(Click for full-size image. Props: Triumph United)

We shared this on our Facebook page on Thursday, but it’s worth a re-post for those of you who weren’t glued to your computers and mobile devices during the holiday. The photo above shows Chael Sonnen predictably going for a leg while Jon Jones — a menacing figure even without a sharp object — puts on his best bad-guy face and straight up dwarfs the gangster from West Linn. We’d like to congratulate the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board for their bravery in sanctioning this one.

In the pro wrestling world, this sort of thing is called “breaking kayfabe,” a moment where the fictional storylines and personas are temporarily discarded, revealing that the whole thing is fake. Yeah, I know Jones has been warming up to Sonnen, who is “pretty decent and pretty classy” all of a sudden. But damn, it sure didn’t take long to go from calling each other cowards, cheaters, mental midgets, and selfish, entitled brats, to “bro, are you bringing the cranberries or do I have to run out to Whole Foods again?”

So how do these two really feel about each other — and how much of their interaction on the next season of TUF will be staged for our amusement?

(The way Erick leaves the cage after a victory? Totally ripped off from Van Morrison. / Photo via Esther Lin @ MMAFighting)

After having his momentum slowed by a beast-mode version of Jon Fitch last month, Brazilian welterweight prospect Erick Silva will attempt to rebound against veteran Jay Hieron at UFC 156: Aldo vs. Edgar, February 2nd in Las Vegas. The UFC confirmed the booking last week.

Hieron is an unexpected choice for Silva’s return opponent, as the Thoroughbred is currently in the “hanging on by a thread” stage of his UFC career. When Hieron lost a unanimous decision to Jake Ellenberger during his promotional return fight in October, his lifetime UFC record dropped to 0-3 — which means that if Hieron loses this next fight, he’ll become just the fourth fighter in UFC history to go 0-4 in the Octagon, after Tiki Ghosn, Seth Petruzelli, and John Alessio. And trust me, brother, that is not a club you want to join.

Geez, these XARM events have been getting weird…

It can be argued that no losing fighter has ever deserved one of UFC’s famous locker-room bonus checks than Fabio Maldonado after his downright terrifying loss to Glover Teixeira at UFC 153.

If this was professional wrestling, we’d say this was the fight that got Glover “over” in the UFC. The brutal asskicking that Teixeira dished out transitioned him from MMA’s best-kept secret to a legitimate light-heavyweight contender, causing fans throughout the world to say “Huh, so that’s what a 10-7 round looks like.”

Yet Fabio Maldonado kept fighting back, almost pulling off one of the most insane comebacks in UFC history as he rocked Teixeira near the end of the first round. Maldonado kept coming back for more until the cageside doctor put an end to the fight after the second round. I’m not going to write something cheesy like “it was a moral victory for Fabio Maldonado,” but I would understand why a person would.

The beating that Fabio Maldonado took wasn’t for nothing – at least not financially. Maldonado revealed on his Facebook page that he recently received one of the UFC’s famed locker-room bonus checks, and it was worth more money than his win bonus would have been. Via MMAWeekly:

CagePotato Conspiracy Theory: Rockhold isn’t hurt, but he already sold the belt on eBay while people were still willing to bid on his treasure.

There’s no need for a wordy introduction here: Strikeforce has officially become so incompetent that it can’t even die correctly.

After canceling two consecutive events, Strikeforce planned to have an absolutely stacked grand finale on January 12, 2013 featuring three title fights and Heavyweight Grand Prix champion Daniel Cormier. Much like everything else that Strikeforce has planned since being purchased by Zuffa, things quickly went wrong. First, lightweight kingpin Gilbert Melendez got injured/realized he was in a no-win scenario fighting for Strikeforce again and pulled out of the event. Now, middleweight champion Luke Rockhold is also off of the card, citing a wrist injury as the reason for his departure. According to The MMA Corner:

The MMA Corner has learned from sources close to the camp of Rockhold that the middleweight champion has suffered a wrist injury and has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled Jan. 12 title defense against Lorenz Larkin.

Via Hallman’s Twitter Account.

It’s safe to say that we should all be thankful that 2012 is almost over. This has been a rough year to be an MMA fan, and with a damn-near legendary injury curse spanning the last eleven months, it’s been just as hard on the fighters. But this has been an especially hard year for UFC veteran Dennis Hallman, whose house burned down in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning.

