than a month behind bars for an alleged assault on a bouncer earlier this year.

According to police, in February Hari and a group of friends were refused entry to a club because their attire did not conform to the dress code set by the bar. An argument escalated to a physical altercation that allegedly saw Hari break the doorman’s nose and eye socket. 

Maybe K-1 fighters just need to stay out of nightclubs.

(For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation will do. PicProps: CombatLifestyle)

As it stands, the Potato has what you might call in the parlance of the fight game a “verbal agreement” in place to have Shonie Carter on an upcoming episode of The Bum Rush. So far it’s just been a matter of getting our schedules to mesh. When it happens and we get Mr. International live on the air you can damn sure bet we’re going to get to the bottom of this little tidbit: Recently retired, it now appears that Carter wants to take his singular talents to the world of professional wrestling. At least that’s what he told Old Dad on Wednesday in an interview over on MMA Fighting.

"I want to go to the WWE … ," Carter says. "I’m coming to acknowledge the midlife crisis that a lot of guys go through where they get a Corvette and a hot blonde girlfriend with big boobs. I’ve just decided to do the WWE. Overtime, that will be my name. Overtime, because I work hard. I put that hard hat on, I bring a lunchbox, and I punch in. If you get in that ring with me, you better punch in too, because you’re going to be working overtime."

Phew, midlife crisis averted. Still, we can’t help but wonder: Wouldn’t it be possible for Shonie to go to WWE and get the hot blonde girlfriend with big boobs? Just sayin.

Strikeforce held a media conference call on Tuesday ahead of its December 4 Henderson vs. Babalu show in St. Louis, MO. Taking part in the call were the promotion’s CEO Scott Coker, former Olympian Matt Lindland, Octagon refugee Paul Daley, and Strikeforce sluggers Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler.

Though there weren’t any shocking revelations that came out of the call, one thing that stood out was how terrible and predictable the questions were.

I guess most of these MMA "journalists" as we’re so often referred to as being, didn’t bother to read Ben’s list of questions you shouldn’t ask when interviewing an MMA fighter:

The highlights are after the jump: