(Winner gets Hammer’s gold pants.)

It looks like the rumors that Frank Mir will coach opposite Brock Lesnar on next season of The Ultimate Fighter gained some momentum today with news that the planned bout between Mir and heavyweight prospect Brendan Schaub has been scrapped.

According to Sportsnet’s Joe Ferraro, sources indicated today that Schaub will likely face fellow Alchemist Management repped fighter Stefan Struve on the UFC’s third "Live on Versus" card on March 3 which will feature a main event welterweight tilt between Martin Kampmann and Diego Sanchez. The change in opponents without any mention by Mir of an injury coupled with his re-tweet of the message below, proclaiming the two former UFC heavyweight champions as opposing coaches does little to disprove the assumption.

(If Vitor walks out at 126 to Iron Mike’s version of "In the Air Tonight," bricks will be shat. Pic props: Sherdog)

It looks like Vitor Belfort has one-upped Anderson Silva’s secret training weapon.

If you recall, prior to his UFC 117 bout with Chael Sonnen, the longtime UFC middleweight champion spent some time with 7th-dan Aikido black belt Steven Seagal to learn slap blocks, wrist locks and throat strikes — none of which helped him from being dumped on his ass and pounded on for the majority of five rounds by the testosterone deficient Republican.

After trying in vain to secure Ralph Macchio to help him prepare for his upcoming UFC 126 bout with Silva, Belfort had to settle for the next best thing: Mike Tyson.

(You know it’s crazy when Antonio McKee makes a face like someone *else* is out their damn mind. Props: ProMMANow)

Antonio McKee’s long awaited (by McKee himself) and briefly rumored (by McKee himself) Octagon debut is scheduled to go down this weekend at UFC 125. The 40-year-old motormouth will take on Jacob Volkmann on the undercard of Saturday’s "Resolution" card in Vegas and it’s a fight he frankly better win, lest his years of trash-talk appear all for naught. Luckily for us, the grapple-first, ask-questions-later McKee isn’t letting his impending UFC entry get in the way of his on-going monologue with the world at large. Nope, he wastes little time this week making some typically farfetched comparrisons to Todd Martin in a sprawling and fairly entertaining long-form narrative at Sherdog.com.

“I feel like I’m the Muhammad Ali of MMA,” McKee says within the first three or four paragraphs. “I feel like I’m the Don King of MMA. I feel like I’m the Tupac Shakur of MMA. I’m the mouth, the talent, the brains, and I’m also the business side. Where does that put me? That puts me as one of the all-time greatest black mixed martial arts fighters.”

Huh, “greatest black MMA fighters” is a Top 10 list we’ve never even considered before. Consider that one tucked away for a rainy day.

("What in the bloody hell? That’s my victory pose, you wanker.")

A welterweight bout between Dan Hardy and Anthony Johnson has been verbally agreed to for March, however it isn’t clear which of the four events that month the fight will happen at.

Cagepotato.com learned of the bout from a source close to one of the fighters Sunday afternoon, but MMAFighting.com was the first to report the story.

An erroneous report surfaced earlier in the day yesterday that stated that the bout would happen at UFC 129 in Toronto, but according to our source, the Canadian date was not offered, but it could happen on one of the three other planned cards. UFC on Versus 3 is penciled in for March 3 in Louisville, Kentucky, an event is reportedly being planned for an undisclosed location for March 19 and Ultimate Fight Night 24 is slated for March 26 in Seattle.

(Props: YouTube/10CroCop)

As has been noted on this website in the past, we can only assume that it is really, really hard for anyone – even actual Croatians – to find Croatian-to-English interpreters. Either that, or whoever is doing it for www.CroCop.info is just totally half-assing it. As you can see with your own two eyes, the “English” subtitles on the above video only make “sense” in a highly impressionistic, inexplicit kind of a way. If the translation can be trusted at all, it purports to be a local news report about our guy Mirko, where he insists that he is healthy headed into 2011 and “can hardly wait” to see some kind of the positive return on the “investments” (we assume he’s talking physical and financial here) that he’s made in training.

