Exclusive: Sean Sherk Talks Steroid Allegations, Says BJ Penn “Doesn’t Know What It’s Like” to Train Hard

Sean Sherk isn’t what most would call a fan favorite. Sure, he has his hardcore contingent of supporters, but even when he reigned as the UFC lightweight champ he faced criticism from detractors who found his style of fighting less than enthralling to watch. That criticism reached a fever pitch after a positive steroid test following his title defense against Hermes Franca last summer, which resulted in Sherk being stripped of the title.

“The Muscle Shark” has repeatedly professed his innocence on the steroid charge, filing an appeal with the CSAC and taking repeated polygraph tests to try and clear his name. Now the former UFC lightweight champion talks with Cage Potato about the steroid accusations, his attempts to prove his innocence, and the war of words with current title-holder B.J. Penn, as they prepare to meet in the Octagon at UFC 84.

CagePotato.com: So how’s training going? As we near the fight, are you backing off the really hard training?

Sean Sherk: No, I’m still training hard up until two days before the fight. Still doing everything I normally do, all the cardio, all the hard workouts. That’s the way I’ve always done it for over thirty fights. That’s the way we did it in wrestling and so that’s the way I’m used to doing it.

I imagine by this point you’re pretty sick of being asked about the positive steroid test.

No, I’m used to it. I kind of expect it now.

In that case, let’s get right into it. You’ve maintained your innocence throughout this whole thing. If you didn’t take steroids, what do you think caused the positive test?

I can’t say exactly why it came up positive, but I know that there were definitely some problems with the testing procedures at Quest Laboratories. The way they did their testing, there was some carryover in the machine from previous tests before they tested my sample.

That seems like a pretty big problem to me right there. If there’s carryover in the machine, should you use that machine to do that test? I wouldn’t think so. Their chain of custody was completely shot. They had no chain of custody. Those were the two main issues.

I tested all the supplements I was taking and I did find contamination in one of them, a testosterone booster. I don’t know if that caused it or not, but I was surprised to find contamination in a supplement like that.

Has that made you paranoid about taking supplements in general?

Oh yeah, for sure. I cut the amount of supplements I was taking in half. I was taking about 25 different supplements and I cut that in half. I still feel the same, so I didn’t really need to be taking all those supplements to begin with. I’m just hoping that by cutting my supplements I can decrease the risk of this happening again.

I didn’t know you could go into a store like a GNC and buy something that would have illegal stuff in it, but I guess you can. I was stunned. I didn’t know that. I’ve also started doing my own pre-testing, which I’ll do before every fight now just to be sure.

Even as you maintain your innocence, the court of public opinion in MMA seems to be largely against you. What do you think you could do to clear your name that would satisfy your detractors?

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Exclusive: Randy Couture Talks Fedor-Sylvia, Being the “Banned Brand”, and More

MMA legend Randy Couture finds himself in a strange position these days. An ongoing legal battle with the UFC threatens his future as a fighter, and his affiliation with clothier-turned-MMA promoter Affliction has prompted the UFC to keep him and the “banned brand” off any of their broadcasts. Recently Couture talked with Cage Potato about his life as a fighter, the future of MMA, and this summer’s Fedor-Sylvia bout.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Randy. How’s everything at Xtreme Couture? It seems like you guys have so many fighters in so many different organizations now. Does it ever get hard to keep track of who is fighting and where?

No, it’s not too hard. We’ve actually just got a big grease board and we just write who’s fighting and where and when and we do a pretty good job of keeping track of it that way. We’ve got new gyms opening up in Long Island and in Toronto. Everything is going really great.

What are your thoughts on Tim Sylvia signing to fight Fedor this summer? You’ve beat Tim, and the Fedor fight is the one you wanted more than any other. How does it make you feel to see Tim get that chance before you do?

I think it’s going to be a great fight. Tim’s a seasoned veteran and he presents some unique challenges with his height and his size. People knock Fedor because he hasn’t fought any top guys recently, but Fedor’s an excellent fighter. It should be very interesting to see how he handles this challenge. I know I’ll be interested to see it. It’s going to be a good one and I hope to be right there at ringside when it happens.

But Tim got let out of his UFC contract and that’s why he can take this fight. Does it bother you that it happened that way for him and not for you?

He didn’t get let go so he could do this fight, he got let go because the UFC didn’t want to pay someone that much money to fight on the undercard. They knew he wasn’t going to fight for a title any time soon and he only had one more fight on his contract, so they made the decision to let him go for financial reasons.

