(Why yes, Bas, I *will* have another bear claw.) 

Fresh off a unanimous decision victory over a Carl’s Jr., wait, I meant Dave Branch at Titan Fighting Championship 22, it looks like an opponent, date, and location has been set for Anthony Johnson’s light heavyweight debut. Johnson will be squaring off against 8-3 KOTC veteran Esteves Jones on August 24th at the Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, at Titan Fighting Championships 24. The chance to finally see Johnson fighting somewhere around his actual weight has to inspire confidence that he will actually make weight this time, a feat in and of itself that “Rumble” has failed to do in his past two fights, and about every other fight before that.

When asked to comment on his newfound diet, Johnson could only mumble “It’s great” through a mouthful of Steak-umms.

Regardless of his training/diet regimen, Johnson should have little trouble putting away Jones, who holds a notable win over Darrill “Titties” Schoonover and no one else. Then again, his nickname is “Quiet Riot”, who were arguably one of the better mainstream metal bands of the 80′s, so…honestly, I don’t really know where I was going with that. Jones is a dead man.

But even better than the news that Johnson may actually defeat an opponent without having to hand over 20% of his purse afterward is the fact that also on the card, a certain BJJ legend will be making his MMA debut.

Details are after the jump. 

(OK Nate, once the ballad starts, you’re gonna grab her hips and just kinda sway like this…)

Perhaps you recall that Jiu-Jitsu superfight Nick Diaz was scheduled to participate in while stepping out for a smoke break from his UFC career. It was to be held at the first annual World Jiu-Jitsu Expo in Long Beach, California on May 12th, against an opponent TBD. Though we had no clue as to who this “TBD” fellow would turn out to be, we already assumed that the match would be rife with Stockton Heybuddies, relentless taunting, and at least one insistence by Diaz that they both “stand up and settle this like men.”

How wrong we were, because it turns out that Diaz will be too busy trying not to get submitted to do much trash talking, as his opponent was announced earlier this morning, and it’s Braulio f*cking Estima. That’s 2009 ADCC double gold medalist, three time European champion, three time CBJJ champion, and five time Pan American champion Braulio Estima. If you consider yourself a fan of the ground game and live withing driving distance of Long Beach, you best be in attendance for this one.

Though Diaz earned his black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Cesar Gracie back in 2007, you gotta imagine he’ll be the underdog heading into this one, as Estima’s list of BJJ credentials ranks him among the legends of the sport. The fact that Estima also took home a Superfight Championship at last year’s ADCC trials by defeating former Strikeforce middleweight champion Ronaldo Souza only furthers this theory.

Familiarize yourself with Estima’s skills after the jump. 

It’s been a while since the finals of this year’s ADCC tournament went down, but it wasn’t until recently that a couple of videos surfaced, and we decided to let you in on ‘em. Just because it’s Wednesday. The first comes from the end of TUF 8 finalist Vinny Magalhaes‘ Over 99kg gold earning effort over Strikeforce/UFC veteran Fabricio Werdum. After controlling the action for the majority of the fight, Magalhaes quickly found himself on the wrong end of a Werdum armbar.

And holy hell does Werdum crank that sucker. For about three minutes straight, “Vai Cavalo” bends Magalhaes’ arm from damn near every position, only taking breaks to re-position himself and inflict further torment. All the props in the world goes to Vinny, who manages to not only withstand the brutal hold for as long as he did, but free himself from it in as calm and collected a manner as possible. Speaking of calm and collected, let’s take a look at a man who has never, ever, been described as such.

(As if I needed an excuse to use this photo.)

For those of you who were too busy watching Jon Jones outgun Rampage Jackson to retain his light heavyweight title or Ben Rothwell fall to 0-1 at the hands of Mark Hunt this weekend, you may have overlooked the ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championships, which transpired in Nottingham, England of all places.

Andre Galvao easily had the best night of the bunch, taking gold in both the Under 88kg and Absolute tournaments, defeating Rousimar Palhares and Pablo Papovitch, respectively. Speaking of “Paul Harris”, he continued to prove that his mind is a fragile, ticking time bomb in his submission victory over David Avellan in their quarterfinal match. Things began to go off the rails when Palhares dove for his signature heel-hook-of-death on Avellan, and continued to crank it after the two rolled out of bounds and the referee yelled for a restart. I’ll let David’s brother Marcos, via his Facebook, explain the rest after the jump:

(Video courtesy of YouTube/Submissions101)

Royler Gracie failed to respond to Eddie Bravo’s challenge to compete at the 2011 Abu Dhabi Combat Club submission grappling competition by the July 10 deadline set by the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu founder and has now tried to save face by challenging Bravo, who has never competed in mixed martial arts in his life, to a one-off MMA bout in Brazil.