Also, we’re not sure if we should just laugh or be kind of legitimately mad about the 20 second span from the 52-second mark to 1:12 when the subtitles drop off entirely and the words “About Croatian Politics” appear on the screen in red type. Look, are we interested in Croatian politics? Hell no, but we’d like the opportunity to make the decision for ourselves. We don’t need CroCop being our Jack Valenti, but it’s whatever, on to the fighting stuff.

("What’s so hard to remember about ‘Hold the anchovies?’" PicProps: Connect.in)

Man, why are we totally not surprised that Frankie Edgar’s boxing coach owns a pizzeria? When you’re talking about a bunch of guys from New Jersey it might sound culturally insensitive to make that assumption but at least according to MMA Weekly, it’s also true. The man responsible for Edgar reaching zenith of his stand-up game in recent fights is one Mark Henry – no, not that Mark Henry – a former member of the US Boxing team who has also owned and operated a place called Pino’s Pizza in the Jerz for nearly two decades. Frankly, it sounds like a bad place to try to rob unless you’re bringing a gang of homies and a whole lot of firepower.

Henry has been working with Edgar for some time, but says they only really got serious about pugilism after he watched Edgar suffer his lone career loss to Gray Maynard in April, 2008. Coincidentally, this interview comes to us just as Edgar is preparing to defend his 155-pound title in a rematch against Maynard at UFC 125 on Jan. 1. See, that’s just good storytelling from the Gray Lady of MMA Journalism. But we digress …

(Propers: YouTube/UFC)

Would it surprise you much if we told you Gray Maynard’s UFC 125 video blog wasn’t – how do we put this – the most exciting thing in the world? Nope, the No. 1 contender for the UFC lightweight title just kind of grinds this one out. Give Maynard some credit for tooling around Vegas in a black-on-black Caddy with dark tinted windows and retiring to what appears to be his very sweet condo to play with his dogs, but that’s about as exhilarating as this one gets. At one point, dude makes a sandwich. Open-face. Peanut butter and banana on a rice cake. In a four-minute video, it takes about a minute. And that’s sort of a metaphor for the whole thing.

Anyway, we know it’s still officially the holiday weekend and you’re still trying to ease back into this thing, so after the jump you’ll find a smattering of weekend videos to keep you entertained. Think of it as like our Xmas gift to you. Our Xmas gift for you that we stole from other places without so much as a tremor of good conscience. Hey, we never said we were nice guys.

(It’s a Christmas miracle! Nah playa, it’s just a Jonathan Brookins video blog. Propers: JonathanBrookins.com)

 – Told You So: K-1 standout Gokhan Saki says he’s headed to Strikeforce (Twitter)

– Tatsuya Kawajiri, Hiroyuki Takaya Pre-Dynamite!! open workout video (MMA Fighting)

– Cody McKenzie shows you around his "crib." (YouTube)

– Clay Guida talks Gomi (Yahoo)

– "Lesnar to Wrestlemania" rumors still alive and well (Bloody Elbow)

– Thiago Alves vs. Rick Story targeted for May. (MMA Weekly)

– Mike Brown ready to roll against Diego Nunes at UFC 125 (MMA Junkie)

– GSP wins Canadian athlete of the year (Heavy)

– What your favorite pro MMA fighters really do want for Christmas. (Sherdog)

– Top 10 Xmas videos to share with friends and family (Gawker)

– 25 sexy celebrity Santas. Don’t worry, they’re girls. (Made Men)

– How to survive the Zombie Christmas Apocalypse. (Break)

– Hot chick pickle eating contest! (Break)

("There goes my number of Twitter followers down the tubes.")

Former UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida finds himself in the unfamiliar position of having his back against the wall coming off of two consecutive UFC losses. Aware that he needs to win his next bout or risk having his head on the UFC’s chopping block, "The Dragon," who was previously undefeated in his career before losing to Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson in his last two bouts says that the biggest adjustment he had to make as a loser was getting used to fans turning their backs on him.

“People sometimes want something that is not possible. St. Pierre for instance, plays by the rules, once you lose people don’t want to know about you anymore," Machida told Tatame in a recent interview. "It’s great to make a good show, if you can do both things, great, but you can’t always. Each day that goes by you keep seeing it as a sequence of losses because you keep distancing yourself to the title, so it’s harder for you to fight a top guy, like Rashad, who’s on the line for the belt. I have to seek another fight d o what I want, but when you’re in the middle of the ranking you never know what can happen to you. Vitor (Belfort), for instance, fought once and will dispute the title, because of his background, so it’s hard to say. But in my weight class I know there’re other people before me on the line; it happens."