As Hallman told MMAFighting.com, the cause of the fire is unknown, but authorities believe it was an electrical fire. No one was hurt, but Dennis Hallman has lost everything to the fire.

Camacho (white trunks) famously knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard in 1997. Leonard retired after the fight.

Puerto Rican boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho, famous for his aggressive style and flamboyant behavior in and out of the ring, was declared dead earlier today in San Juan, four days after he and his friend were shot in a parked car in the city of Bayamon. Hector Camacho, who was taken off of life support earlier this morning, died of a heart attack shortly afterwards, according to Dr. Ernesto Torres of the Centro Médico trauma center. His friend, Adrian Mojica Moreno, died immediately.

Details regarding the shooting are still being kept quiet. However, police have confirmed that Mojica had nine bags of cocaine on him when he was shot and that a tenth bag was found open in the car. No arrests have been made, and according to police spokesman Alex Diaz, neither man was expecting the attack.

Inside the ring, ‘Macho’ Camacho was one of the greatest to lace up the gloves. After winning three Golden Gloves titles as an amateur, he turned pro and quickly became a contender due to his aggressive, albeit cocky style of fighting. With Don King promoting him, Camacho would go on to win his first world title, the WBC Super Featherweight Championship, on Aug. 7, 1983. He would vacate the title to move up to lightweight two years later, capturing the WBC lightweight title by defeating Jose Luis Ramirez on August 10, 1985.

(Video via MMA Fighting)

There was a period of time, back around 2004-2005, when folks spoke about a young welterweight named Georges St. Pierre as if it were inevitable that the Canadian would one day be the welterweight champion of the world. These days, the same type of hype surrounds St. Pierre’s training partner Rory MacDonald.

Rory will be fighting BJ Penn next on the UFC on Fox 5 card but is so good and so young that he constantly has to answer the question of whether or not he’d fight his Tri-Star stablemate St. Pierre.

Before last week’s UFC 154 in his home town of Montreal, MacDonald answered questions from fans. If you hear past Rory’s dry delivery and watch the whole session (above) you’ll be treated to an earnest sounding kid, both full of confidence and hard on himself (for example, he refers to his loss to Condit as getting his ass kicked instead of losing at the very end of a fight he was previously winning).

MacDonald believes with certainty that he will become the welterweight champion one day but says that “me and Georges are not going to fight.”

(Unless you plan on “purging” that, Anderson, you may need to switch your diet up a bit to make 170 pounds)

It never really becomes crystal clear if we’re getting closer to MMA’s two best pound-for-pound fighters fighting one another or further away from it. UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva has finally warmed to the idea of fighting welterweight king Georges St. Pierre, six years after each man won their first world titles.

Well, Silva has more than warmed to the idea. He’s practically begging for the fight.

He even hijacked St. Pierre and Carlos Condit’s special Primetime moment to lobby for the bout. The much smaller St. Pierre, however, doesn’t seem to like the idea of fighting Anderson nearly as much.

GSP has only gone so far as to wonder out loud if Silva could once again make the welterweight limit, and his head coach has said he’d only want his charge taking the bout if it was at welterweight, not at a heavier catch weight, as Silva’s camp has suggested in the past.

Alright, let’s say that GSP gets his way and Anderson gets on a Machinist diet and gets down to welterweight…unlikely but if he did we could get more than a “legacy fight.” We’d get an honest to goodness, here and now title fight.

Well, don’t you worry your pretty lil head about that exciting possibility. UFC President Dana White is here to dampen your enthusiasm.

When asked last Saturday if GSP’s belt would be on the line if “The Spider” came down in weight to fight him, White replied, “Probably not, because I don’t know how many times Anderson would actually defend it.”

Great. So if St. Pierre gets his wish he’d be fighting an emaciated Silva who wouldn’t even have the incentive of getting a hold of another title belt if he earned it with a win.

Unless Uncle Dana was just being crazy like a match-making fox. Hear me out.

(Photo via UFC.com)

For a number of reasons having to do with the sport’s culture, rule set and diversity of techniques, MMA simply is not as dangerous a sport as, say, boxing or American football in terms of brain trauma. That said, it is still quite dangeous and fighteres face a myriad of potential dangers in training and in competition.

