(Photo via MMAWeekly)

By Elias Cepeda

A while back, retired legend Randy Couture joked that the only way he’d come out of retirement for would be if the UFC offered him a fight against Steven Seagal. Let us repeat that: It was a joke.

Couture is a four-time Olympic alternate in Greco Roman wrestling and one of only two UFC fighters in history to hold world championships in two different divisions. Seagal is an actor and aikido master whose success in real fights is officially undocumented, although his on-set altercations have become the stuff of pants-crapping legend.

The action star has hung around the best fighter in the world, Anderson Silva, for the past few years, however, all the while claiming to coach Silva. It has been hilarious to observe, and Couture’s joke about fighting Seagal clearly played on Seagal’s many audacious claims about his own fighting and coaching abilities while passing himself off as an MMA expert.

Predictably, Seagal didn’t see Couture’s tongue-in-cheek statement as such during a recent interview on The MMA Hour. “I always thought that Randy was my friend and a gentleman. I’m kind of confused as to why he would say that,” Seagal said on the show.

“All I can say is, I’m here. Anybody can find me anytime and anyplace. If Randy really wants to fight me, he can fight me anytime he wants. It’ll be for free, and it’ll be some place where there are no witnesses.” When asked if this hypothetical match would take place under MMA rules, Seagal told Ariel Helwani, “I don’t play by rules. That’s not how I fight.”

Since Seagal’s poor self awareness and lack of humor allowed for him to talk about him fighting Couture as a real possibility, we thought it would be fun to give “Captain America” a call and get his reaction to it all…

(Nah, that’s cool. It’s not like we need to see the champion’s face or anything. / Image via MMAJunkie)

The Ultimate Fighter‘s year of wandering the Friday-night desert may be coming to a merciful end. Following two seasons on FX in which the show’s viewership went from really bad to straight-up abysmal, a new ad in UFC 360 (formerly UFC Magazine) claims that TUF 17: Team Jones vs. Team Sonnen will debut Tuesday, January 22nd, at 9 p.m. ET. Says MMAJunkie.com:

UFC and FX officials have yet to make an official announcement, however representatives from both companies have since confirmed the change with MMAjunkie.com. UFC President Dana White was a little more coy.

“That day sounds good to me,” White told MMAjunkie.com.

With the new season of TUF slated for Tuesdays, it seems that the UFC and Bellator will avoid an uncomfortable head-to-head scheduling situation. According to recent reports, Bellator’s live events will be returning to Thursdays beginning next month.

TUF 17, which began filming in October, will feature a cast of middleweight fighters to be named shortly. The question is: Will you start watching it again? Before you answer, keep in mind that these guys will no longer be on the show.

(Whoa! Those are some nice hardwood floors!) 

Although I technically have a Twitter account, I am not what you would consider an avid user, whatever that may mean. In my mind, the best addictions are the old fashioned ones: cocaine, air duster, and drunk driving – preferably at the same time. But if there’s one person out there I consider myself a “follower” of on the Twitter, it’s Felice Herrig, and it’s not just because she occasionally tweets out photos like the one above (although it doesn’t hurt). And after finishing off my last can of Gust last night (which we all know is the Rolls-Royce of air dusters), I happened to stumble upon quite the little story while perusing over Ms. Herrig’s account.

You see, Herrig was set to return to the bright lights of Bellator for the first time since 2010 at Bellator 84 on December 14th. Her opponent was supposed to be the 3-3 Michele Gutierrez. However, it was recently announced that Gutierrez had suffered a hand injury in training and would not be able to fight. And while we were just about to chalk up another victory to that God forsaken injury curse, Herrig came out of the woodwork to declare that not only was Gutierrez faking the injury, but that she had solid proof to back her accusations.

The alleged proof is after the jump. 

(That makes two of us who went commando today. Pic Props: Playboy)

By Jason Moles

After the post-fight press conference for Bellator 82, I was lucky enough to catch up with one of our all-time favorite MMA ring girls, Jade Bryce. When you’ve been around the business for any significant amount of time, you are rarely blown away during an interview — especially when you’re talking with the hired eye candy. Wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what happened Saturday night.