As far as his last loss — a decision that many feel shouldn’t have gone  to Rampage — Machida says he is done dwelling on what should have or could have happened.

"Until these days I hear everybody telling me, ‘they steal from you,’ but I don’t like to keep saying it because it ain’t change anything, maybe it make things worse because I’ll keep thinking about it. Now I’ll do my own game, win without leaving any doubts. These are things we learn on the road."

(No, really, I love it. It’s much better than something practical like a new hoodie or pair of glasses.")

Since it’s the holidays and we haven’t been spitting out as many Photoshops as we used to, we figured it would be appropriate to put together a collection of illustrations depicting what a handful of fighters and MMA luminaries are angling for this Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa or putting up with obnoxious relatives just so you can get a crappy token gift day.

The possibilities were pretty much endless, but these are the best we could come up with on an hour’s notice.

Enjoy.

(Todd Duffee does curls for the girls and testosterone replacement therapy for his opponents. PicProps: XPE Sports)

Alistair Overeem’s New Year’s Eve bout with recently exiled UFC malcontent Todd Duffee is officially going down, according to a report out Thursday morning from MMA Fighting.com’s Ariel Helwani. Overeem’s status for the event was confirmed yesterday as rumors of the Duffee fight simultaneously began to percolate. At first it appeared the honchos at FEG wanted to keep the identity of The Reem’s opponent secret – at least until they’d, we don’t know, slipped Duffee through customs in a giant duffle bag marked “Perishable Goods” or something like that – but then the fighter himself let the cat out of the bag by posting (and immediately deleting) a message on his Facebook page.

Smooth move, T-Duff. Hey, since it’s the holiday season, please allow us to express our heartfelt thanks for social media and the unfettered opportunity it provides fighters to broadcast the worst parts of their personalities and prematurely release time-sensitive information to the public without checking with anyone (anyone at all) beforehand. Without you, beloved Facebook and Twitter, this sport wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Isn’t that right, Marcus Davis?

With the holidays nearly upon us and your work week winding down, we figured we’d give you something to do while you drink your bourbon spiked coffee alone in your office today.

This is our twelfth and final episode of the year, but it’s a good one.

Besides our "expert" breakdown of UFC 125, we opened the phone lines up again for this show to hear from the Potato Nation one last time before heading into 2011.

At approximately the :79 minute mark (for those of you who can’t stand our hodgepodge of Canadian and American accents) UFC lightweight contender George Sotiropoulos stops by to talk about a number of topics, including his upcoming fight with Dennis Siver at UFC 127, the lightweight title bout between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard coming up on New Year’s day, the hate towards 10th Planet jiu-jitsu and the controversy surrounding his competition legwear.

*We apologize in advance for a fragment of latent audio from a past episode that somehow made it into the intro by Ben when he’s talking about our pal Dallas Winston. We’re in the process of uploading the new version of the show with the soundbite removed, but it likely will take an hour or so to complete the process.

As always, we suggest that you subscribe to The Bum Rush on iTunes if for nothing else but simplicity’s sake, but if you’re still against all things Apple, you can download the episode by right-clicking HERE.

(Props: densetsug via MiddleEasy. Match starts at the 2:01 mark)

UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman hasn’t competed in a legit MMA fight since he was choked out by Randy Couture at UFC 109. What you see above is Coleman performing in a worked MMA-style wrasslin’ match at the IGF Genome 13 event back in September against Shinichi Suzukawa (who will be appearing against Bob Sapp on the Dynamite!! 2010 card). The thing is, this particular work was supposed to be worked in Coleman‘s favor. We’ll let Phil Baroni tell the story:

"It was supppose to be a pro wrestling match. It was suppose to be 3 min.
Coleman was suppose to win. The fat fucking douch scum bag didnt do the match the way it was suppose to be. That film was eddited. The Fat didck was suppose to tap from a head lock. He would not and kept rope escaping. Coleman squeezed hard a few times and burnt him self out trying to get the guy to tap.

