(Weidman delivering an inspirational speech while still in his hospital bed, following surgery Wednesday | Via Weidman’s Youtube account)

The first step in Chris Weidman’s elaborate counter-plan to UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva chasing super-fights and blatantly avoiding him was completed Wednesday, as the contender underwent successful shoulder surgery. Weidman went under the knife to repair a host of problems, including a torn AC joint and a torn labrum and rotator cuff.

Unbeaten in nine professional fights, Weidman set himself apart as the clear number one contender to Silva’s belt with wins over former title challenger Demian Maia and fellow top contender Mark Munoz. The Long Island native’s campaign towards gold came at an inconvenient time as the champion turned his attention instead towards fights with Stephan Bonnar and, potentially, Georges St. Pierre, claiming he had no interest in defending his belt for some time.

Weidman was then matched up with Tim Boetsch at UFC 155, but his recent injuries forced him to pull out of the bout. Silva is still campaigning for the fight with St. Pierre, but GSP seems reluctant, at best, to make it happen. With Silva off filming the next, great crime film epic and saying he won’t fight again until late 2013, it looks like he and the number one contender’s schedules might just match up once more. Through his twitter account, Weidman said, “Surgery went perfect…I will be 90 percent in three months and 100 in four!”

(The “doctor” in question. No joke, this is seriously the guy we’re talking about. / Props: Blog do Olivar)

In the U.S., a doctor is simply the person you visit when you need more prescription medication. In Brazil, a doctor is a parent, priest, and boss rolled into one — they know what’s best for you, and damned if you’ll try to defy them.

At least that’s how it seems lately. Two weeks after Cris Cyborg explained that she couldn’t possibly cut ten pounds of her freakish muscle mass because DOCTOR’S ORDERS, we have this translated report by Eduardo Cruz at FightersOnly, in which Anderson Silva‘s “personal physician” [Ed. note: referred here only as 'Camoes,' but we'll get to that after the jump] had a lot to say about Silva dropping a weight class to face Georges St. Pierre at 170, which is something that I didn’t think was even being considered by anybody, but nevertheless:

“It would be a crime for Anderson to try and fight at 77kg. He could maybe make the weight but the physical loss that he would suffer would be too much…For me this fight should happen at 80kg, since that would already be a sacrifice for Anderson. It would be his first shot at this weight and we would have to implement a very specific work for him to be able to perform at 100% of his capacity…Anderson losing 3gk and St-Pierre going up 3kg would be more fair for both of them and for the public, who would watch a great fight.”

(Silva vs. Jones, in Madison Square Garden: If we dream it, we can achieve it. / Fan-poster by NixsonDesign via MiddleEasy)

Since 2004, the UFC’s Super Bowl weekend card in Las Vegas has been one of the most stacked pay-per-view events on the promotion’s annual schedule — and 2013′s will be no different. But in a conference call held yesterday for UFC on FOX 5: Henderson vs. Diaz, Fox Sports Group president Eric Shanks voiced his desire to make 2014′s installment a massive free event on FOX, as the network will also be broadcasting Super Bowl XLVIII, which goes down February 2nd, 2014, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. As Shanks said:

“We think that Super Bowl week in New York is going to be like anything else. We’re gonna own the city, we’re going to own that week of sports television and there’s nothing better we can think of than a big fight that week. So, we’re talking to Dana and Lorenzo about that. We’d love for that to happen. We’ll see if they can put that together.”

Hosting a UFC event in New York City still seems like a lost cause, but maybe the neighboring Izod Center in East Rutherford (max. capacity: 20,000) would be a logical next-best option. And if the FOX really wants to make Super Bowl weekend a monster for their network — thereby sticking it up ESPN’s ass — Shanks and his crew would do all they can to make sure that the Super Bowl Eve 2014 UFC card is stacked to the damn rafters. So let’s all put on our fantasy-caps and come up with the craziest five-fight main card that the UFC could put on that night. Here’s how I see it…

Anderson Silva vs. Jon Jones [main event, 195-pound catchweight]
The fantasy fight of all UFC fantasy fights. Anderson will indeed take most of 2013 off before defending his middleweight belt in late fall 2013, maybe against Bisping, maybe against Weidman. (By the way, the Silva vs. GSP fight isn’t going to happen. Sorry about that.) Meanwhile, Jones will smash Chael Sonnen in April, then beat up the winner of Henderson vs. Machida in late summer. At that point, there won’t be anything left for Silva and Jones but each other. Convinced by the promise of a non-title catchweight and a billion dollars, Silva will finally accept the fight against Jones. Anderson Silva will win by TKO in one of the UFC’s all-time greatest battles, then announce his retirement during the post-fight interview with Joe Rogan. The Spider will then bow to the crowd, before beaming back up to his home planet. Rogan will be like, “I FUCKING KNEW IT! AND NONE OF YOU WOULD BELIEVE ME! AHHHHHHH!”

(Diaz, seen here preparing the only gameplan that hasn’t been thwarted by Anderson Silva in the octagon yet. And no, that’s definitely not a hash pipe next to the dartboard. Props be to MiddleEasy.) 

Nick Diaz may be a shortsighted, virulent, pot smoking, press conference-skipping delinquent who didn’t go to college for buying houses, but damn it, we can’t help but love the guy’s “take on all comers” attitude when it comes to fighting. Blame it on the increased popularity of the sport, the ridiculous string of injuries, or whatever you want, but suffice it to say, the Diaz mentality of accepting fights is a fading one. It seems we can’t go a day without hearing that so and so turned down a fight with this guy, or that this champion will maybe fight this one under a ridiculous set of circumstances, and honestly, this prima donna nonsense has all but completely quelled our interest in seeing the “superfights” we would have killed for just a couple months ago.

But before you jump down our throats, we (or at least I) do not blame Georges St. Pierre for turning down the Anderson Silva fight. Because like GSP said, there are still several viable contenders in his division and he is just coming off an 18 month layoff. Plus, if Anderson wants to fight the smaller man, he should pony the fuck up and drop down to his weight class. And since Silva is (for whatever reason) dead set on fighting a smaller opponent next, Cesar Gracie recently threw Diaz’s name into the fold as a potential future opponent, because why the hell not at this point:

We’re pushing for the GSP fight. That’s what we’re going to push for, GSP or Anderson Silva. That’s the two fights that interest us the most, and that’s the one’s we’re going for.[Silva's] people are into it. We’re into it. The fans, I think, would be into it. We’ve got convince Dana about it now. Obviously the fight that makes sense to them, and I don’t disagree, is Anderson-GSP, and like I said, I would watch that fight. That would be great to watch. But let’s get real. If GSP just absolutely says no, then what? You can’t make a guy fight. That’s the thing. And Anderson, if they want to promote a superfight and if the stars align, I think Nick would be into it.

(You should have gotten after him when you had the chance, Anderson. / Photo via Ric Fogel @ ESPN)

It appears that Georges St. Pierre wants to fight Anderson Silva about as bad as ‘The Spider’ wants to fight Jon Jones. That is to say, not at all, right now. We were told by UFC Prez Dana White that should the welterweight champ beat Carlos Condit as he did at UFC 154, he would take on the Brazilian middleweight king next, but St. Pierre revealed all of that to be a cruel tease recently while on Radio-Canada’s Tout Le Monde en Parle, or, Everyone is Talking as we’d say here in civilization. MMA Fighting had the translation.

“[The Anderson Silva] fight is the cherry on the sundae,” St. Pierre explained. “[Silva] wants to fight me so he can then retire. I would like to fight him too, but after I fight him and win the fight, what happens next? These days, yeah, there’s a lot of money to be made, but I don’t fight for the money. My motivation is to be the best. Like we said, to be the Wayne Gretzky of my sport. So if I fight him, what happens next? It will be over. So yes, I want the fight, but I want to take it when I decide the time is right, not when he wants the fight to happen.”

St. Pierre doesn’t want to move at Silva’s schedule just because he’s champion of a lighter division, even though Silva would appear to be much closer to retirement at age 37 than St. Pierre is. Speaking of weight differences, St. Pierre has appeared to have gotten some specific intel on just how much heavier Silva is than him.

More on that, as well as the complete video interview with St. Pierre wearing sunglasses and sipping wine, you know, just to emphasize the whole French thing, after the jump.

(Unless you plan on “purging” that, Anderson, you may need to switch your diet up a bit to make 170 pounds)

It never really becomes crystal clear if we’re getting closer to MMA’s two best pound-for-pound fighters fighting one another or further away from it. UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva has finally warmed to the idea of fighting welterweight king Georges St. Pierre, six years after each man won their first world titles.

Well, Silva has more than warmed to the idea. He’s practically begging for the fight.

He even hijacked St. Pierre and Carlos Condit’s special Primetime moment to lobby for the bout. The much smaller St. Pierre, however, doesn’t seem to like the idea of fighting Anderson nearly as much.

GSP has only gone so far as to wonder out loud if Silva could once again make the welterweight limit, and his head coach has said he’d only want his charge taking the bout if it was at welterweight, not at a heavier catch weight, as Silva’s camp has suggested in the past.

Alright, let’s say that GSP gets his way and Anderson gets on a Machinist diet and gets down to welterweight…unlikely but if he did we could get more than a “legacy fight.” We’d get an honest to goodness, here and now title fight.

Well, don’t you worry your pretty lil head about that exciting possibility. UFC President Dana White is here to dampen your enthusiasm.

When asked last Saturday if GSP’s belt would be on the line if “The Spider” came down in weight to fight him, White replied, “Probably not, because I don’t know how many times Anderson would actually defend it.”

Great. So if St. Pierre gets his wish he’d be fighting an emaciated Silva who wouldn’t even have the incentive of getting a hold of another title belt if he earned it with a win.

Unless Uncle Dana was just being crazy like a match-making fox. Hear me out.

Well, we should have seen this coming.

Not that it matters to Anderson Silva, but UFC 155 was supposed to set the stage for a fight that would more or less* determine the next top contender of the middleweight division when Chris Weidman and Tim Boetsch squared off. But as things are wont to do in 2012, it has just been announced that Weidman has suffered an undisclosed injury and has been forced to pull out from his scheduled fight at UFC 155. Newsday was the first to break the news:

Chris Weidman, one of the top UFC middleweight fighters, is out of UFC 155 next month with a shoulder injury, Newsday has learned.

Weidman said the injury occured Tuesday while training in Arizona with UFC light heavyweight Ryan Bader and Levittown-based Strikeforce light heavyweight Gian Villante. The injury occured during a grappling session, the 28-year-old Weidman said.

“I hit a double-leg and that’s it,” Weidman said Wednesday. “My shoulder landed weird and I felt a pop. I can’t even move my arm.”

Weidman said that he hasn’t received an official diagnosis from doctors, but he believes it is a torn labrum.

(“First off, I’d like to thank my brother, Thor, for if he hadn’t transmitted the power of his hammer into my left hand, none of this would have been possible.” Photo courtesy of Getty Images.) 

The UFC has never been an organization that takes pride in its subtlety. The same can be said about Dana White. So when they forced one of their cameramen to spend the entirety of the incredible GSP/Condit fight shooting Anderson Silva’s reactions (and Lyoto’s pedostache), you’d have to be pretty thick-skulled to not realize what they were angling at. However, GSP’s hesitance to commit to the fight, combined with Johny Hendricks’s brutal declaration of #1 contendership, have seemingly put a halt on these superfight rumors, if only temporarily.

In either case, we figured we would dedicate one post as the official battlegrounds for this debate, with you, the most distinguished and intelligent audience an MMA blog could ever ask for. So join us after the jump to vote on the poll that dares to ask: Who should Georges St. Pierre fight next now that he has successfully put the kibosh on this whole interim champ/actual champ nonsense? After you’ve finished voting, make your case in the comments section, using as much profane language, personal attacks, and outright trolling attempts as possible. Seriously, we kind of miss that stuff, so don’t get soft on us Taters.

After every UFC event, there is a press conference where some of the main fighters are brought out to field questions from the media in attendance. While over the course of a presser you are bound to get many of the same questions repeated in slightly different ways by media members, they are always still interesting to watch if only because of the unique moment and that there are usually at least a few insightful comments given.

For example, in last night’s UFC 154 post presser we hear from and see a bruised, cut and battered Georges St. Pierre talk about how he feels just a few minutes after a successful long-awaited return bout that he once feared would never happen. We also see his beaten opponent, Carlos Condit, still eloquent though despondent after coming so close to realizing his professional dream only to have it violently taken from him by the returning champion.

Above we bring you just about the full presser from last night (it cuts out after about two minutes. When it does, go ahead and fast forward to about the 7:30 mark and it picks back up). Dana White and a few other fighters are also in attendance.

GSP discusses not finishing fights, ring rust, Anderson Silva and Johny Hendricks. Condit says how close he feels he was to beating St. Pierre in the third round and about making another title run in the future.

For those that like their information less complete and quicker, check out an additional video with highlights of St. Pierre and Condit’s comments after the jump.

MMA Fighting interviewed Dana White yesterday and BLAF, per usual, had lots to talk about. Check out the video above for the full interview.

Dana White says that the UFC isn’t looking past Carlos Condit even though, you know, if St. Pierre wins tonight at UFC 154 he will definitely fight Anderson Silva and Dana has a month in mind and three possible locations for the fight to happen (May, in either Toronto, Brazil or Dallas). If Condit wins, however, he’ll take on the winner of Martin Kampmann vs. Johny Hendricks.

