(Live tomorrow night from the KFC Yum! Center. *facepalm*)

If you’re looking for a way to kill a few hours this hump day, remember to check out UFC heavyweight Pat Barry’s UFC Fight Club Q&A session at 2:00 pm ET followed by the weigh-ins for tomorrow night’s UFC on Versus 3: Kampmann vs. Sanchez event. “HD” is always good for a laugh and usually has some interesting stories to tell and you can bet Diego “The Fighter formerly Known as The Nighmare” will bring his “yes” mantra and crazy face with him for the weigh-ins, so they’re worth a look.

As always, the media player is after the jump.

(“I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen.” Pic: ESPN)

During the four years, four months and 16 days that Anderson Silva has had the middleweight title on lockdown, the UFC’s light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions have combined to produce 10 different champions. Think of it this way: Silva won the title by pulverizing Rich Franklin at freakin’ UFC 64, the same event where Sean Sherk defeated Kenny Florian to become the first lightweight champion since 2003. It was also just a few months after Michael Bisping defeated Josh Haynes to win season three of “The Ultimate Fighter.” Kinda seems like a lot has happened since then, huh?

Well, not at middleweight. Middleweight has been a rock – an unchanging, unshakable rock that sometimes seems so maddeningly bored with its own immovability that it just sits there and stares at its opponents for five tedious rounds. Silva’s dominance has been so thorough that it alone kind of makes ranking MMA’s top five 185-pounders an exercise in futility. Half the guys in the Top 10 have already been defeated by the current champ and lot of the other guys either don’t seem worthy or fight in other organizations. Still, we ranked ’em. Why? Because they were there, son, because they were there …

(Will Strikeforce pull off this tournament?)

Strikeforce announced today via press release that its planned April 9 event which was supposed to play host to the remainder of the opening round bouts of its heavyweight grand prix tournament will be put on hold until the summer. According to the promotion’s CEO, Scott Coker, they ran out of time to properly promote the event.

“Strikeforce is coming off a record presale and impressive attendance for the kickoff of the Grand Prix at IZOD Center in New Jersey that also drew a record viewership on SHOWTIME for live MMA,” said STRIKEFORCE CEO Scott Coker. “To build on the tremendous momentum from New Jersey we needed the proper time to promote an event of this magnitude, which is why we have decided to continue the Tournament on June 18 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, a venue that has been identified as one of the premier sports and entertainment venues in the U.S.”

So let me get this straight. Strikeforce wanted to build on the tremendous momentum created by the success of its first grand prix quarter final event, so it decided it would be best to delay the second event by two months? Seems like a logical way to keep the momentum going.

(Ryan Jimmo‘s epic victory-robot from Friday night. Props: Card)

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…

- Tongue Wrestling: The 25 Greatest Trash-Talking Affairs in MMA History (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- Kampmann Looks to Correct Mistakes of the Past at UFC Live (Versus MMA Beat)

- Compustrike: UFC 127 by the Numbers (LowKick)

- Chris Lytle to Consider Retirement After Secret Surgery, UFC 127 Loss (MMA Fighting)

- Now You Can Train MMA — Inside Your Local Wal-Mart (MiddleEasy)

- Michael Bisping’s Camp Points Finger At Jorge Rivera’s Boxing Coach For UFC 127 Incidents (MMA Convert)

- Gracie Breakdown: BJ Penn vs. Jon Fitch (MMA-Scraps)

- Strikeforce Title Contender Liz Carmouche: “Jitters Aren’t Something That You Can Have When You’re Out in Iraq With Your Weapon.” (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Dana White: “Fedor Emelianenko Looks Old and It’s Over” (5thRound)

- FIGHT! RANKINGS: Penn Proves Ranking Correct, Siver & Bisping Enter Top 10 (FightMagazine)

(Why go to trial? Refuting DNA evidence is like fighting GSP. You aren’t going to win unless you’re a short loudmouth from New York… Serra? No, we meant “My Cousin Vinny.”)

Accused rapist Joseph Hyungmin Son, perhaps better known to MMA fans as Joe Son, will finally get his day in court according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office. After being imprisoned for two-and-a-half years while awaiting trial on charges that he and an unnamed accomplice kidnapped and raped an unnamed female victim in 1990, the onetime UFC fighter who played Random Task in the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, will see his case brought before the courts on March 24. The facts of the case will be presented by Orange County Deputy District Attorney Eric Scarborough of the Sexual Assault Unit and will be contested by a jury of Son’s peers.

If you’re unfamiliar with the case, be forewarned that the details of the crime after the jump are unsettling.

(Maybe they should let some terrible judges go instead as a cost-cutting measure.)