UPDATE: Strikeforce has denied Craner’s story, and claims they have records of paying her for all her appearances and travel expenses.

Of all the ring girls that have come and gone in the employ of Strikeforce, Nicole Craner was one of the all-time greats. These days, the 29-year-old Idaho native holds cards for Shark Fights — which seems like a downgrade until you learn that Craner wasn’t getting paid at her old job. As she revealed on a recent episode of TUF Crap Radio:

“I think when you’re an organization like the UFC, they value their [Octagon] girls. They treat them well, they’re part of the family, and that’s something that I wanted to do with Strikeforce…With Strikeforce I can honestly say that I don’t think Scott Coker even knew my name. I don’t think he knew any of his ring girls’ names and I’ve never really talked about this before, but it came down to not getting paid; And for me, I treated it as a job and I put a lot of effort into it and when you’re not respected or valued enough, it makes you want to go somewhere else…

So I mean you can pay Frank Shamrock 340,000 dollars to lose but you can’t pay your ring girl 400 bucks?…There were promises made that we were going to do contracts and that we were going to travel and they had me host something that they said Josh Thomson and Cung Le would be hosting, but it was something that they didn’t host or never were going to host and I never got paid for it. So those kinds of things, to me, made me just quit. I felt that if I’m going to put passion into it and I’m going to go out there and put your name out there that I should at least be respected enough and valued as part of the company."

Damn, even the eye-candy’s taking shots at Strikeforce now. But when you consider that NFL cheerleaders make just $50-75 a game, you can’t really expect an MMA ring girl to be compensated with anything more than complimentary booty-shorts and an occasional wink from Mauro Ranallo. Of course, this is all just an excuse to run some more photos of Nicole. You can find those after the jump…

(Ishii misunderstood the SEG reps when they offered for him to sign for a K-1 bout with LeBanner. He thought he was signing for to get a K-1 belt with LeBanner.)

In keeping with Japanese tradition of announcing bouts at the last minute,  K-1 revealed the majority of its competitors for its FieLDS Dynamite!! show on New Year’s Eve at a special press conference held in Japan last night.

Besides the rumored featherweight championship bout between champion Bibiano Fernandes and Hiroyuki Takaya and welterweight title tilt between Marius  Zaromskis and Kazushi Sakuraba, SEG also confirmed Satoshi Ishii vs. Jerome Le Banner, Sergei Kharitonov vs. Tatsuya Mizuno, Shinya Aoki vs. Yuichiro Nagashim, Kyotaro Fujimoto vs. Gegard Mousasi and Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Josh Thomson among among other bouts.

They also announced that Strikeforce heavyweight champion and K-1 Open Weight Grand Prix winner Alistair Overeem will be on the card against a yet-to-be-named opponent and that depending on the caliber of his  challenger, the fight could be for the DREAM heavyweight strap. Bobby Lashley and Todd Duffee are the two leading candidates to face The Reem, but according to sources, an announcement likely won’t happen until next week as they are working through a few hurdles with their number one choice.

A strange addition to the card is a pro wrestling bout between Bob Sapp and Shinichi Suzukawa which will be contested under Antonio Inoki’s Inoki Genome Federation (IGF) rules. At least it will give us a chance to go to the washroom and to grab a sandwich and a beer.
———-

If 2010 was a cold beer, we’d be down to the backwash. December puts all of us MMA-pundit types in a reflective mood, and this year gave us a double-crapload of big stories, insane fights, rising stars, and utter embarrassments to wrap our heads around. And so, we’d like to pay tribute to 2010 in the best way we know how — sarcasm and insults, mostly. Without further ado, here are 15 things we felt were worthy of some end-of-year recognition, Potato-style…

The Giant Silva Freak Show Award, presented each year to the match that’s made strictly for gruesome entertainment value; fighters should ideally exhibit a tremendous difference in either size or experience level.
Winner: Randy Couture vs. James Toney at UFC 118, in which a tubby boxing champ trash-talked his way into a co-headling bout against an MMA legend, and got choked out before he was able to land a single punch. This marks the first time in eleven years that the Giant Silva Award hasn’t been granted to a fight held in Japan.
Also receiving votes this year: Herschel Walker vs. Greg Nagy

The Wanderlei Silva Unintentionally Homoerotic Smack Talk Award, known as "The Wandy" is presented each year to the fighter who, when trying to hype a fight, inadvertently makes reference to having gay sex with his (or her) opponent.
Winner: Josh Koscheck, for the utterly disturbing wild-eyed, tongue-waving description above of what he was planning to do to UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre during this season of The Ultimate Fighter. 
Also receiving votes this year: Matt Horwich, for his cringeworthy rant about how he was going to Mike Tyson 10th Planet protagonist Renato Laranja.