The UFC President also describes what he says is St. Pierre’s extra nervousness and irritability this week. For example, White says St. Pierre is refusing to touch people for fear of getting sick. Interesting.

Speaking of sick, White talks about being sick and tired of guys like Dan Henderson pulling out of fights and complaining about Chael Sonnen getting title shots. Oh yeah, Dana says that Cyborg is ducking Ronda Rousey. Its a good view and listen, so check out the full video to help you wait for UFC 154 tonight.

- Elias Cepeda

By Nathan Smith

At the conclusion of the UFC 154 main event, I fully anticipate Bruce Buffer to get on the microphone and begin his enthusiastic spiel:

“At the end of five rounds we have a unanimous decision. All three judges score the bout 50-45 for your winner and the undisputed UFC welterweight champion of the woooooorld – Georges “RUSH” St. Pieeeeeeeerre!”

The Canadian crowd will erupt; Molson will be sprayed about and empty Poutine containers will be trampled as the joyous celebration begins. Dana White will put the championship belt around GSP’s waist and then Joe Rogan will approach for the post fight interview. It is at this point that Bizzaro Georges will snatch the microphone out of Rogan’s hand and jump into a tirade while speaking in his native French language. The only two words we will understand during his entire outburst will be “Anderson” and “Silva” as he walks to the edge of the octagon and points directly at The Spider, who will be mocking him all the while from cageside.

(Why must you torture us, fan-made poster?? Image via MMehFighter)

Man, this week is just full of disappointments. First, we learn that Ronda Rousey‘s historic migration to the UFC isn’t quite official yet. And now we learn that this Saturday’s UFC 154 event in Montreal won’t include a WWE-style post-fight run-in from middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

As the story went, Silva would be in attendance at the Bell Centre to challenge Georges St. Pierre to a superfight, if GSP was victorious in his welterweight title defense against Carlos Condit. Though Silva does plan on attending the fight, he has no interest in getting up in St. Pierre’s grill afterwards:

“I’m going to Los Angeles and then going to Canada for the fight of St. Pierre,” Silva told Tatame. “I’m already going to be there to shoot a movie, a feature film that I’ll participate in with Lyoto (Machida). It’s not my character to up and challenge anyone. I think it will not happen. I think not, I’m sure (laughs).”

Furthermore, Silva doesn’t plan on fighting anybody until the end of next year:

“I’m on vacation from fighting. I think I will return only in the end of the next year. I have personal projects ongoing. Tomorrow I’m embarking to Los Angeles to attend the arrangements of the academy we’re setting up there…If the UFC wants to make an interim bout while I’m gone, it’s up to them. I don’t know if it will have any meaning but they can do whatever they want. I’m in a comfort zone, so I’m not worried about it.”

I’m sure Chris Weidman is just thrilled to hear about Anderson Silva and his “comfort zone.” But at least one fighter sees this “interim bout” business as a great opportunity…

(The Comeback of Buck Rydell, episode 1. Any similarities between Buck and a certain UFC legend are purely coincidental. Keep an eye on the Buck Rydell YouTube page for future installments of the series.)

- Dan Henderson Says He’s Fighting Lyoto Machida at UFC 156 (BleacherReport)

- Pros React to Ronda Rousey Joining UFC, Dissolution of Strikeforce (MMAFighting)

- Rich Franklin Expects Plenty Of Tricks From Cung Le (Fightline)

- Anderson Silva and Jon Jones Kidnapped and Forced to Fight (prebek)

- Dave Herman Agrees to Drug-Rehab Program (MMAJunkie)

- To be fair, we heard his first words were “Hello Japan!” (Facebook.com/CagePotato)

- UFC Primetime: St. Pierre vs. Condit Episode One (HeavyMMA)

- The Best-Ever Bond Villains (MensFitness)

- The 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Beats of All-Time (Complex)

- It’s Thanksgiving: Let’s Make a Horrible Music Video (EgoTV)

- The 50 Weirdest Photos on the Internet (WorldWideInterweb)

- 9 Bad Tattoo Ideas No Man Should Ever Get (MadeMan)

We’ve got a special treat for you today, Taters – not one but two dope short video documentaries that take us behind the scenes of some of the biggest recent MMA events. UFC President Dana White has released his latest vlog (above) to promote this Saturday’s event in Macao.

The vlog has footage from last month’s UFC in Minneapolis as well as the UFC in Rio and has some compelling stuff, showing Yves Edwards waiting painstakingly backstage to hear if he would get to fight the incarcerated Jeremy Stephens or not. It also shows him getting the bad news broken to him by White personally.