I can see how it made sense for them to let him go and it doesn’t make sense to want to let me go. I’ve got the belt, so that’s different. The way I look at it, that’s his good fortune to be able to go take the fight with Fedor. I’m not upset about it. I’ve still got a few more good fights left it me.

Tito Ortiz recently made some public statements about the lack of respect he feels from the UFC and from Dana White. He referred to the way they no longer show you on pay-per-views when you’re there cornering your fighters, never even mention your name or your gym. How much is this stuff about respect and how much is about money?

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Exclusive: Dean Lister’s Next Challenge

by Ben Fowlkes

Dean Lister is in a tough spot. He’s a world class grappler, an Abu Dhabi champion, and depending on who you talk to, he may be the best pure jiu-jitsu fighter in the world. Trouble is, when you carry around a reputation like that it’s hard to surprise anyone.

Because Lister’s ground game is so advanced, most of his opponents will do anything to avoid it. They’d rather force him to stand and strike – which he admits he’s been less comfortable with – and rely on providing just enough offense to win.

“It’s frustrating,” Lister says. “Everyone so far has had pretty much the same strategy. My last opponent (Jordan Radev) was supposed to be an Olympic wrestler from Bulgaria. He didn’t want to go to the ground with me at all. I guess that’s how a lot of people approach it though, just trying to stay on their feet no matter what. I don’t look at it as a negative thing. It’s just how it is.”

The problem for Lister is that as good as his ground game is, when he can’t win with it he’s struggled to find other paths to victory. His recent losses to Nathan Marquardt in the UFC and to Ricardo Arona in Pride were both the result of decisions, as were all five of his career defeats.

The UFC recently announced that Lister will get a chance to avenge one of his early losses when he takes on Jeremy Horn at The Ultimate Fighter Finale show in June. The two first faced off in 2003, when Horn took Lister’s King of the Cage middleweight championship belt from him with a split decision victory.

“We’re both different now,” says Lister. “I’m about three times as experienced as I was back then. I only had like five fights back then, now I have fifteen. Then again, he’s probably fought way more than fifteen times since then, the way he goes.

“One thing Jeremy is known for is he’s not afraid to fight on the ground or on the feet. He’s very well-rounded. I just think that no matter what happens, it’s going to be an exciting fight. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the feet or on the ground – of course everyone knows that I have a preference.”

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Exclusive: Mac Danzig Talks Latest Win, TUF Stigma, and More

(’I'm here to eat some hummus and kick some ass. I am all out of hummus.’)

Mac Danzig may be one of the most accomplished fighters yet to win Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t feeling the same pressure to live up to the hype that other winners have labored under. His submission victory over Mark Bocek on his first UFC pay-per-view this past Saturday was a good start to his UFC career, but Danzig is hoping that it’s just the beginning.

In this exclusive Cage Potato interview Danzig talks about the price of celebrity, about his future in the UFC’s lightweight division, and about his hard-fought victory in Montreal.

CagePotato.com: First of all, congratulations on your victory. Looking at this matchup beforehand, it seemed like you were a pretty heavy favorite, 5-1 according to some of the betting lines. Were you expecting Mark Bocek to be as tough as he was?

Yeah, I knew it would be a really tough fight. I thought it had potential to be tougher than it was. The betting lines don’t really mean anything to me and I try not to look at them. I was kind of pissed when I did see them, actually, because I thought to myself, ‘Man, they’re not giving this guy enough credit.’

It’s kind of a tough situation for me because everyone’s just expecting me to steamroll this guy. He didn’t have a big name and so people didn’t realize how tough he was. It’s really a no-win situation because people just expect me to win and if I don’t it really messes up my status in the sport. If I do win, it’s like, hey, no big deal. But I knew how tough he was. He and I have a common opponent, this guy named John Mahlow, and he took me to a decision while Mark Bocek submitted him in the first round. So I knew what he was capable of and I knew it was going to be a tough fight.

Toward the end of the fight when he was cut and his eye was swelling up pretty badly it looked like you were able to land the straight right at will, like he couldn’t see it coming at all. Was that something you noticed right away and did you try and exploit that?

When I first cut him with that knee and I saw how bad it was I thought there was a chance they might stop it because of the cut. But I wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen. I wanted to finish him. It was a pretty nasty cut, though. The blood was squirting about two feet out at one point, so I was thinking to circle to my right and stay on his left side where he might have trouble seeing.

When the doctors checked him out he got a little breather and he came back in there with a sense of desperation, trying to swing for the fences and get a knockout. I felt like I was on my way to setting up a pretty good knockout before they stopped it to look at the cut, but who knows.