The Natasha Wicks Memorial Best Female Newcomer Award, presented each year to the up-and-coming MMA ring girl — preferably blonde, as per the bylaws — who gets us to forget about Arianny Celeste and Brittney Palmer, if only for a moment.
Winner: Rhian Sugden, the stunning (and frequently-nude) star of the U.K.’s BAMMA promotion.
Also receiving votes this year: Kelli Hutcherson, Stephanie Ann Cook, Brittany Ward, Melissa Jo

Well it looks like his detractors won’t be able to call Alistair Overeem a can crusher after New Year’s Eve.

According to heavyweight prospect Todd Duffee, he and the the Strikeforce and 2010 K-1 Grand Prix champion will meet in Japan that night as the main event of Fields’ K-1 Dynamite!! show.

Duffee made the announcement via his Facebook page, but quickly took the post down, but not before we grabbed a screenshot of the message in which he asked, "Have no plans on NYE? Dream Dynamite 2010: Duffee VS Overeem on HDnet!!!"

The 6-1 Evansville, Indiana native, who only fought once this year and was dropped by the UFC for his "bad attitude" according to the promotion’s president Dana White, has not fought since being knocked out by Mike Russow in the third round at UFC 114 after pounding on the Chicago, Illinois native for the first twelve and a half minutes of the fight. He’s scheduled to face 6-3 TUF 10 veteran Abe Wagner under the Titan Fighting Championship banner on January 29.

Overeem (33-11-1) has been equally as inactive in MMA this year, logging just one fight against Brett Rogers, whom he defeated by TKO in just under four minutes at Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery in St Louis, Missouri in May.

The fight has not officially been announced, but Overeem stated last week that he was hoping for a decent opponent and that he was hoping that DREAM would put their heavyweight belt up as the prize for the winner if the match-up was belt-worthy and this fun little scrap fits the bill.

("What has two thumbs, wears a red jersey and has an insatiable hunger for Hot Pockets right now?" PicProps: Ultimate Fighter.com)

Not to get sidetracked by the psychology of it all, but clearly a certain amount of success in athletics must be based on not thinking about it too much. Hence, the stunning percentage of dumb guys who are also professional athletes. Now, we’re not trying to say that Cody McKenzie is dumb, per se, only that he sure doesn’t appear to over think things. In fact, perhaps that blind confidence – coupled with a freaky guillotine — is his greatest strength as a fighter. There’s something about McKenzie’s particular blend of boundless enthusiasm and wanton hubris that we find incredibly endearing. His surprising run on “TUF 12,” during which he performed the MMA equivalent of continually poking a sleeping grizzly bear with a stick by talking an endless stream of shit to Josh Koscheck, was enough to win our hearts. His choke-out of Aaron Wilkinson at the show’s live finale? Well, that was just hilarious.

From the outside looking in, it appears the UFC may be just as bemused by McKenzie as we are, perhaps vowing to just keep giving him fights in rapid succession until somebody beats him. That – paired with the fact the kid just doesn’t seem know any better – would explain why the company is moving him straight from his victory over Wilkinson earlier this month into a short-notice fight with Yves Edwards on Jan. 22. It would also explain why he’s prone to say stuff like this: “I’d love to be able to cut down to 145 and fight (Jose) Aldo,” McKenzie told MMA Junkie this week. “I respect the guy, but I think that would be a war.”

Yeah, no. Clearly a complete inability to conceptualize your own limitations can only take you so far.

(Video courtesy Sherdog)

I don’t know what the hell it is lately with shady MMA promoters screwing fighters, but it looks like these leeches are bound and bet to add some black marks on an overall otherwise decent year for the sport before the clock ticks out for 2010.

