Andrei Arlovski

(Photo courtesy of MMA Mania.)

Getting knocked out in two consecutive high-profile fights has to be a devastating blow to a fighter's confidence. And the idea of Tim Sylvia banging your ex-girlfriend, sure, that would make anybody want to throw up until they died. But we weren't expecting this troubling bit of news from a fighters.com article posted yesterday:

Aaron Brink Intervention Preview - Watch more Funny Videos

From aetv.com/intervention:

For the unfamiliar, Aaron Brink was a very promising heavyweight striker who fought at UFC 28 against Andrei Arlovski (who was also making his UFC debut that night) and was once paid $250,000 for beating Mike Bourke. For some reason he started doing porn just as he was finally getting his first decent win streak together, and unfortunately got into drugs. A contract with New Era Fighting that would have potentially paid him a cool million to beat Kimo Leopoldo never panned out, and he hasn't fought since March 2007. His episode of Intervention (which you should be watching anyway) airs on A&E this coming Monday at 9 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. CT. Video of the Brink/Arlovski fight is after the jump.

(Well, you sleep on the job as much as Andrei does and you’re bound to get fired at some point. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Andrei Arlovski’s career options just got even slimmer. After suffering back-to-back first-round knockouts against Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers — both of which were humiliating in their own special ways — Affliction has declined to renew the Belarusian’s fight contract. Affliction VP Tom Atencio did his best to spare Andrei’s feelings:

(How's taste this career-shattering loss? Photo by Esther Lin for Showtime Sports.)

What a weekend of fights, and amazingly, all without the benefit of the initials “UFC.”  Instead we had Strikeforce and the WEC (okay, a Zuffa property, but still) teaming up to blow our minds without charging us fifty bucks for a pay-per-view.  Now we begin the difficult task of using the Potato Index’s completely arbitrary numerical rankings system to see who’s up and who’s down after the eventful weekend.

Mike Brown +209
He beat Faber fair and square, no flukes needed, and he also proved he can last through five tough rounds.  Instead of making broken hand-related excuses for Faber, let’s finally all give Brown the unqualified props he clearly deserves.

Urijah Faber -37
We can play the ‘what if?’ game with his broken hand all we want, but that’s the fight game.  That he still fought well and fought hard afterwards, even in a losing effort, deserves to be mentioned.  But he’s not the world’s best featherweight as long as Brownie is around, and that deserves mentioning too.

(Props: MMA Scraps)

What up, guys? I just got back from shooting some footage at the Strikeforce press conference, which I'll be sharing with you on Monday. The basic gist of the Q+A session was: Joe Riggs and Scott Smith had to go to the hospital after their fights, Andrei Arlovski just didn't feel like sticking around, Jake Shields has made up his mind that he's not going to give Joe Riggs the time of day, Nick Diaz doesn't consider Cung Le to be an important opponent, and Brett Rogers is just gonna keep doin' work. (Direct quote.) Plus, Brett Rogers told me the secret to his KO power, I chatted with Gilbert Melendez about his preparation for his rematch with Josh Thomson, and Nick Diaz provided me with an exclusive rant. In the meantime, video of the Rogers/Arlovski knockout is above, and video of the Diaz/Smith scrap is after the jump. Talk soon...