Featherweight Eddie Yagin was just ordered to take six months off from MMA to let his brain heal. Many other active fighters conceal or ignore brain trauma and don’t retire or take the rest they need in order to hopefully have some quality of life as they age.

So when UFC bantamweight Nick Denis announced on his tumblr blog this week that he had decided to retire from MMA, it was bittersweet. Bitter because the international community had only begun to see how skilled and talented the twenty nine year-old was after two fights in the globe’s top organization. Sweet because, as he detailed on his blog, he made a thoughtful and proactive decision to protect what is left of his health.

One of hardest things for athletes to do is walk away, no matter their physical condition or age, because it means a forced change of identities. They have to find a new way to define themselves, a new set of activitites to spend their lives doing.

Denis seems at peace with his decision and confident that he will find new things to “obsess” over. We are glad and we hope so.

His written statement announcing his retirement is insightful, moving and inspirational. Read it and then go out and get started pursuing dreams and accomplishments that will make you worthy of a nickname as awesome as the one Nick “The Ninja of Love” Denis has.

“I would like to think that I don’t have an ego. Sometimes though, I think it might just be so big that it can’t be hurt.

I really believe in living life. I always tell people, quite casually, ‘follow your heart.’ I don’t just say it for the sake of having words come out of my mouth, it is something that I truly believe in and do. I couldn’t imagine living my life and ignoring my true feelings and desires, just for the sake of living a ‘rational’ and safe lifestyle. That is why I quit my Ph.D. in biochemistry to move to Montreal, train full-time and make my way to the UFC.

To me, it was the only available option. What other choice did I have?

MMA Fighting reports that charges against retired former UFC fighter Jason “Mayhem” Miller from an August arrest have been dropped in the Orange County Superior Court. You may remember the allegations as perhaps the most bizzare ones of Miller’s life, which is saying something.

“Miller was arrested Aug. 13 in Mission Viejo, Calif., on burglary charges after he allegedly broken into a church, sprayed a fire extinguisher and broke many items. According to a spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Miller was found by police naked on a couch in the church. He was not intoxicated and was arrested without incident,” MMA Fighting recounts.

According to the news site, Miller said that the case against him was dropped and that the arrest has been removed from his criminal record. “God is good,” he was reported as saying.

Just as his long and accomplished fighting career is often ignored by newer fans in light of his recent UFC performances, the fact that Miller is a friendly and good guy can often be lost amidst all of his public antics and schtick.

He has a lot to offer, even as a retired fighter. Let’s hope that his days of allegdly breaking into churches and women’s houses are behind him.

Not too long ago Miller took a stroll through New York City’s Central Park with MMA Fighting and discussed the arrest and other issues. Check out the full video interview after the jump.

(DuffMan!)

Heavyweight Todd Duffee’s career has been a strange mixed bag of extreme highs and lows. As a 23 year-old, Duffee became a sensation by knocking out Tim Hague in just seven seconds in his UFC debut back back in 2009. A host of injuries delayed his second fight in the organization for nearly a year.

When he did make his return, against Mike Russow, Duffee fell victim to one of the most surprising come from behind KO victories in UFC history. Duffee outclassed Russow for twelve minutes before getting caught and knocked out cold.

He was then released by the UFC, took a short notice fight against fellow He-Man impersonator Alistair Overeem (because short noticed fights against over-matched opponents was just how Ubereem got down in those days before he could keep himself occupied with running from and failing drug tests) , got shellacked, and then didn’t fight again for about a year and a half.

When he did, last April, Duffee stopped Neil Grove inside one round. He hasn’t fought since then but evidently the fickle matchmaking overlords (Happy Thanksgiving, Joe) at the UFC have been satisfied and it was announced Wednesday that the Duff Man will be back in the Octagon at UFC 155.

“Duffee (7-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) will meet Phil De Fries (9-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC) at UFC 155, this year’s version of the annual New Year’s Eve weekend card in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena,” Case Keefer of The Las Vegas Sun reports.

Are you happy to see Todd back in the big leagues after being dumped a couple years ago, nation? We are. Win or lose, he’s exciting. After the jump, let’s look back at our favorite Duffee moments so far.

(A good meal well prepared, and the company of your loving family — that’s what it’s all about, guys.)