By now we’ve all heard about some of of the crazy shit that went down at the Nemesis Fighting show in Dominican Republic earlier this month where fighters didn’t get paid and the promoter tried to high tail it out of Dodge before they realized the checks he wrote them were rubber. The latest on that story is that former bounty hunter Keith Jardine, who was one of the fighters who got stiffed has hooked up with the U.S. Secret Service to remedy the situation. We’ll have one of the fighters who nearly didn’t make it out of Dominican alive, Chris McNally on tomorrow’s The Bum Rush Radio Show to tell another crazy story from the event.

Well, it looks like another promoter has tried to pull a fast one on another UFC veteran, only this time it isn’t money that was stolen, it was a championship belt.

(You don’t want any part of this, Nick. No part whatsoever. / Photo courtesy of ESPN.)

It’s official: Nick Diaz vs. Jason Miller ain’t happening, at least not in the near future. With both sides failing to come to an agreement on weight class, Strikeforce has decided to move on with their welterweight champion, reportedly booking Diaz to defend his belt against Chute Boxe veteran Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos. The fight is expected to take place on the January 29th San Jose card that will also feature the middleweight title fight between Ronaldo "Grappler" Souza vs. Robbie "Striker" Lawler.

(Shinya Aoki tries to hide his disgust next to kickboxer/cosplayer Yuichiro Nagashima, who he’ll be facing in a strange mixed-rules bout at Dynamite!! 2010. Though we suppose any match against Nagashima could be described as "strange, mixed-rules.")

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail feedback@cagepotato.com for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…

- Tito Ortiz vs. Lil’ Nog Will Now Headline UFC Fight Night 24 in Seattle (MMA Convert)

– ‘UFC 127: Penn vs. Fitch’ in Sydney Ties Sellout Record (Versus MMA Beat)

– WEC 53: Five Fights To Make (Heavy.com/MMA)

– Clay Guida: Livin’ in an RV Down by the River [VIDEO] (FightMagazine)

– While His Management Negotiates, Fedor Emelianenko’s Legacy Suffers (MMA Fighting)

– Keith Jardine Gets the Help of the US Secret Service to Prosecute Nemesis Fighting (MiddleEasy)

– Five Reasons Why Jake Shields Will Beat Georges St. Pierre (Or Not) (LowKick)

– Roxanne Modafferi Discusses Fight With Hitomi Akano at Sengoku’s New Year’s Event (Five Ounces of Pain)

– Eddie Bravo Breaks Down What Went Wrong in Dustin Hazelett’s Loss to Mark Bocek (MMA Scraps)

– The MMA Year In Review Part 1: Randy Couture, Herschel Waker, James Toney and More (SBNation.com/MMA)

(Well, it looks like the UFC just lost its anorexic hipster fanbase.)

Reports surfaced today that lightweight Dustin Hazelett has been released by the UFC and CagePotato.com has since been able to substantiate the story with sources close to the Cincinnati-based fighter.

Although he is a respectable .500 in the Octagon, a third straight loss by Hazelett in the form of a first round submission to Canadian grappling standout Mark Bocek at UFC 124 earlier this month pretty much signed the release papers of the Louisa, Kentucky native.

Known for his seemingly impossible submissions — many of which earned him Submission of the Night honors, Hazelett will look to rack up a hand full of victories in regional promotions to earn himself another shot with the UFC in 2011. Competition next year will likely be greater considering the amalgamation of the WEC’s lightweight division with the UFC’s, so it may take more than a few wins over a few unseasoned opponents for McLovin to make it back to the Octagon.

(Where are these plugged in?)

Just a reminder that we’re going live for our last episode of The Bum Rush this year at 5:30 pm ET today and it will be an interactive affair.

Tell your boss that you have an important call from a client overseas that you have to take, unless of course you work at Burger King, in which case you’re SOL until we post the finished product on Thursday morning.

Call in and talk MMA and the state of the Potato in 2011 with Chad, Mike and Ben.

You never know, you might even win something.