The footage from the Rio event shows Anderson Silva warming up by doing crazy spinning kicks back stage as well as Stephan Bonnar during intense moments of contemplation as he warmed up for perhaps the last time of his roided storied career.

Behind the scenes footage of the World Series of Fighting‘s inaugural event is after the jump.

(Quick poll – Which is funnier: Miller’s hair or Shields’ attempt at a mean mug?) 

You can hate on the over-the-top theatrics of professional wrestling all you want, but there’s no denying the sport’s influence on the world of MMA. Do you think we would have ever seen Jonathan Ivey break out “The People’s Elbow” in a fight if The Rock hadn’t done it first? And how about that Chael Sonnen character, who we would all just write off as another boring wrestler if not for his Billy Graham-esque heel routine? The list goes on and on, but greater than the signature moves, greater even than the whimsical trash-talking pro wrasslin’ has inspired in our great sport, is the post-fight cage confrontation.

It has been responsible for some of the most unintentionally hilarious highs and Gus Johnsony lows that MMA has ever seen, yet we can’t seem to look away when such an inherently silly situation is presented in the aftermath of a fight. The UFC clearly understands this, and in an effort to set up everyone’s dream match of Anderson Silva vs. Jon Jones Georges. St. Pierre, both the UFC and Silva’s manager have hinted that not only is the middleweight champ going to be in attendance at UFC 154, but should St. Pierre emerge victorious, the two will face off in the cage and lay the foundation for the next great MMA superfight. So with that in mind, we’ve compiled a brief, albeit memorable, video tribute to the post-fight confrontation. Enjoy.

(“It’s a romantic comedy called ‘You’ve Got Wrist-Locks.’ You play my girlfriend’s father, and you don’t approve of our relationship because I’m so fucking old and gross.”)

File this one under not sure if awesome. According to a new report from Estadão (via Fighters Only), UFC middleweight king Anderson Silva will be filming a role in an action-packed “police story” alongside, who else, Steven Seagal. Silva received the first script draft this week, and is heading to the U.S. to shoot the flick after he gets back from a vacation in Dubai. As Silva explained:

“I will make a lot of fight scenes and this is also the first time I will act. I received a long plot and I will have the opportunity of putting in practice what I have been studying for some time.”

Wait, here’s the best part:

“I don’t want to be seen as somebody who caught the role because I am on the media and to be a fighter. Of course it is difficult, I am not Lorenzo Lamas, but I want to do it well done to the people see that I am a good actor.”

LOL, Lorenzo freakin’ Lamas! That’s the first (and surely last) time we’ve heard that guy’s name used as a standard for fine acting. (“Is Andy a good actor? Well, he’s no dude-from-Renegade, but I suppose he’ll do.”)

Basics of negotiation dictate that one starts with a high asking price. UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva doesn’t need to be told that twice.

Fans want Silva to fight light heavyweight king Jon Jones, but neither he nor Jones really seem all that interested in tainting their legacies testing themselves against one another. Well, sorta, but not really. Nonetheless, UFC Prez Dana White has confidently declared on several occasions that he has the cashflow to change their minds completely.

“I think the Jon Jones fight is a big fight. I know my man says ‘No, no, no,’” White told reporters at the UFC 153 post-fight press conference, “but the amount of money that would be offered for that fight, I guarantee you I will make Anderson Silva say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’”

“O RLY?”, Silva recently replied in an interview with Brazil’s Tatame Magazine, stating that his price tag to fight Jon Jones is a completely reasonable 50% of the UFC’s net worth. “Let’s ask him to see if [White] will give me 50% of the UFC,” Silva told Tatame.

White has publicly estimated that the UFC is worth $2.5 billion. Half of that is…well, we’re writers not mathematicians but we’re betting its a lot of money.

(And so, the dance of seduction continues…)

In the old days, we really wanted to see UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva fight welterweight kingpin Georges St. Pierre. Like, a lot. Both took turns demurring over the years and it has yet to happen, though Silva has more than warmed up to the idea.

But let’s face it — GSP vs. Silva is so 2010. After Silva has improbably continued his UFC reign of terror into a sixth year and second weight class, all we fickle observers want is for him to take on light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones. We may be a long way from that fight happening still, but the latest small step towards what could be the biggest fight in MMA history was taken recently (if rhetorically) by Jones during his media tour through Brazil.

“I respect [Silva] a lot,” Jones reportedly said to Brazilian outlet Correio Brazilienseour, via MMA Fighting. “As I said several times, I do not want to be the guy who beat Anderson, and do not want to be the guy who lost to him. Anderson is a great champion, I’m a great champion…I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not saying that the fight will not happen. It can happen. But it’s not something I’m chasing.”