Ms. Bryce is one of the most knowledgeable and genuinely caring people in the MMA industry. During our conversation, we touched on topics ranging from her favorite fighters to her weakness for chocolate chip cookies. But it’s only when we broached the subject of what she wants for Christmas that her passion was truly enkindled. Check out the highlights of our little one-on-one below.

CagePotato: Hi, Jade, thanks for making time to speak with us. We have a few quick questions for you, which should help our readers get to know you a bit better. For starters, who is your favorite fighter?

Jade Bryce: Since I began with Bellator, I’ve always really loved Michael Chandler and the “Pitbull” brothers a lot, as well as Alexander Shlemenko. I also really like Douglas Lima and Ben Saunders, but yeah, my favorites have always been Shlemenko, “Pitbull” brothers, and Chandler. Oh! [Pat] Curran too. Which is weird because him and [Patricio] “Pitbull” are going to fight soon, so it’ll be a hard fight for me.

CP: For sure. Watching two of your favorite fighters punch each other in the face must be like torture to you. What about Ben Askren, do you think he’s going to defend his title successfully against Karl Amoussou?

JB: No.

CP: Wait, what?! You’re kidding, right? You might be the only person not from France to say that.

JB: I know, but I’m always the one to say, “I told you so.” Everyone else thought Eddie Alvarez was going to win against Chandler, but I had been saying for a year that Chandler was going to win. And no one believed me when it came to “Pitbull” or Chandler, and he has the belt now. I think Amoussou is going to do really well [in his fight against Askren.]

(Even in the off-season, the dude stays in killer shape. Props: @ryanbader)

We’ve got four new UFC fight announcements for you this morning. If you begin to feel overwhelmed, just remember your safe word, and pray that I have mercy on you, you worthless little dung beetle.

- As first reported by ESPN, light-heavyweights Ryan Bader and Vladimir Matyushenko will meet at UFC on FOX 6: Johnson vs. Dodson, January 26th in Chicago. Both guys are returning from being smashed in their last fights: Bader suffered a knockout loss to Lyoto Machida in August, while the Janitor has been sidelined due to injury since being TKO’d by Alexander Gustafsson last December.

- MMAWeekly reports that streaking heavyweights Stefan Struve and Mark Hunt will meet at the UFC’s next Japan event — UFC on Fuel 8, March 2nd at the Saitama Super Arena. The beanpole Dutchman and stocky Kiwi were originally scheduled to meet at UFC 146 back in May, but Hunt was forced to pull out of the fight on short notice with a knee injury.

A proven fight-finisher, Struve has stopped his last four opponents in the Octagon (Pat Barry, Dave Herman, Lavar Johnson, and Stipe Miocic), while Hunt has earned victories over his last three (Chris Tuchscherer, Ben Rothwell, and Cheick Kongo). Though Hunt will enjoy a sort of home-field advantage — he’s had nine previous MMA fights at the Saitama Super Arena, while Struve will be making his Japanese debut — he will also be giving up 13 inches (!) in height.

(“Why must we have to wait until February for the next episode of The Walking Dead? WHY?!”) 

If their backstories are any indication of how they will perform, then Rory MacDonald best prepare himself for hell against B.J. Penn come Saturday night. Not only is BJ looking to be in the best shape of his (welterweight) career, but the manner in which “The Prodigy” was portrayed in the UFC’s recent UFC on FOX 5 “Road to the Octagon” featurette has all but set him up for an epic career comeback. The “champion hoping to reignite legacy for family’s honor” angle has been played up plenty of times by similar countdowns, fight previews, or whathaveyous in the past, but very few cases have been as emotionally gut-wrenching as Penn’s.

The normally stoic Penn, whose daughter turned 4 around the time of the filming, revealed a completely unseen side of himself as he broke down in front of the cameras while describing how hard it has been to see his children grow up while he has been away fighting to secure their future (14:25). Credit is due to the editing department for brilliantly juxtaposing Penn’s fatherly plight (but did they have to have impose BJ’s breakdown over the Happy Birthday song for his daughter? TOO MUCH EMOTIONS DAMN YOU) with that of MacDonald’s, who admits that his own father wasn’t around much during his childhood. Nice try, Rory, but you are now the Max Bear to Penn’s James Braddock and we will root against you until Penn breathes his final breath. ATTICA! ATTICA!!