Going into this fight – your first since winning The Ultimate Fighter – what was the pressure like? Were you feeling that burden of being a TUF winner?

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A Video Look at Ricardo Arona

We reported earlier that Ricardo Arona might be fighting again very soon, so in the spirit of Ricardo jumping back into the fray, let’s check out a couple of his battles.

First, the Arona/Rampage Jackson fight from 2004, which went down at PRIDE - Critical Countdown and was cloaked in controversy. At the 1:10 mark, Arona lands a kick and several shots to Rampage’s melon that seems to temporarily KO Jackson. After pleading with the ref to stop the fight before Rampage pulled it together, Arona found himself again on the bottom-side of the grappling match. Exactly a minute later, Rampage power-slams Arona — which included an accidental, yet illegal head-butt — to end the fight.

And here’s Arona’s last fight, which happened at PRIDE 34 around a year ago. In case your memory is as shitty as mine, the handy internet tells us that Arona got KTFO by Sokoudjou at 1:59 of the first round.

Here’s hoping when Arona comes back he retains the form he showed against guys like Kazushi Sakuraba, Dean Lister, Dan Henderson, Murilo Rua, Guy Mezger, and Jeremy Horn (twice). Only time will tell…

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Hot Fighter Alert: Carina Damm

Carina “Barbie Girl” Damm just won her third fight in a row with her win over Sofie Bagherdai at FFF 4 - Call of the Wild on April 3rd in L.A. We love watching chicks fight, but especially love it when they’re kinda’ hot and have an accent — and not, like, a valley girl accent.

Vitals: Brazilian, 5′4″, 120-ish, likes wearing pig tails
Record: 8 wins (5 via subs, 3 decisions), 3 losses (2 via subs, 1 decision)
Noteworthy: Trains with her brother, 7-1 fighter Rodrigo Damm. She appeared in a spread for Japanese Playboy — clothed, unfortunately.

Carina’s win streak started with a decision win over Molly Helsel, which also broke “Barbie Girl” out of a two-loss slump. Parts 2 & 3 of the fight, plus more pics are after the jump. Enjoy.

Part 1

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Exclusive Interview: Ben Rothwell Talks Adrenaline MMA and More

(Ben Rothwell is happy about his new contract, and yes, that’s what he looks like when he’s happy)

The last six months have been confusing times for Ben Rothwell. After leaving the IFL following an unbeaten run that spanned nine fights in fifteen months, he’s been waiting on the sidelines for a new contract and a new organization. Last week, Rothwell’s manager and former CEO of the short-lived M-1 Global promotion, Monte Cox, announced that Rothwell would be joining his new organization, Adrenaline MMA.

In this exclusive Cage Potato interview, Ben Rothwell discusses the details of that contract for the first time, as well as the very strong possibility that he may also fight for another organization later this year.

CagePotato.com: Tell us about the new organization that you signed with, Adrenaline MMA. What’s your contract with them like and how did you decide to go with them instead of one of the other companies that offered you a deal?

I was trying to find the best company to go with. M-1 had been talking to me, obviously Monte Cox was the head of it and he gave me an idea of what they were looking at. I was trying to hold out while they figured out their business with Fedor. I had other organizations looking at me, but I wanted to wait and see what the best deal would be. Fedor’s management was just impossible to deal with, so that hurt M-1, but Monte and everyone else there decided, ‘Hey, we can still be an organization’, so they created Adrenaline.

They’re not missing a beat, because they had everything planned and now they can still go ahead with it, minus Fedor and the Russians. As soon as that was decided I got the phone call to get signed and I said absolutely.

It’s a good deal. Three fights, non-exclusive, so it’s a very cool thing for two reasons. Number one, I’m getting paid a flat rate win or lose. Now I can go out and just throw everything I have without worrying because I know I’m getting paid. The second thing is the non-exclusive thing. If there’s a lot of time between shows or an opponent doesn’t come through, if I a get a call from Japan I can go over there and fight. It’s very cool and I’m very happy.

Can you talk about what kind of money you’re getting in this flat rate contract?

I don’t really want to talk about that, but I will say that it’s a lot more than what the IFL had offered. It’s the kind of contract that makes me happy, I’ll put it that way. It’s the kind of money that makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something and like I’m making it as a fighter.

After all the trouble with M-1, are you concerned about how solid the organization is and what kind of future they might have? It seems like they’ve already had a lot of difficulty without ever putting on a show. Does that worry you?

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