Happy Thanksgiving, Potato Nation, and welcome to a short and sweet Turkey Day edition of the CagePotato Roundtable. Today we’re discussing things we’re thankful for in the world of MMA, so if you can spare a moment from shoving cranberry sauce down your filthy gullet, give it a look and tell us what *you’re* thankful for in the comments section…

Seth Falvo

There’s an argument to be made that the best quarterbacks in the history of the NFL have always been the most boring people on the planet. Throughout the league’s history, the most fascinating quarterbacks on the field have been about half as interesting as the instruction manual that came with your toaster off of it. Johnny Unitas was stoic enough to make Fedor look expressive in comparison, Joe Montana somehow didn’t have enough charisma to last on NBC, Brett Favre made people feel themselves get dumber whenever he opened his mouth, and Drew Brees wears Affliction shirts (seriously). While it’s not exactly a fact that having any type of personality will ruin your chances of becoming a famous NFL quarterback, I don’t see too many people wearing Christian Ponder or Ryan Fitzpatrick jerseys.

So why am I talking about football? For one, it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving unless some oafish mouth-breather that no one in your family actually likes didn’t talk about football during your holiday dinner and/or roundtable discussion. But aside from that, it’s because, in many ways, this has carried over to MMA as well. As fans, it’s fun to cheer for an interesting fighter — especially when he’s actually good — but while the personalities of our fighters have led to the rapid growth and development of our sport, they have also brought on some downright ugly consequences as well.  You don’t need to be the most interesting guy in the room to be the best athlete in your sport, and as fans, we should be far more thankful for the boring guys who are great at fighting than we currently are.

Case in point, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson has outstayed his welcome in the UFC by about three years, putting on boring fights and complaining about the exceptional treatment he’s received as if he’s washing dishes at a Denny’s somewhere. Yet Rampage is still one of our sport’s most popular fighters — especially among mainstream media outlets — because of his reputation as a funnyman and an entertainer, despite being neither funny nor entertaining. Likewise, Dan Hardy has gone 2-4 in his last six, with Amir Sadollah being his most notable victory since 2009, yet his colorful hair and marketable image have kept him on ESPN as recently as last week.

(Huh. I always figured Thiago was more of a PCP guy. / Photo via Sherdog)

For a brief moment, Thiago Silva‘s submission of Stanislav Nedkov at UFC on FUEL: Franklin vs. Le looked like a redemptive moment. The Brazilian light-heavyweight had his back against the wall thanks to a one-year suspension for trying to cheat a drug test, followed by a unanimous deicison loss to Alexander Gustafsson. Beating the undefeated Nedkov meant that Silva was finally heading in the right direction.

Well screw all that, because the dude just threw his own career under the bus again. The UFC released the following statement this evening:

“Thiago Silva tested positive for marijuana metabolites following his bout at UFC on FUEL TV in Macau. The UFC organization has a strict, consistent policy against the use of any illegal and/or performance-enhancing drugs, stimulants or masking agents. Silva has admitted to taking the banned substance and has agreed to participate in an approved drug-rehabilitation program and serve a six-month suspension retroactive to the November 10 event. He must pass a drug test upon completion of the suspension before receiving clearance to fight again.”

(A glimpse into the nightmare that awaits Stefan Struve if he doesn’t start choosing his battles.) 

If I could spend a day inside the head of any UFC fighter – Being John Malkovich style — I would obviously choose Donald Cerrone, who is currently sticking it to Brittney Palmer if I remember correctly. High fives all around, guys! But on the off chance I could crawl inside the head of a second UFC fighter, I would have to go with Cheick Kongo, because based on recent events, I can only assume that his brain functions exactly like one of those twisty-turvey waterslides at your local amusement park.

In the past few days, Kongo has turned down a fight with Daniel Cormier, which is understandable, and turned down a fight with Roy Nelson, which is not so understandable for a guy who is coming off one of the most atrocious winning performances in UFC history. But after turning down the Nelson fight, Kongo sent out this tweet, which challenges the phrase “splitting hairs” on a level my brain has yet to fully comprehend:

I did NOT REFUSE to FIGHT Roy Nelson. I REFUSED to TAKE A FIGHT on SHORT NOTICE. Which is NOT THE SAME AT ALL.

Fine, Cheick, if that helps you sleep at night. I hate to judge a book by it’s cover, but if you were to tell me anywhere else that a man with pectorals the size of dinner plates refused to fight this dude on a month’s notice, I would probably call him a pussy. I said probably.