Anyway, a full replay of the special is after the jump, and it features an equally compelling handling of the Gustafsson/Rua and Henderson/Diaz fights, so check it out, won’t you?

You already know that the Florida-based Championship Fighting Alliance has the hottest roster of ring girls out of any regional MMA promotion. So why don’t we get to know one of these ladies a little better today? Nicole Mejia is a model/actress based in Fort Lauderdale, who is also a full-time nursing student when she’s not holding round cards for CFA and traveling around the world for modeling gigs. She’s of Columbian and Italian descent, has been modeling for about two years, and enjoys working out and dancing.

Check out a glorious hand-picked selection of Nicole Mejia photos in our gallery after the jump, and get to know her even better on her Facebook and Twitter pages.

(Dominick Cruz, seen here seconds after being made aware that Dominick Cruz had been injured yet again.) 

It just doesn’t end, you guys. It. Doesn’t. Fucking. End.

The insatiable injury curse of 2012 — seemingly fed up with claiming non-injured, active fighters — has somehow grown powerful enough to affect those who were already injured to begin with. NO, IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE.

And while the title may be a little misleading being that bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz didn’t truly re-injure himself, but rather failed to recuperate properly from the ACL injury that has kept him out of action since May, it looks like we won’t be seeing “The Dominator” dominating anything but a Domino’s delivery menu until late 2013 [WORDPLAY]. The newsbroke earlier today that the anterior cruciate ligament Cruz had replaced with that of a cadaver’s following his run on TUF 15 was rejected by his body, forcing the champ to undergo additional surgery in order repair/replace it.

“He’s pissed and disappointed,” remarked Cruz’s trainer Eric Del Fierro, echoing the sentiment of not only MMA fans around the world but that of MMA hack journalists such as myself.

I mean, I’m running out of ways to continue delivering bad news to you guys in this format. Creativity be damned; I feel like a World War 2 messenger at this point, just handing out notifications of death to the families of the deceased, trying to remain as emotionally unavailable as possible while little Jimmy Pocket and his Mom stare at me with tear-filled eyes. No Jimmy, your father isn’t coming home this Christmas. And that really awesome toy you wanted? You won’t be getting that either, because Santa never existed and now your Mom will have to pull double shifts at the diner and sell her body for money nightly just so you can eat canned hot dogs and stay off the street long enough to die with some dignity at age 7, when, following your Mom’s inevitable descent into cocaine and then full-on heroin addiction she’s since developed as a coping mechanism for being ravaged by the local charlatans and bottom-feeders day after day, she will fall asleep with a cigarette in her mouth and burn your house to the ground while you are dreaming of something, anything to remove you from the hellish nightmare your existence has become.

(Props: facebook.com/MichaelChiesaUFC)

Just days after UFC on Fox 5 lost its originally scheduled heavyweight bout between Brendan Schaub and Lavar Johnson when Johnson backed out due to a groin-pull, the December 8th event has lost another high-profile prelim match on short notice. The UFC announced yesterday that lightweight Michael Chiesa has been forced to withdraw from his fight against Marcus LeVesseur.

“Less than a week out from his backyard bout, Seattle’s Michael Chiesa has been forced to withdraw from UFC on FOX due to illness. The TUF Live season winner had been first slated to fight Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Rafaello ‘Tractor’ Oliveira, then lightweight Marcus LeVesseur when Oliveira was injured,” UFC.com reported.

The particular illness was not disclosed but one imagines that Chiesa would have to be awfully jacked-up to pull out of such a huge fight for himself. It would have been Chiesa’s first UFC bout since winning TUF Live at the series’ finale show last June, and he would have been fighting in front of his hometown fans in Seattle, on a FX-televised platform before a monster FOX event.