Here are the details:

If you want to call in and participate in the show,  follow these instructions:

Dial (724) 444-7444
Enter: 89629 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN if you have a Talkshoe account.
We will be notified that you are in the queue to talk with us.
You can listen to live, HERE at 5:30 pm ET

The first UFC title fight of 2011 is just eleven days away, which means it’s time to drag out some stats and see who holds the advantages in the Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard rematch — on paper, at least. As we all know, anything can happen in the cage. Seriously. This one could end in a unanimous decision, it could end in a split decision, a majority decision…you just never know.

BIGGEST CAREER WIN
Edgar: Defended his lightweight title in a 50-45 x 3 shutout against BJ Penn at UFC 118.
Maynard: Routed Kenny Florian the same night to win the #1 lightweight contender spot.
Advantage: Edgar

MOST PAINFUL LOSS
Edgar: His UFC Fight Night 13 decision loss against, you guessed it, Gray Maynard. It’s still the only loss on Edgar’s record.
Maynard: He’s never lost in professional competition, though he was submitted by Nate Diaz on TUF 5 (a loss he avenged later at UFC Fight Night 20) and accidentally knocked himself out in a no-contest against Rob Emerson.
Advantage: Maynard

UFC FINISHING RATIO
Edgar: 22% (2 stoppage wins in 9 fights)
Maynard: 11% (1 stoppage win in 9 fights)
Advantage: Edgar

I’m no expert on the rules of blackmail or bribes, but if I was going to pay a dude $20,000 to pretend I didn’t kick his ass outside the bar he bounces at, I would…I don’t know…get some kind of a contract or receipt from the victim to make sure he didn’t renege on the deal. 

I guess Badr Hari is just a very trusting man who believes in the power of the human spirit.

Here’s the latest on Hari’s legal issues stemming from a smackdown he allegedly laid down on a Dutch bouncer who wouldn’t let him in his club, courtesy of The Telegraaf.

"Hari After his arrest told police that the matter had been settled out of court and that the 33-year-old bouncer had been paid. According to the fighter, the man asked through his lawyer that he be paid [$20,000 USD]. Hari gave him then one third of that sum in order for him to withdraw the allegations, with the promise that the remainder would be paid in full when he did.
The door man of the club in Holland refused Hari and his three friends entry into the club and was then beaten and kicked so hard that he broke his jaw and doctors had a plate put in his face to hold it together. After he had received the money, the doorman appeared on the TV channel AT5 to tell him that Hari had assaulted him. The lawyer of the kick boxer, Benedicte Ficq, confirmed in the newspaper that his client has paid money to the doorman, but disagreed that it was hush money."

"If by ‘hush money you mean that the doorman had been paid to lie about the incident, then the answer is  absolutely ‘not’. The doorman kept gossiping that Badr had beaten him up for days prior to going to police, which is not true," his lawyer explained. "Hari has had his reputation tainted by some of the things he’s done in his career, so I advised him that he should pay this man to make sure he didn’t create any more problems for him."

Hari can’t bribe a guy properly and he sucks at faking his own death. Maybe he needs to get in touch with Lee Murray and see how his Moroccan homeboy got away with his crime….oh wait.

("My fellow Americans …" Props: MMA Badass.com)

Try not to look too shocked, y’all: Chris Leben went on Ariel Helwani’s "The MMA Hour" radio show yesterday and made a number of incredible statements about his October arrest on suspicion of drunk driving in Hawaii. And when we say “incredible,” we mean it in the most literal sense, as in, not credible. Among other things, Leben said he doesn’t believe his latest DUI arrest is “going to be a big deal,” that “nothing is going to happen with it” and – if you want to know the truth – he’s not 100 percent sure he’ll even be formally charged with DUI after the truth comes out at his upcoming February court date. Oh, and he also compared himself to the former president of the United States.

"George (W.) Bush got a DUI and he ended up being the president," Leben said. "I really feel as though nothing’s really going to happen with it, honestly. I don’t want to talk about it too much, and it’s still in the works. But I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal."

Obviously, Leben comparing himself to the leader of the free world – even a really, really bad one – is a bit of a stretch. Also, forgive us here at CagePotato Legal Services if we can’t take such an optimistic view of his upcoming court appearance. Let’s review some facts.

 
(Chael has this posted on his fridge.)

Since he doesn’t really have a lot to do at the moment, given he quit politics, his suspension and the fact that he isn’t going to be on The Ultimate Fighter, it’s not surprising that Chael Sonnen spends a lot of time trolling people on Twitter.

