Insanity

You read that correctly. Russia…has water parks. Not only do they get to have Sambo, awesome sweaters, and The Dude’s favorite beverage, but now they have waterparks as well. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE LAND OF SNOW AND SORROW GOD DAMN IT.

We have no clue where this video came from, or what the true purpose of it is, but we’d be lying if we said that Piterland doesn’t look like the bees knees, and apparently former PRIDE Heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and his daughter Masha agree. We are still waiting to hear who “The Last Emperor’s” next opponent will be, but rumors have ranged everywhere from Bobby Lashley in a MMA match to Brock Lesnar in a pro wrestling bout, so who the hell knows? What we do know is that the next man to fight Fedor might want to reconsider if he values his health whatsoever. Poor Ishii.

What’s that you say? You want to see a MMA fighter humiliate and dance around his opponent ala Silva/Leites/Maia/anyone before brutally kicking them in the face? Well we’ve got just the video awaiting your viewership after the jump.

Here at CP, we have covered damn near every type of knockout that has occurred in the MMA world, and in fact, we pride ourselves on our devotion to the topic. And although we’ve seen both the double KO and the even more rare no contest due to both fighters falling out of the cage, little did we know that over the weekend, these two would meet at a shady hotel, do the nasty, forget to wear protection, and give birth to the above knockout.

The event was Hardrock MMA 43, which went down on Saturday night. The place was Sheperdsville, Kentucky. In the co-main event of the evening, lightweight fighters Brandon Bishop and Braedon Ward squared off in what started as a relatively even match that saw both men struggle for superior position in the clinch. After Ward managed to toss Bishop to the mat but was unable to complete the takedown, he bull rushed ahead with a double leg, eventually slamming into to cage door, which burst open and sent both fighters crashing to the ground.

As team members rushed to their aid, it quickly became apparent that both parties had been knocked unconscious in the fall, and the bout was subsequently ruled a no contest. Fortunately, both men were able to walk away on their own power after a few minutes. According to Gary Thomas of ProMMAnow.com, who was in attendance for the entire event, a hinge in the cage had been damaged in an earlier fight, but was believed to have been fixed. However, when both fighters hit the door, the pin was knocked loose, causing one of the more bizarre fight endings we have seen in quite some time.

And as it turns out, this was not the only bit of controversy that went down at Hardrock MMA 43. Join us after the jump for an illegal KO from the same event that is as brutal as it is hilarious.

(Our boy Chucky shows up around the 1 minute mark.)

Between you, me, and the wall, I had a doozy of a dream last night, Potato Nation. Get this: a corn fed harvest mouse, a hooker, a nun, a Flemish peasant woman, whips, chains, whistles, yo-yo’s, a circus midget, my grandmother riding by on a bicycle giving me the finger, and a duck.

You think that’s crazy? Well it pales in comparison to the Super Bowl ad Kia managed to dream up, which features supermodel Adriana Lima, former UFC Light Heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell, Motley Crue performing “Kickstart My Heart,” a legion of bikini-clad women, a magical dwarf (so close!!), and a cowboy riding a giant rhinoceros. Check out the video above, even if it isn’t related to MMA whatsoever. Did we mention it has Adriana Lima in a skimpy outfit? Yeah, that’s what we thought.

-J. Jones

(You see? People were doing this WAY before MMA was ever popular.)

*facepalm*

Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently a former MMA fighter named Harold Finger III (seriously) viciously assaulted a woman before setting himself on fire, nearly taking a six year old child with him in the process. This bizarre story comes to us courtesy of KTUU.com out of Anchorage, Alaska, whose “report” is so shockingly inept that we feel the need to post it verbatim:

A former mixed martial arts fighter set himself on fire on Tuesday night and faces assault charges for striking a woman, according to Anchorage Police.

Police said 28-year-old Harold Finger III lit himself on fire during a disturbance around 8:33 p.m. Tuesday. Officers found him badly burned at an apartment on the 200 block of N. Klevin Street.

According to witnesses, APD said Finger became angry while speaking on the phone with an acquaintance after getting out of jail for one week.

Police allege Finger then punched and kicked a 34-year-old woman in the face and head while wearing leather gloves with hard plastic knuckles. The victim and two other women living at the apartment took refuge in a bedroom with one of the women holding her 6-year-old son.

Finger said he was not going back to jail and took a can of Prestone starting fluid and doused the door frame and his upper body and then grabbed the child. The women were able to free the boy before Finger used a lighter to ignite himself, bursting into flames. One of the women extinguished the flames with a jacket.

Finger was taken to a local hospital for severe burns on his upper torso, face, and head. He faces charges of assault in the first and second degree and reckless endangerment with a no-bail warrant.

Anchorage Police said Finger will be served when he is physically able to be taken into custody.

(Hey, I keep tons of random trash in *my* car too! SOUL MATES. / Photo via @RondaRousey)

On March 3rd, red-hot women’s MMA prospect Ronda Rousey will drop to 135 pounds for the first time to challenge Miesha Tate for her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. Rousey’s pro MMA career isn’t even a year old yet, and she’s already facing the world’s top-ranked 135′er, a woman who holds victories over such big names as Marloes Coenen and Zoila Gurgel.

And according to oddsmakers, Miesha Tate is dead meat.