(Props: AXS TV Fights)

It’s time to admit to ourselves, once and for all, that Anderson Silva isn’t the kind of champion we’d like him to be. After thoroughly conquering the middleweight division, fans assumed that the logical next step for the Greatest UFC Fighter of All Time would be to take more competitive matches against the elite in the light-heavyweight division. Of course, that’s not happening. Silva clearly has an agenda in the final stage of his career, and it doesn’t involve fighting non-superstars, or 205-pound phenoms who actually have a chance of beating him.

As Silva’s manager Ed Soares reiterates in this clip from Inside MMA, Anderson wants to fight UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre next, at a suggested catchweight of 177.5. And after that…well…Michael Bisping, maybe? The idea that Anderson Silva would fight Jon Jones is immediately dismissed by Soares, and the name Chris Weidman — remember him? the UFC’s actual #1 middleweight contender? — isn’t even mentioned.

(We’re sorry, Stephan, but unless those things are actual guns, you’re getting your ass kicked tonight.) 

In the days leading up to UFC 153, many of you (and by you, we mean the entire MMA Interwebz) had some less than favorable things to say about the pairing of Stephan Bonnar and Anderson Silva. As if the bookies hadn’t told us all we needed to know, the general consensus among fans seemed to be the evening’s main event was a “travesty, a sham, and a mockery” that “blasphemed the great sport of MMA” and was a “completely meaningless squash match” whose “insulting pairing” would be reflected in “the abysmal pay-per-view numbers it receives.” And those were the favorable comments.

But for every fifteen of you complaining, there were apparently five or more of you who were forced to stifle your true excitement over this matchup like a pedo at a tee-ball game, because if the early numbers are any indication, squash matches featuring unstoppable killing machines are the new superfights. According to several reports, the pay-per-view numbers for UFC 153 are in the range of 340,00 to 410,000 buys. These numbers not only exceeded expectation, but are not that far below September’s squash match of the month featuring Jon Jones and Vitor Belfort, which managed to clear over 450,000 buys despite having those little guys that no one cares about fighting in the night’s co-main event.

(Rampage and Bisping might want to start running the things they are about to say out loud by more people than one another)

Let’s just dive right in, nation. UFC middleweight and all around centered and nice guy Michael Bisping recently spoke with MMA Junkie and had some pretty silly things to say. “I’m tired. I know I’ve got to wait my turn, but it’s pissing me off. I want to get my title shot, and if I keep beating guys, they’ll have no choice but to give it to me,” he told Junkie.

“I’m here, and I’m fighting the best guys. I want my shot.”

Bisping has undoubtedly fought some of the best fighters in the world, but he still doesn’t seem to realize that he needs to beat some of them in order to deserve a title shot. At present, ‘The Count’ has a brand new streak of exactly one, count em, one wins.

(It’s the fight *business*, okay? It’s not the fight let’s-be-best-friends-and-attend-the-Paranormal-Activity-4-premiere-together-and-share-a-large-Sprite-and-”accidentally”-brush-hands-during-the-scary-parts.)

Could Anderson Silva be shifting his stance on a potential superfight with Jon Jones? In a new interview with SporTV, the Spider actually makes that match sound like a possibility for the first time, but only under specific circumstances — namely, if Jones accepts the fight first, and the fight is held at a catchweight, and his middleweight belt isn’t on the line. Still, that’s progress, right? Here’s Silva’s quote:

“People are talking about [a Silva/Jones superfight] so much that… I don’t have this ambition, this (fight) doesn’t motivate me, especially since they have other athletes in my team, such as Lil’ Nog, Maldonado, Feijao, Caldeirao (Wagner Prado), that are in his weight class. My weight class is 185, my belt is of that weight class. But people are talking so much about this, and we are employees of the UFC.

Of course, I could be saying that I don’t want it, but what if he goes out and accepts the money Dana is proposing for him to fight? It will be hard (not to accept it). It’s not the money that motivates me to fight, I fight because I like it. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t like (to fight him). But if it’s going to happen, it would have to be at a catchweight. The belt shouldn’t be at play. I already have mine and I don’t want a belt to be left at the side.”

(“You got punched where? And by who? I’m not sure I understand.”) 

If anything, UFC 153 provided us with several entertaining moments to confirm what we already knew, or at least hoped, to be true:

1. This Anderson Silva guy is for real.
2. This Glover Texmexamerica guy is also for real. Look out Page.
3. Jon Fitch is in fact capable of entertaining a crowd. (fight it….fight it…)
4. This Jiu Jitsu stuff works.
5. Fabio Maldanado is the closest thing to a zombie this earth may ever witness.