“I have no problems with ADCC, but the fact is that we didn’t get to an agreement on our negotiation and unfortunately the organizers of the event haven’t got in touch with me again. I can’t keep waiting, I have other plans for myself. I’m assuming this bout won’t happen”, Royler told TATAME. “I’m dealing with this MMA event, which might happen in Brazil. I haven’t sign anything yet, but the negotiations are going well and it’s likely it happens. The organizer of the event even called Eddie Bravo to fight me, but he declined it, he didn’t want to fight me… And I said I was only punch him with my hands opened, man (laughs).”

(Bravo says, “Don’t be scared, romie.”)

When a relatively unknown brown belt named Eddie Bravo defeated a revered member of the fabled Gracie clan eight years ago at the Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling Championships, many people, including the man he beat, Royler Gracie wrote off the win as a fluke. Since then, Bravo has been painted as a rebellious martyr by the Gracie loyal and has worked tirelessly to prove that there’s more than the Gracie way of competing in submission grappling and MMA.

Recently it was announced that a rematch between Gracie and Bravo would be taking place at this year’s ADCC tournament and after agreeing to the bout and speaking about it in the press, Royler made some high monetary demands to the event organizers that may very well leave the match in jeopardy.

We spoke to Bravo over the weekend and touched on a number of topics, perhaps most importantly the status of his match with Royler that was to provide him an opportunity to once and for all silence his detractors.

Check out what he had to say after the jump.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/Submissions101.com)

A long-awaited rematch of the 2003 Abu Dhabi Combat Club tournament bout between Eddie Bravo, 40, and Royler Gracie, 45, has been confirmed for September 25. The match will be contested at a 165-pound catchweight under ADCC tournament rules.

The first time the pair met in São Paulo, Brazil, Bravo, who was then a brown belt under Jean-Jacques Machado at the time, shocked everyone, (including Gracie) by locking in a triangle and eliciting a tapout from the decorated black belt. The win earned Bravo, who has not competed since the tournament, the respect of the BJJ community as well as his black belt from Machado. He would go on to start his own style of no-gi jiu-jitsu known as the 10th Planet system, which is centered around the Rubber Guard.

(Demian Maia won’t be going for his second-straight 87kg tournament sweep at this year’s ADCCs. Photo courtesy of GracieMag.)

On Monday, we oohed and aahed over the lineup for the 2009 ADCC Submission Fighting World Championships, which, according to its official website, was slated to feature a horde of MMA stars. (Urijah Faber is now listed in the under 65.9kg category, by the way.) Well, it’s time to debunk some rumors. First off, Demian Maia:

Then, more bubble-bursting from a couple of our twitter-buddies…

(Highlights from the 2007 ADCC tourney. For part 2, click here.)

The ultra-prestigious invitation-only Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Fighting World Championships — which takes place every two years — kicks off September 26th in Barcelona, with a host of familiar names in the brackets. Read on to see who will be battling for the biggest bragging rights in the grappling world during the upcoming 2009 edition. Props to Fightlinker and Japan MMA for the tips…

Female -60kg:
Kyra Gracie, Brazil (2007 women’s -59kg winner)
Sayaka Shioda, Japan (2007 women’s -55kg winner)
Megumi Fujii, Japan
Michelle Tavares, Brazil
Laurence Cousin, France
Ina Steffensen, Denmark
Hillary Williams, USA
Luanna Alzuguir, Brazil

Female 60kg+:
Hannette Staack, USA (2007 women’s Absolute and -67kg winner)
Penny Thomas, USA (2007 women’s 67kg+ winner)
Hitomi Hiraiwa, Japan
Rosângela Conceição, Brazil
Ida Hansson, Sweden
Shanti Abelha, Denmark
Lana Stephanac, USA
Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos, Brazil

(Hey, if he can do it to Captain Planet…)

Huge news for followers of competitive grappling — the Abu Dhabi Combat Club has announced that Fedor Emelianenko and DREAM middleweight champ Gegard Mousasi have been confirmed as participants for the 2009 ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championship:

Fedor Emelianenko, after conquering the World of MMA, wants to show the World he is also the best Submission Grappler in the World. Fedor want to make history and expand on the pioneer spirit of what Mark Kerr did in the late 90′s when he was the Champion of Pride and became the weight and Absolute Champion of ADCC and went on to defend his title in the Superfights for 2 editions.

Mousassi, the winner of the 2008 Dream Middleweight Grand Prix where he defeated former World ABJJ Absolute and ADCC middleweight Champion Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in the final, also wants to test his ground skills against the top names in Submission Grappling. This sets up some humongous possible match-ups such as a re-match with “Jacare” or facing current ADCC Middleweight Champion and rising U.F.C. star Demian Maia.