The Inaugural “Okay, It’s FINALLY Safe to Call This Guy Wasted Potential” Award (a.k.a. “The Filho“): Melvin Guillard

(Photo via Tracy Lee, CombatLifestyle.com)

It’s been two days since Melvin Guillard lost to Jamie Varner on the preliminary card of UFC 155. And although there was a slight scoring controversy — don’t ask me how Varner took all three rounds of that fight — it’s safe to finally admit to ourselves that we’ve been living a lie. Melvin Guillard is a highly entertaining fighter, an inspiring story and he looks great in a pair of bikini briefs (I write this in the most heterosexual way possible, naturally). But he is not a legitimate contender to a title in any weight class, in any of the major MMA promotions.

It’s been easy to live this lie for as long as we’ve lived it. We’ve watched him absolutely demolish poor chumps making their UFC debuts and perennial midcard fighters alike with extreme prejudice for seven years now. Guillard’s stand-up has always been light-years ahead of virtually everyone he’s faced, and when combined with his good sprawl, the results have been devastating enough to create the illusion that Melvin Guillard is an elite fighter. Unfortunately, the utter hopelessness that has been his ground game has kept him miles away from the true elites, and after ages of thinking “maybe this fight he’ll develop some sort of submission defense,” his loss to Jim Miller at January’s UFC on FX proved that he’s either too far behind or too apathetic about jiu-jitsu at this point in his career to catch up with the guys at the top. Of course, the knockout loss to Donald Cerrone at UFC 150 didn’t exactly help his case, and his aforementioned loss to Jamie Varner should all but cement his midcard status in the UFC.

With some better submission defense, Guillard could have easily been a champion. He could have been one of the all-time greats. Or maybe he could have grown wings, discovered Atlantis and cured cancer if he only knew how to defend against a rear-naked choke, who knows for sure. But in 2013, I say we give The Young Assassin the Tatanka treatment — let him disembowel all of the hapless upper-preliminary/lower-main card lightweights he wants to, but keep him away from the title picture. - Seth Falvo

Honorable mentions: Welterweight BJ Penn, Middleweight Anthony Johnson, American Marius Zaromskis, Brandon Vera, and Aleksander Emelianenko (truly the Ozzie Canseco of MMA)

Greatest Hype Deflation: Junior Dos Santos and His Invincible Aura

(Photo via Tracy Lee, CombatLifestyle.com)

This award rightfully belongs to the former UFC heavyweight champion, for losing so badly to Cain Velasquez at UFC 155 that hopefully, by the grace of the Almighty, “experts” will stop declaring any heavyweight unbeatable until they’ve had a chance to surpass the divisional achievements of a professional wrestler with bad guts, a 220-pound senior citizen, and a guy who once shit his pants in the cage…literally. In the land of the big boyz, there is no such thing as a dominant champion. - Anthony Gannon

Honorable mentions: Dave Herman, Erick Silva

Greatest MMA GIFs of the Year

(Disclaimer: The UFC’s legal department has strongly encouraged us to stop uploading/embedding GIFs on CagePotato that feature UFC footage. So instead, we’ll use the bolded headlines below to link to these GIFs on other websites; let those guys take the heat for a change. And don’t worry, the above image of Tawny Kitaen will make sense very soon.)

There are no losers in this category because each and every single one of them has an element of straight-up unadulterated certifiably freakish awesomeness that happened live during one of the 2012 UFC broadcasts. I can’t even rank them because each one is so monumentally sweet-ass that I would be a floor-turd if I rated one above another. It would be like saying that I love my son more than I love my daughter, even though I’m pretty sure both of them know who Daddy loves more, but I would never come right out and say it. At least not until they are older, and I doubt my liver will hold out that long, which makes this point moot (I love you Sadie, LOL). So like today’s “participant trophy” era of youth sports, everybody in this group is a winner. Please forgive us for contributing to the pussification of Western society.

Drunk Mom at UFC 150

Check this cougar out and take a close look at those Tawny Kitaen-esque moves that she undoubtedly practiced in the mirror a million times before, just hoping/knowing that she would eventually be able to unleash them on the masses. This was her one chance to reach all of us, and she did not disappoint. “Shake Your Money Maker” does not begin to describe the sheer intoxicated vigor that produced thousands (dare I say millions?) of instantaneous rock-hard boners across the land. Sadly, I assume, she ended up as a groupie for Captain Dickswing and the SwingDicks (For the record, that last link is NSFW — in fact it’s Not Safe For Reality, and could quite possibly give you herpes and/or a meth habit just from viewing it one time — but the lyrics are something only John Lennon and GG Allin in the midst of Boitanoish relations could inspire).

The Best $50 Ever Spent . . . . Almost

It could have been the greatest DQ loss in the history of professional sports, but at the end of the day it was juuuuust a bit outside. Bummer.

Ryan Jimmo Goes “Breakin’ 2” after seven-second KO victory at UFC 149

Even if Ryan Jimmo was not a former CagePotato.com blogger, he would still make this list. In fact, this was my initial pick as the winner because mere seconds before his Electric Boogaloo began, Jimmo had just turned the face of Anothony Perosh into a wax figure of Good Ol’ JR after tasting a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper, forever frozen in time, and it was also his 16^th victory in a row. War Jimmo!

The Girl In The White Dress

It was the bounce that launched a thousand calluses and chafed shafts among the Tater Nation. The thing that struck me about TGITWG (after I stopped looking at her dynamic, glorious bounty) was her two cohorts, and I am not talking about her bosom. Namely, the short-haired punker chick and the hipster/douche in the Hot Topic-bought hat trying to steal Boobzilla’s glory. Thankfully they did not. But after view number 200 or 2000, I noticed something else: Check out the dude right behind the star of this repeated loop who is sort of lurking in the shadows holding a cup of what I can only assume is human blood or infant tears or a mixture of both. Something tells me that his favorite song is THIS (thanks JJ) and he would make “a cap out of your right buttocks cheek” just before Chris Hansen asks him to have a seat.

For the record, though I have written things for CagePotato that have been more newsworthy, more topical and even more thought-provoking, this little GIF-roundup — buried on the last page of a feature that most of you will be too drunk to read today — may be my favorite contribution yet when you factor in all the goofy-ass links I included.  Don’t forget to follow @cagepotatomma and all your CP writers on Twitter, because our follower counts make us feel a little less shitty about our mundane existences, even though we all know the comment section Sleestak are going to call us twat-waffles. Happy New Year, beloved Taters, and thank you for letting all of us entertain and infuriate you all year long! - Nathan Smith

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