That last lesson came at a price that Maldanado will likely pay down the line in terms of brain function, but who needs brains when you have to special order your underwear to hold your massive balls? And if there’s any country out there that appreciates as gritty a performance as Maldonado gave on Saturday, it’s Brazil. And while they rallied around fellow Brazilian Glover Teixeira’s solid performance against Maldonado, they were quick to support their fallen comrade as well.

So in an effort to support Maldonado’s incredible display of heart, fellow UFC 153 participants/Brazilians Anderson Silva and Antonio Nogueira (along with Lil Nog) paid Maldonado a visit in the hospital. Tears were spilled, laughs were shared, and we’re pretty sure at least one of them fired up the grill, so check out the pair of photos and let us know who you’d like to see Maldonado fight next now that his UFC future is safe for the moment.

Props: mmafanmade.tumblr.com

By George Shunick

If there’s a word that sums up UFC 153, it’s got to be “wow”. Anderson Silva gave another performance indicating that we do indeed live in the Matrix. Jon Fitch was in the most exciting fight of the night, and one of the best of the year. Big Nog submitted a man impervious to jiu-jitsu. Demian Maia choked/neck-cranked a man so hard he had a mini-hemorrhage and blood spurted out of his nose. And perhaps most impressive of all, Wagner Prado actually stopped a hat thief.

The bottom line is UFC 153 was an amazing card that delivered from top to bottom. Could it have been better if it had Frankie Edgar square off against Jose Aldo? Probably. But I’ll take another transcendental show from Anderson Silva any day of the week. And that’s exactly what his fight with Stephan Bonnar was. After a slip, Bonnar pressed Silva into the cage, presumably looking to wear the smaller fighter down. Silva wasn’t having any of it, offering a few knees, shoulder shrugs and nothing else. Bonnar backed away and then things got weird. Silva remained on the fence, hands down, encouraging Bonnar to hit him.

Now, I know Stephan Bonnar isn’t the world’s greatest striker. He’s never shown serious knockout power, and his technique has never been the best. But he’s still a 230 pound man who’s spent the majority of his adult life learning how to hurt people. He’s a professional fighter. And for about 4 minutes and 40 seconds last night, those facts didn’t amount to jack shit. Silva dodged, deflected or simply absorbed Bonnar’s offense for about two minutes, demonstrating what a black belt in Tae Kwon Do is worth against a man who seems to know what you’re going to do before you do. Then, Silva decided to end the fight. He tripped Bonnar, established some separation, and then connected with a debilitating, pin-point knee to the solar plexus. Bonnar – who had never been stopped with strikes before – collapsed and waited for the end to come. Mercifully, it did.

(How about dropping to your knees and begging for a swift death? Would that work? / Photo via MMAFighting.com)

The matchup between UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and light-heavyweight non-champion Stephan Bonnar has been called everything from a “fun fight,” to a mother’s worst nightmare. Tonight at the HSBC Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we’re going to find out what this weird freak show will actually look like. Our only prediction is that Griffin Bonnar‘s first image of his father will be a bruised and lumpy one.

Luckily, there are plenty of far-more-legitimate matches on the UFC 153 main card, including Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Dave Herman, Erick Silva vs. Jon Fitch, and Glover Teixiera vs. Fabio Maldonado. And as with previous shows in Brazil, the local fans will make sure that the show is just as entertaining outside of the cage.

Round-by-round results from the UFC 153 pay-per-view broadcast will be stacking up after the jump beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT, courtesy of CagePotato liveblogger-supreme Anthony Gannon. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and be sure to tell us how you feel in the comments section. Thanks for stopping by.

(Sorry guys, but this shitty Photoshop is as close as we’ll get to seeing these two face off. / Image via MMAMania)

Considering how many times Jon Jones and Anderson Silva have told us that they’ll never fight each other, most reasonable people would have given up hope on that particular fantasy-match by now. Of course, UFC president Dana White is not exactly known for being reasonable. Asked by a fan on Twitter yesterday if Jones vs. Silva would ever happen, Dana replied “it will.”

That simple phrase — seemingly based on nothing other than his own desire to promote the fight, and his long-standing belief that any fighter can be convinced to do anything if you put enough money in front of them — resulted in a predictable firestorm on twitter. There were the gullible UFC-marks who expressed their excitement for the match as if it was already booked, and the detractors who questioned if Dana could actually put it together.

Props to Reddit/MMA for capturing part of the ensuing tantrum…

(It was at the UFC 153 pre-fight press conference that Stephan Bonnar revealed his true gameplan to defeat Anderson: G.T.L.) 