(“Thank you for this honor, Bader-san. I will now honor your ancestors by getting drunk on a boat and attending a foam party.” Photo via Tracy Lee/Yahoo! Sports)

The UFC’s spite-booking between light-heavyweight contenders Dan Henderson and Lyoto Machida is close to being finalized. Sources close to the event have informed MMA Fighting that Hendo and Pervo have verbally agreed to meet at UFC 157, which will go down February 23rd at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The bout isn’t expected to be the card’s main event, which is still TBA at this point. Not that we wouldn’t want to speculate.

Due to a poorly-timed knee injury, Henderson has gone all of 2012 without a single Octagon appearance — not an ideal situation for a 42-year-old athlete, but at least the layoff has given him time to enroll in shit-talking school — while Machida is coming off his August knockout of Ryan Bader. The winner will likely take on Jon Jones, after he champ finishes thrashing Chael Sonnen in April. (No, I’m still not going to give Sonnen a chance, no matter how many insulting specialty pizzas he creates.)

Well, we should have seen this coming.

Not that it matters to Anderson Silva, but UFC 155 was supposed to set the stage for a fight that would more or less* determine the next top contender of the middleweight division when Chris Weidman and Tim Boetsch squared off. But as things are wont to do in 2012, it has just been announced that Weidman has suffered an undisclosed injury and has been forced to pull out from his scheduled fight at UFC 155. Newsday was the first to break the news:

Chris Weidman, one of the top UFC middleweight fighters, is out of UFC 155 next month with a shoulder injury, Newsday has learned.

Weidman said the injury occured Tuesday while training in Arizona with UFC light heavyweight Ryan Bader and Levittown-based Strikeforce light heavyweight Gian Villante. The injury occured during a grappling session, the 28-year-old Weidman said.

“I hit a double-leg and that’s it,” Weidman said Wednesday. “My shoulder landed weird and I felt a pop. I can’t even move my arm.”

Weidman said that he hasn’t received an official diagnosis from doctors, but he believes it is a torn labrum.

(Golden Glory’s lawsuit against him was nothing an old fashioned pose-off couldn’t settle)

The Netherlands’ long, national nightmare is finally over. Number one UFC heavyweight contender Alistair Overeem and his former management and team, Golden Glory, have reached a settlement on their respective law suits against one another, according to GG’s lead counsel Rick Lindblom.

Sherdog.com has comment from Lindblom in a statement released Tuesday.

“Everyone worked extremely hard to resolve these matters so that KOI, Golden Glory and [Golden Glory founder] Bas Boon can walk away and move forward with the Glory World Series Promotion in Europe, Japan and the USA, and Alistair Overeem can concentrate on his fighting career with his new manager Glenn Robinson at Authentic Sports Management and his new team, the Blackzilians,” Lindblom said in the release.

In September, 2011, Overeem left the team and management company. Two months later he filed suit against Golden Glory alleging that they owed him over $150,000 in back pay. Golden Glory regularly requested that promoters pay purses directly to them, and then they dispersed that money to their fighters — a practice that certainly lends itself to potential shadiness.

(Can’t tell if trolling…)

A lot of fighters say that once the cage door closes, they enter a state of temporary hypnosis, not unlike sleepwalking, that more or less shuts their brain down until the fight is over. Hence why they often need to be reminded what round it is, whether or not they won the last round, etc. It’s a familiar feeling — the combination of nerves, adrenaline, and the tiniest bit of fear — to anyone who has ever spoke in public or performed on a stage, and an example of how our own psyche subconsciously protects us from harm whether we want it to or not.

Clearly, this is the case for Sam Stout, who was jibber-jabbed into oblivion by John Makdessi at UFC 154. Stout’s runaway locomotive-esque strategy of “forward, forward, FORWARD” was picked apart by Makdessi with sharp combinations and simple head movement, resulting in easily some of the greatest punch faces of the night. But if you were to ask Stout how things went down, you’d probably think he fought the reincarnation of Kalib Starnes that night (Author’s note: Kalib Starnes is dead, right? I vaguely recall hearing something about a jogger accidentally running right off a cliff and just assumed the worst).

Stout shared his feelings with MMAMania:

He wasn’t fighting. He was running the whole time. I wanted to fight, I came to fight and I didn’t get the fight I wanted. 