Last week MMAJunkie reported that the Nevada State Athletic Commission will be cutting random year-round drug testing from it’s 2011 budget due to a lack of available funding. The move will free up upwards of $20,000 that the program required to run in the past. In 2009, NSAC received $18,000 in government funds for the testing program. The governing body requested the same amount last year, but only received $12,000, but before the year was over, were asked to give the money, which was mostly spent by that time, back to State regulators.

Because the costs of effectively running the program are simply too great without an outside funding source, the commission has been forced to suspend out-of-competition drug testing. Athletes are still tested either the day prior to an event or immediately following it — sometimes both —  but with adequate time to clean out their systems, fighters can easily test clean even if they have been abusing performance enhancing drugs for months during the rest of the “off-season.”

The question is, should commissions just throw in the towel in the fight against drug use by MMA athletes or should they come up with other means of procuring the funds to try to keep the sport as clean as possible like other professional sports like football, baseball, basketball and hockey do?

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

We’re only 18 days away from one of the most compelling UFC title fights in recent history. Will Jon Jones complete his prodigious ascent to the top of the light-heavyweight heap, less than three years after making his MMA debut? Will veteran knockout artist Mauricio Rua show Bones what a true champion really is? And will anybody have the guts to confront Shogun about his unibrow situation? The UFC’s latest teaser trailer has our minds racing. If you have any insight, please share…

(In his next fight, Bader would like to face someone of great historical significance. Anybody got Kimo’s number? Pic: MMA Convert.)

Contrary to popular belief, the UFC middleweight division has not quite cornered the market on making strategically advantageous call-outs. While the world’s 185-pound fighters are lining up to let everybody know how much they’d all love to fight Michael Bisping – which is like so 2010 – their light heavyweight brethren are also making requests of UFC matchmaker Joe Silva. It seems that at least a couple of 205-pounders have been spending some time on the “Fighters” page over at UFC.com and thinking to themselves, “Let’s see here, who can I beat?”

Ryan Bader, for one, emerged this week from whatever dark room he’s been huddled in, rocking back and forth since UFC 126 to tell ESPN.com he’d very much like to fight Tito Ortiz. Cuz, why not? Sure, just a withered shell of his former self, Ortiz hasn’t won a fight since 2006, is barely clinging to his career and seemingly can’t make it to the cage without a serious back injury, cracked skull or giant laceration over his eye, but still … fighting him would mean A LOT to Bader. You know, on a personal level.

(Filho has recently begun wearing his Jesus teeth wherever he goes. Any time one of his friends or coaches try to tell him to take them out, he pretends he’s deaf.)

Sure Paulo Filho may be batshit crazy, but that doesn’t stop the dude from fighting as much as he can.

“Ely” has signed on to compete for three different organizations in a three-month span in Brazil in March, April and May, and if the beleaguered fighter can put together an impressive win streak, it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility that we might see the former WEC middleweight champ return to the UFC when they bring their travelling circus back to the South American country for the second time in history.

On March 19 he will get his feet wet by taking on  4-7 Peruvian fighter Jackson Mora at the WFC: Pretorian event in Rio de Janeiro. Then on April 29 he will square off with fellow Brazilian and 14-3 UFC vet Ronys Torres at the International Fighter Championship (IFC) event in Recife before strapping on the gloves again one month later to lock horns with Gustavo “Ximu” Machado (16-8-1) on May 14 at Fatality Arena 3 back in Rio (*editor’s note: Seriously, it’s called Fatality Arena 3. We couldn’t make that shit up).

(Props: WunWunTwo)

Back in March 2009, we referred to the above clip as “the greatest KO ever.” We never bothered to find out who the fighters were, but we got a strange flash of deja vu during UFC 127 on Saturday night when Brian Ebersole launched two separate cartwheel kicks at Chris Lytle. Now, MiddleEasy confirms that the dude in the famous cartwheel kick knockout video is Brian Ebersole. The fight went down at XFC: Return of the Hulk in Perth, Australia on 3/14/09, and the unlucky victim was Shannon Forrester. Now give that crazy manscaped goof his due respect. After the jump: Gifs of Ebersole’s failed cartwheel kick attempts against Lytle, courtesy of IronForgesIron.com.

(Gerald Harris after slam-KO’ing Dave Branch at UFC 116; we can’t tell what Joe Silva is saying back there, but it’s probably something like “hit that bastard again and again and again!”)

Last Friday in Tulsa, former UFC fighter Gerald Harris competed for the first time since his unanimous decision loss to Maiquel Falcao in November and subsequent canning. Harris’s opponent at Xtreme Fight Night: Harris vs. Head was James Head, a fighter from Oklahoma City who came into the fight with a 7-1 record against mostly-anonymous competition. And even though that sounds like the kind of mismatch you’d only find on a local card in Tulsa, Head went off script and actually beat Harris by unanimous decision. What?