We’re not sure if Mamed Khalidov has been workshopping any nickname ideas, but as the unofficial authorities on this subject, we’d like to suggest “The Compactor.” Because for the past two or so years, Khalidov has been making his living collecting the UFC’s trash and shredding them into bite-sized pieces before disposing of them like yesterday’s leftovers. In this regard, his victory over TUF 3 winner Kendall Grove was a success, as he secured a rarely seen achilles lock to put Grove away inside the distance. But in a way, the win was one of Khalidov’s less impressive performances in recent memory. I mean, he even let Grove get to the second round for Chrissakes, and considering UFC veterans like Rodney Wallace, James “WHY ME?!” Irvin, Matt Lindland, and Jesse Taylor couldn’t make it out of the second minute, it really makes you wonder just why Khalidov decided to dick around for as long as he did.

We kid, we kid. In his last six fights, Khalidov has scored two victories by knockout, one by armbar, one by kneebar, one by guillotine, and one by the aforementioned Achilles lock. The man is as close to a human Swiss army knife as you will ever find, and once the UFC offers him a contract worth more than the paper it’s printed on, expect to see him making waves stateside.

Unfortunately, the video of his fight with Grove in unembeddable, so you’ll have to go here to check it out.

After the jump: Videos of the night’s co-main event — which pitted Rodney Wallace against Michael Materla for the KSW middleweight title — and the scrap between UFC veterans Matt Horwich and Terry Martin.

By Jason Moles

This past Saturday, Bellator Fighting Championships came to Michigan for the first time in the promotion’s nearly four-year history with its 82nd event. It’s been said that you only get one chance to make a first impression, and I’m not sure this was what CEO Bjorn Rebney had in mind, despite the obligatory smile on his face. Don’t get me wrong, the night could have gone worse — but it could have also went so much better. But I’m just a hack “journalist,” so what do I know?

I know demand for Bellator’s Michigan debut was low. Although the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort was pretty full for the main card fights, it was by no means a packed house. This just wasn’t one of those ‘standing room only’ functions, which probably explains why one of the more popular local watering holes* didn’t show Bellator that night.

When asked about the decision in the hours leading up to the fights, the response from one of the employees was an apathetic “Because we’re just not.” Not one of their dozen or so TVs would be allowed to show the second largest mixed martial arts promotion. Not one. I wonder how much of this could have been prevented with a proper main event — you know, the kind where the two guys set to throw down are ones you’ve heard of before or maybe even seen on the cover of a magazine.

I also know that all MMA events are improved with at least one matchup featuring two “Let me bang, bro!” type of guys. And while I thoroughly enjoy a great display of BJJ and wrestling, watching two highly skilled ground specialists do their thing, not everyone shares my opinion.

Skip to the 1:45 mark for Dana’s appearance. Props to reader Alan K for the video.

While the rest of you were watching football today (the American version, aka the one worth watching *chugs beer, initiates U-S-A! chant*), you may have noticed a familiar face in this week’s edition of Riggle’s Picks. No, it wasn’t one of us. It was UFC President Dana White, satirizing “Exclusive Access” sports websites alongside Rob Riggle.

Riggle hits all the standard punchlines about these types: Improbable rumors, Rex Ryan is a fat mess, that these sites are only in it for the money, Richard Simmons, the webmasters live with their mothers, Jewish guilt- you know the drill by now. But Dana White steals the show with his masterful performance as a homeless drunk, who serves as an incarnation of “Guy who can’t possibly have inside information spreading outlandish rumors that only internet trolls are dumb enough to believe.”

When the UFC makes budget cuts to put a fight together, the marketing department is the first place to feel the impact. Props: jinxonhog.

According to the welterweight champion, the answer is “no.” Or rather, not nearly as much as has been rumored.

On yesterday’s edition of The MMA Beat, Mike Straka of Fight Now TV reported that a source close to the welterweight champion told him that GSP was asking the UFC for $50 million to fight Anderson Silva.