All the fighters for tomorrow night’s UFC 153 event are scheduled to hit the scales starting at 3 p.m. EST this afternoon from the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so make sure to swing by the Tater to check out all the intense, barely-clothed staredowns you could ever ask for. Did that come off as gay? Because we didn’t mean for it to come off as gay; not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Anyway, a string of injuries (go figure) and a good old fashioned case of hepatitis have dramatically altered the face of UFC 153, leaving us with a main event matchup that, when viewed through an incredibly narrow and skewed lens, is almost plausible. So swing by this afternoon to see whether or not Stephan Bonnar will piss himself after he realizes just how big of a mistake he has actually made, whether or not Anderson Silva will come dressed as a Jabbawockee again, and whether or not the Brazilian audience will still be donning their “I fucked Chael Sonnen Last Night” t-shirts. Also, be sure to swing by tomorrow at 10 p.m. EST for our official liveblog of all the action!

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

Anderson Silva, Stephan Bonnar, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Dave Herman, Fabio Maldonado, and Glover Teixeira were in attendance for the UFC 153 press conference in Rio earlier today, fielding questions from a multi-national conglomerate of media professionals. The full video is above, though as you can imagine, there’s a lot of translation involved. Short version: The UFC wants to host a stadium show in Brazil next year, Anderson Silva is seriously not interested in facing Jon Jones, and Dave Herman has pretty much signed his own death warrant by insulting jiu-jitsu before a fight against Big Nog. Bonnar looks pretty chill, considering the circumstances.

Be sure to swing by CagePotato.com Saturday night beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT for our liveblog of the UFC 153 main card!

(Well, at least the poster is as half-assed as the main event.) 

By Dan “Get Off Me” George

I’ll be honest, when I first heard of the new main event for UFC 153, I thought we were all the victims of some intricate ruse on the UFC’s part. Surely the head honchos at Zuffa didn’t consider a “fun” squash match on the level of Joe Lauzon vs Jens Pulver to be the best possible option for a country that was recently denied the biggest fight of all time, right? But I guess when an injury curse on the level of 2012′s hits, you do what you can to simply stay afloat, and in that sense the UFC has succeeded.

Luckily for us, the UFC has also succeeded in putting together a card that provides plenty of opportunities to prosper from a wagering perspective as well. This time around, I will attempt to follow the lead of Jared “Money Bags” Jones, who provided both the gift and the curse for UFC on FX 5: Browne vs. Silva with his parlay picks, so follow me as I highlight a few names on the preliminary cards for Facebook and FX and breakdowns of all fights on the PPV portion of UFC 153. All betting odds come courtesy of BestFightOdds.

Facebook + FX prelims

Reza Madadi stands out in the two FB fights; Sweden has been hot in the octagon lately and I think “Mad Dog” (not Anthony Macias) at around -200 has the right combination of size and all around ground advantage to deal with Marcello’s submissions game and win his second straight UFC fight.

Gleison Tibau hovering around -160 should be able to stifle fellow Brazilian Francisco Drinaldo and find a way back into the UFC win column after dropping a hard fought loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 148. Tibau has fought solid competition throughout his lengthy UFC career and I do not think Francisco has the right tools to win this fight. An underdog that may be worth a look is Renee Forte at around +200 against Sergio Moraes, who dropped a unanimous decision last time out due in part to his in-ring demeanor, which did not seem to go over well with the judges.

(It’s pretty obvious who takes the “Cooler Hairstyle” category.)

It’s time for some real talk, Potato Nation. Stephan Bonnar is booking a one-way train ticket to Painsville Station on Saturday night and Anderson Silva is the conductor. I know it, you know it, the bookies know it, and your mom knows it (I asked her last night. Say hi to her for me, alright?). Matter of fact, if “The American Psycho” is simply able to come away from the fight in the same state of matter he began it in, everyone watching will unquestionably declare his performance a win for America, the UFC, and perhaps even the Caucasian race.

But this fight is about more than who’s accomplished what or who holds what title or who may or may not have lost to a decrepit Mark Coleman. There are several x-factors at play here, and when we decided to match up Stephan Bonnar and Anderson Silva for one of our infamous head to head sessions, the results might surprise you. Let’s get started.

AGE
Bonnar: 35
Silva: 37
Advantage: Bonnar

SIZE
Bonnar: 6’3″, walks around at roughly 235 lbs, 80 inch reach
Silva: 6’2″, walks around at roughly 215 lbs, 77.5 inch reach
Advantage: Bonnar