I usually like to come out and put on an exciting fight and it takes two guys to do that, to do those kinds of fights. And you know John, he ran, he kept on moving the whole time and I was expecting him to fight me a little more.

Sour grapes much, Sam?

(The word “harpooned” comes to mind. Props: labrea69, via the always-entertaining Tuesday Night Fights feature on Deadspin)

- David vs. Goliath freak-show booking? Check.

- Walk-off knockout? Check.

- Loser collapses lawn-chair style? Check…

- …with his enormous belly exposed to all humanity? CHECK.

The only way this KO would be more satisfying is if the fat dude (aka “400 Pound Boy From Detroit“) started involuntarily masturbating while unconscious, and then Maury Povich walked up to inform him that in the case of 2-year-old Teesha, he in fact is the father. Aside from that, awesome stuff, Internet.

(Clementi tangles with Melvin Guillard at UFC 79, a fight that concluded with an infamous rear-naked teabagging. Photo via CombatLifestyle.com)

After a 13-year, 68-fight professional MMA career, lightweight grappling specialist Rich “No Love” Clementi announced on Monday that he has retired from competition. Best known for his ten-fight stint in the UFC and appearance on TUF 4, Clementi most recently competed in Bellator’s Season 7 Lightweight Tournament, where he lost a toe-hold war to Marcin Held in the semis last Friday. And according to this Sherdog report, the aftermath of Clementi’s loss to Held was the biggest motivating factor in his decision to walk away from the sport:

Clementi told Sherdog.com that his left ankle had been injured for about two years before Held cranked on it in both the first and second rounds, with the final submission attempt also damaging his knee. Clementi recently underwent an MRI and says he will need to undergo surgery to repair the damage.

“My tendons are ripped on the outside of my foot, and because they have been stretched for so long, my socket is pitted and will have to be filled and repaired, as well,” Clementi told Sherdog. “I didn’t know, but I also found out I had ACL failure on the knee I had surgery on a few years back. [I will have a] 12- to 14-month recovery.”

(Don’t fart…don’t fart…don’t fart…don’t fart…)

Well here’s a bit of good news for once.

If you’re like us, you’re probably sick to death of watching interim champions all but refuse to defend their titles while the actual champions remain on the shelf. So when Renan Barao’s camp announced that he would be taking the Carlos Condit approach to the interim title, we here at the CP offices let out a collective groan before pouring another round of Johnnie Walker Blue Label on the rocks — also known as our HR department — and prepared for a long winter of semi-meaningful-but-not-really bantamweight fights. Thankfully, Dana White is a Johnnie Walker man, and after he smashed a bottle of it over Danga’s head, we managed to come to an agreement regarding the UFC’s last remaining interim champ.

White recently told MMAWeekly that Barao will likely be defending his belt before champion Dominick Cruz is back in action, and his potential opponent should come as a surprise to no one.

(Sadly, this was the only interesting moment of the Lawlor vs. Carmont fight. Props: ybrekyert via Reddit MMA)

Even the suavest sons-of-bitches occasionally make mistakes. UFC cage-announcer Bruce Buffer — the sharply-dressed Trigg-abusing card-shark who has long showcased his golden throat and trademarked catchphrases as the “Veteran Voice of the Octagon” — made quite a verbal boner during the main card of UFC 154 on Saturday. Honestly, it’s not his fault. When your product slogan includes the phrase “nut snack,” you’re setting yourself up for unfortunate accidents.

Prediction: Following his triumphant performance as the Shockmaster, Tom Lawlor will show up to his next UFC weigh-in appearance as a corn nut-sack.

(Skip to the 1:30 mark to watch Karma work its magic.) 

There is perhaps no greater a hooley-hoo punk-ass jabroni in the MMA world than the guy who fakes the glove tap and immediately tries to knock his opponent out/take him down. It’s a garbage ass maneuver, perpetrated by only the soggiest of floor turds, but the one good thing that can come from such blatant bitchassery is watching it backfire in said jabroni’s face. Paul Kelly tried it against Donald Cerrone at UFC 126 and was promptly strangled for his efforts. JR Fuller tried it against Jonathan Harris and was promptly dicknailed. But today’s cheap-shotter, Adam Fyfe, almost got away with this bitch move when he pulled it on fellow ammy Alex Thorne at Absolute Adrenaline: Platinum on November 4th. Almost. 