Props to MiddleEasy for alerting us to the current betting odds for next month’s Tate vs. Rousey showdown in Columbus, Ohio. Due to her string of armbar victories within the first minute of her fights, Ronda Rousey is as high as a -375 favorite in the matchup, with Tate slated as a +275 ‘dog. That, my friends, is insane.

(If anyone can explain what is going on in this photo, we’ll give you Carmen Valentina’s digits.) 

After Edson Barboza’s spinning heel kick KO over Terry Etim gave birth to the phrase “falling tree” knockout here on CP, we got to thinking, what other classifications of devastation existed in the MMA highlight-o-sphere? Debates got heated, egos got crushed, and limbs got mangled, but we were eventually able to agree that the next category of KO’s in need of appreciation was that of the “lawn chair.”

What is a “lawn chair” knockout, you ask? Well, it’s that special kind of knockout, perhaps the complete opposite of a “falling tree,” in which the victim’s legs give out from underneath them almost instantaneously after the lethal blow is delivered, often forcing their body to collapse into itself like that of a common lawn chair. And to add insult to injury, the poor son of a bitch often receives an unnecessary strike courtesy of his own knee on the way down. Here are nine of the finest examples, in no particular order.

Chuck Liddell v. Guy Mezger

Ricardo Lamas v. Bendy Casimir

Check out seven more beautiful examples of this phenomena after the jump.

(True story.)

Rousimar Palhares‘s reputation for unsportsmanlike leg-breaking, terrifying aggression, and general insanity is well-documented, and well-deserved. But now that he’s being blamed for leg-murders he didn’t even commit, we felt it was time to step in to defend him.

This morning, as part of their Blood Week series, Deadspin linked to a photo of a man on a table, with his femur sticking out of his leg. If you really, really need to see it, just hit the “next page” link at the end of this post. [Ed. note: Don't actually do that.] As Deadspin writes:

Click through to see what happened to Isiah Ordiz’s femur after he wouldn’t tap out of a heel hook from Rousimar Palhares. I cannot stress this enough: this is a Faces of Death-level photo and you will wish you hadn’t seen it.

Immediately, my bullshit sensors went off. I researched an entire article about Palhares’s assholish history of leg abuse two years ago, and there’s no way I would leave out something this gruesome and dramatic, if there was any record of it on the Internet. The fact that this is surfacing now makes it suspect to begin with. Surely us MMA fans would have already heard of it?

(Props: foxsports)

Of the many painful moments during Saturday’s UFC on FOX 2: Evans vs. Davis broadcast, the worst were the two appearances by Chael Sonnen‘s pro-wrestling heel character, which didn’t exactly help MMA’s reputation as a serious sport. Before the fight, Sonnen compared himself to a pack of cigarettes then leered directly into the camera, in a promo that would have gotten him immediately eliminated from WWE NXT.

After the fight, Sonnen launched into a self-aggrandizing monologue that had nothing to do with the battle he just had with Michael Bisping. If it reeked of low-budget wrasslin’ trash, there’s a reason for that. Sonnen was actually doing his own version of a 1975 post-match interview by “Superstar” Billy Graham, from a World Wide Wrestling Federation show. Watch the video above, then watch the video after the jump, and you’ll see what we mean…

(We’re not the only ones who see a woman in a bear suit in the background, right?)

It’s a new week, Potato Nation, and with it brings change. I, for one, will be shedding the DangadaDang “nom de plume” if you will, in favor of my actual name from now on. Will the writing be any gooder? Perhaps, but for every change, something must stay the same, as they say. And in the ever changing landscape that is the current MMA scene, it’s comforting to know that we can count on the stability of at least one thing: Fedor Emelianenko‘s desire to toss around Asian men he outweighs by a good 70 pounds. You get caught with your hand in the (fortune) cookie jar once, it’s forgivable. You get caught twice, and you’re moving into full blown fetish territory, Mr. Emelianenko.

Yes, the former PRIDE heavyweight champion recently appeared on the South Korean TV show, “Star King,” to reenact the end of the Tim Boetsch/David Heath scrap with the help of fast rising featherweight contender Chan Sung Jung. Aside from being a reminder of how much better Asian television shows are than ours (oh MXC, where hast thou gone?), the sparring session is at the minimum a silver lining in the storm cloud of disappointment that was the second UFC on Fox broadcast. Like we said, it’s a new day, and let’s just shed the memory of last weekend’s main card with a good old fashioned freak show exhibition to start the work week, shall we?

Join us after the jump for the glorious video, but for the love of God, turn off your speakers before you do so. If you’ve ever ordered take out from P.F. Chang’s, then you are familiar with the chaos that awaits you.

During halftime of yesterday’s NFC Championship game between the New York Giants and the San Francisco Fail Machines, viewers were treated to a UFC on FOX promo that was…kind of odd, actually. Light-heavyweight champion/part-time model Jon Jones is set up as a relatable nice-guy, then kicks his own child into the stratosphere. Jones catches the falling kid, and two nearby moms express their barely-conceled lust for him. And that’s about it.

General strangeness aside, the commercial doesn’t actually show any UFC footage — more evidence of FOX’s gun-shy attitude toward the sport, maybe? — and doesn’t feature any of the fighters competing in next week’s UFC on FOX: Evans vs Davis event. (Rashad Evans probably punched another hole through his wall after seeing this.) I wonder how many football fans watched the commercial in a loud sports bar and thought, “Hey, there’s a new Old Spice guy. Alright.”