Despite the fact that St-Pierre is currently on vacation in France, he dismissed the rumor during a recent conversation with 985Sports.ca. In his own words:

Props: bpatelphoto.com

By CagePotato Contributor Michael Sanchez

Bantamweights beware. Radames Garcia is looking to destroy your dreams. Ranked number one in the nation and sporting an amateur record of 9-1, all he is waiting for is a chance to make his pro debut.

“My last two opponents pulled out. My coach said one of them thought I was too big,” Garcia said.

The 29-year old native of Miami, Florida is fighting out of Cung Le’s gym in San Jose, California. In a little more than two years, Garcia managed to win two state titles in the amateur leagues of both California and Nevada.

Garcia first learned about MMA from a conversation with his co-worker. He invited Garcia to train with him at Tribull Mixed Martial Arts Center.

“At first, I thought it was illegal. I wanted to make sure it was legit. I had no clue about it at the time and I didn’t want the cops to bust down the doors and end up in jail,” Garcia laughed.

We were not happy to read a report from MMA Weekly that TUF 9 vet Frankie Lester allegedly hit female fighter Cassie Crisano [Ed. Note: And former Hot Potato] while in a scuffle between her and his girlfriend, fighter Shanie Rusth Saturday night after the two women weighed in opposite one another for an amateur MMA card in Virginia. Come to think of it, we’re incensed by the possibility that a large, professional male fighter may have hit Crisano in the face, and it has nothing to do with the fact that her face is particularly pleasant to look at. That stuff just ain’t cool.

According to MMA Weekly ‘s Damon Martin, “The situation unraveled during a weigh-in between two women’s competitors, Cassie Crisano and Shanie Rusth. Lester was there supporting Rusth, who is his girlfriend.

It went completely under our radar, but former WEC Light-Heavyweight Doug Marshall made his Bellator debut at last night’s Bellator 82. There are three things you need to know about this fight:

1.) His opponent, Kala Hose, is apparently a big fan of the Big Buford and/or Kimo Leopoldo, if his tattoos are any indication.
2.) He entered the fight with a 7-5 record (including a loss to Mayhem Miller and a win over Phil Baroni), hadn’t fought in two years and was riding a three fight losing streak.
3.) Things went exactly as you’d assume they would.

By the way, Ben and Jason were at Bellator 82 last night, so expect some updates from them as soon as they’re back. Video and results after the jump.

We reacted the same way.

It wasn’t surprising to see Cesar Gracie fire Caio Terra for helping nemesis Carlos Condit, but it was sort of odd that Gracie had so little to say about it. Never one to shy away from calling someone out, it was strange to see Cesar post a half-assed rant on Facebook about the firing and be done with it. Fortunately, he was asked to address the firing on this week’s edition of The MMA Hour, and by the time he shows up on the show, he does not disappoint.

The segment started off with Areil Helwani asking some pretty standard questions about Nate Diaz’s upcoming title fight, but things get interesting when he plays Terra’s explanation for his decision to train Condit and then asks Gracie for a reaction. Believe it or not, Cesar Gracie does not threaten to slap Helwani for instigating fights, but instead opts to give an articulate response detailing the finer points of Caio Terra’s bitchassness. Via MMAFighting.com:

“He must be happy, because this is literally the most publicity he’s ever received. ” Gracie remarked. “He a jiu-jitsu guy, he doesn’t have any kind of MMA anything.”

(Ain’t no tantrum like a Big Rigg tantrum)

In the whole welterweight/middleweight title/super-fight mess of excitment and speculation going on right now, number one 170 pound contender Johny Hendricks is one of the few people giving real talk. “I’m not going to fight unless it’s for a belt,” Hendricks told MMAJunkie Radio Friday.

The former NCAA Division I wrestling national champion solidified himself as the number one contender to Georges St. Pierre’s welterweight crown with five straight wins, his last three against Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck and Martin Kampmann. Despite earning his shot, Hendricks is far from a lock to be the next one to fight St. Pierre.

Middleweight champion Anderson Silva is chasing a super fight with the Canadian and St. Pierre surrogates are lobbying for his next fight to be against his rival Nick Diaz. Diaz is currently serving a suspension for testing positive for marijuana metabolites before his last fight, a loss to Carlos Condit.