(Destroys some of the UFC’s toughest welterweight contenders; still afraid of spiders. / Photo via Esther Lin of MMA Fighting)

By Jason Moles

At the end of 2011, UFC Magazine (now known as UFC 360) released their Complete Fighter and Event Guide for 2012, highlighting who they thought were the movers and shakers in each division. Surprisingly absent from the list was welterweight wrestler-turned-knockout-specialist Johny Hendricks. Fast forward a year and he’s next in line to face Georges St. Pierre for the gold. After his 46-second KO of Martin Kampmann at UFC 154, Hendricks’ emergence as a legitimate threat to and rise to the top of the 170lb. division is undeniable.

Although this past year has seen the Oklahoma native’s stock price triple — thanks in large part to his powerful left hand — he was anything but an overnight success story. To hear Hendricks’ diehard supporters tell it, he’s always been this good; we’re just now noticing it. One quick Google search is all it takes to confirm; the two-time NCAA Division I National Champion (2005, 2006) has been just as dominant in the cage as he was on the mats, though he no longer seems to be interested in playing the bad guy.

Starting his professional MMA career in 2007, Hendricks only competed on regional cards in Oklahoma at first, racking up a 3-0 record with all wins by stoppage. That was until he signed a multi-fight deal with the now-defunct World Extreme Cagefighting where he continued his winning streak against Justin Haskins by TKO in December 2008. Three months later at WEC 39, Hendricks was featured in the last welterweight bout in company history, defeating Alex Serdyukov in a Fight of the Night performance. After Reed Harris and company announced their intentions to focus solely on the lighter weight classes, Johny Hendricks was in need of a new home. Although his fights in the blue cage were few, they were the perfect appetizer for the next stage of his slow-cooking career.

(Actual un-spellchecked book cover, via Amazon.)

“Gunslinger of the bars, where a duel was a fist-fight without weapons or you backed down by calling the bouncers. It was just kicking ass or getting your ass kicked. The gunslinger didn’t care if he won or lost, but only about his personal integrity and being satisfied when he woke up in the morning that he had delivered justice to a deserving cockroach.”

Those are the first lines from the prologue of Bar Brawler, a 306-page semi-autobiographical novel by personal CP hero David “Tank” Abbott. We first heard about this writing project way back in January 2008, when Tank casually mentioned it during an EliteXC press conference before his fight against Kimbo Slice. Bar Brawler was finally published this June, but it flew under our radars until yesterday, when this Sherdog article revealed that the book did in fact exist, and that it’s actually the first in an already-completed trilogy.

So believe it or not, Tank Abbott is already the most prolific novelist in UFC history. But is the book any good? We’ll get to that in a minute. First, here’s the description from Bar Brawler’s Amazon page, which doesn’t inspire much confidence in the quality of the work:

Walter Foxx, Happening* Beach, California’s most feared bar brawler, works at Sea Lion Beach Liquor at night, attends Wong Beach State College in the day, and dishes out street justice in his spare time to the scumbags, posers, wannabes, and bullies of the world who violate his personal code of honor. Driving a 1987 Chevy Sprint with his faithful pit bull Adolf** riding shotgun, Walter and his twisted crew of Poppa Chulo, Rolando, Big Cal, and Gonzo hold court at the Dead Grunion bar where they take on all comers…

(The Simpsons Imanari did it!) 

Catch it while it’s still up, Taters.

Although most of us were too busy watching the resurgence of one Georges St. Pierre last weekend to even realize that a Bellator event was happening, well, a Bellator event totally happened last weekend. In the evening’s main event, UFC veteran Rich Clementi squared off against rising prospect Marcin Held in the lightweight tournament semifinals.

The match was rife with the kind of grappling exchanges that could make a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fan out of Seth Davis (although ironically, the amount of heel hook attempts alone in this fight would have given Rousimar Palhares an erection so strong that he would have had to hate-fuck your Mom’s cankles like a dog in heat to quell it), but it was the finishing toe hold that really caught people’s attention. It was undoubtedly the most effective use of the technique we’ve seen since Frank Mir fought Tank Abbott, so check it out before it gets taken down.

With his fifth straight win (fourth in Bellator) under his belt, Held will now face Dave Jansen for the right to meet lightweight champ Michael Chandler — who defeated Held by arm-triangle in Held’s Bellator debut — next.