Responding last night to comments Wanderlei Silva made recently about not being in a hurry to fight Chael since he already "killed him" in the gym, Sonnen, as usual, pulled no punches in denying "The Axe Murderer’s" claims.

A little eyeliner WOULD help to improve Wanderlei’s new staredown face considering he can’t stop smiling or furrow his brow since his surgery.

("…three…two…one…Happy New Year! Damn, take it again, Brock had another stroke.")

By CagePotato.com contributor Jason Moles

2010 is in the books, and MMA fans and fighters alike have endured tremendous highs and lows. Who would have guessed that The Last Emperor, Brock Lesnar, BJ Penn and the WEC would all collapse this year? Who could imagine that Chael Sonnen would accuse Lance Armstrong of giving himself cancer, then test positive for a banned substance? Ironic? You bet. But enough about last year — a new decade is upon us. Here are ten predicitions that will sound ridiculous until they actually happen in 2011…

1. MMA will be sanctioned in New York.
While watching WEC bid adieu, I couldn’t help but notice the commercials for the PBR (Professional Bull Riding) at MSG (Madison Square Garden). Pro bull riding averages 1 to 2 deaths per year — that’s not including amateurs, sometimes children, participating at the county fair. Regardless of what Bob Reilly has to say, this is a no-brainer that only the likes of the M-1 management team could foul up. MMA will be sanctioned in New York in ’11, even if we have to blackmail a senator to make it happen.

2. GSP will relinquish his Welterweight title to change weight classes.
Jake Shields blah, blah, blah — Georges St. Pierre is indestructible and will wipe the floor with him, or at least dry hump him to death. With his ‘le-gacy’ secured, he can bump weight classes and test the waters in the process in becoming the best mixed martial artist from Canada with an extra ‘s’ in his name OF ALL TIME.

3. Dana White will coin a new phrase. 
"You want to be a %^&@$#! fighter?" and "Never leave it in the hands of the judges." will be replaced by something catchy like "Don’t cross the boss." Oh, wait, that one’s already taken. How about "Go big or go home," or "Suns out, guns out"? I never said it would be original — just catchy.

(Props: MMAConvert)

The full video of Eddie Wineland‘s WEC 53 preliminary card fight against Ken Stone is still nowhere to be found — and yet, we now have a gif of Wineland’s Knockout of the Night-winning slam, which means that someone must have seen the fight at some point. Stone had to leave the cage on a stretcher, but was reportedly moving around under his own power later that night. I know, the gif ain’t much. Which is why we’ve included another slam-knockout after the jump — this one of the belly-to-belly suplex variety, from an M-1 Challenge event in August 2009. (Thanks to MiddleEasy for the tip.) 

(Video courtesy YouTube/TheFightNetwork)

Despite the growing hype surrounding a fight between him and outspoken former number one UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen, Wanderlei Silva says he’s still hoping he will be matched up with fellow slugger Chris Leben for his return bout following knee surgery. Silva mentioned a couple months back that he would be fighting Leben in Toronto, which seems like it must have been in the works, at least at the time considering "The Axe Murderer" was privy to the info that the UFC was likely holding a show in the Canadian city in the spring before it was announced.

"I want to make my next fight for here in Toronto, maybe in April. I started my rehab for my knee right now and I started to lift weights, but I don’t train martial arts right now. I’m gonna wait two weeks to see what’s gonna happen with my knee," Wand explains. "If it feels better I’m gonna fight on the first show in Toronto. [Chris Leben] is a really good opponent. His style’s like my style. He likes to fight. He’s no afraid to fight toe-to-toe, so he’s a good opponent. He’s going to fight right now in one of the next UFCs, but I want to fight against him."

As far as a possible fight with Sonnen goes, Silva thinks that unlike Anderson Silva, he’ll have the upper hand if the bout comes to fruition, citing a certain sparring session he had in Vegas with the testosterone deficient, smack talk abundant middleweight to support his opinion.

"Sonnen, he’s more of a wrestler. I think that’s a good fight for me, too," Silva says. "I trained with him one time at [Xtreme Couture] and I killed him there, you know? I think he’s a good opponent too. He’s tough.