After the jump: A gif of yet another Bellator referee sleeping on the job and allowing a fighter to absorb way more punishment than necessary, because that’s kind of their thing these days.

(Sure, dude. Just trim off some of that disgusting excess fat, and you’ll hit 135 no problem. / Photo via MMAJunkie)

Standing 6’1″ and carrying a 73-inch reach, Pablo Garza is already a freakish physical anomaly in the UFC featherweight division. His Mr. Fantastic-esque body-type has been a key element to his UFC victories, from his flying knee KO of Fredson Paixao during his Octagon debut at the TUF 12 Finale to his manhandling of Mark Hominick at UFC 154 on Saturday.

Garza’s latest win wasn’t just the greatest moment of his MMA career — it also saved him from a possible dismissal from the promotion, as he was coming into the match on a two-fight losing streak. So what’s next for the Scarecrow? Well, he’s going to try to shed 10 pounds of bone and gristle off his already-meager frame, because he’s sure he can be champion at 135. As he told MMA Weekly:

By Jared Jones

I appreciate honesty in writing. I am also a tremendous hypocrite, which is why I often resort to trickery, tomfoolery, and outright fabrications when discussing this thing we call MMA with you Taters. I’m less a blogger, more a magician — a line that I would never suggest you use to pick up women with — and more often than not I resort to a near constant influx of red herrings and other intentional misdirects to even make it through a post. But amidst all the deceit and double-crosses, I do actually manage to squeeze in a few instances of genuine honesty with you readers, more often than not in the Gambling Addiction Enabler pieces I contribute when Dan “Get Off Me” George doesn’t feel up to it.

So when I turned to the introductory page of Jason Rothman’s Betting on MMA to find the statements located directly below, I was pretty much assured that I’d be getting exactly what I wanted out of his look into the world of MMA gambling.

This book is about making money from betting on the sport of mixed martial arts. And that is the only thing this book is about.

If you do not know what a triangle choke is, then this book is not for you. 

And indeed, Rothman’s guide analyzing everything from money line odds to fighter attributes to the power of hype makes no attempt to wow you with its prose. The writing style, though sometimes cryptic and a bit repetitive, is simply a means to an end. That end is making you money, and although I have yet to put any of Rothman’s teachings into practice, I can assure you that Betting on MMA offers enough genuine insight and real-life examples to make it a must own for any MMA fan who fancies themselves a gambler.

(The douchebag in question. Photo via KJHK.org)

Sports Illustrated writer and CBS analyst Seth Davis may have gotten himself in a little hot water yesterday in a particularly 21st century way — being an idiot on twitter. Evidently Davis is not a fan of mixed martial arts and he used some good old-fashioned homophobia to make his point.

One tweet from Davis’ @SethDavisHoops account Sunday read (props to Stephen Douglas of TheBigLead);

Looking on news sites showing picture of two muscular bloody men in homoerotic fighting pose….Sorry, I’ll never get this UFC thing.

We can’t imagine what kind of trauma Davis may have sustained that makes the CBS personality have erotic thoughts while watching two men covered in blood hitting each other, but we are truly sorry for any pain that the writer has to live with.

Another similarly idiotic tweet of Davis’ read:

(“First off, I’d like to thank my brother, Thor, for if he hadn’t transmitted the power of his hammer into my left hand, none of this would have been possible.” Photo courtesy of Getty Images.) 

The UFC has never been an organization that takes pride in its subtlety. The same can be said about Dana White. So when they forced one of their cameramen to spend the entirety of the incredible GSP/Condit fight shooting Anderson Silva’s reactions (and Lyoto’s pedostache), you’d have to be pretty thick-skulled to not realize what they were angling at. However, GSP’s hesitance to commit to the fight, combined with Johny Hendricks’s brutal declaration of #1 contendership, have seemingly put a halt on these superfight rumors, if only temporarily.

In either case, we figured we would dedicate one post as the official battlegrounds for this debate, with you, the most distinguished and intelligent audience an MMA blog could ever ask for. So join us after the jump to vote on the poll that dares to ask: Who should Georges St. Pierre fight next now that he has successfully put the kibosh on this whole interim champ/actual champ nonsense? After you’ve finished voting, make your case in the comments section, using as much profane language, personal attacks, and outright trolling attempts as possible. Seriously, we kind of miss that stuff, so don’t get soft on us Taters.