(‘Gotcha, motherfucker!’)

Okay, I take back what I said about April Fool’s pranks being lame.  The UFC – an organization not typically known for its sense of humor – has the best joke of the day so far, and it’s really as simple as this headline on UFC.com: “UFC Greenlights Construction of Russian Stadium.”

Get it?  Because Fedor Emelianenko’s management team allegedly wanted the UFC to build a stadium in Russia as part of their completely unrealistic contract demands?  And so now the UFC is openly mocking those demands simply by pretending to have agreed to them, thus pointing out that they are so ridiculous as to be comical all on their own, while at the same time pretty much eliminating any chance of reconciling with Fedor and bringing him to the UFC!  April Fool’s!

It is at this point that I have to wonder whether Fedor and the boys down at Crazy Russian Management Group, LLC (also an organization not known for its sense of humor) are going to get this joke.  In all the Yakov Smirnoff routines, I don’t recall anything about how April Fool’s Day is different in Soviet Russia, which is weird because he must have covered every other conceivable topic but that one.  

You may have thought that Fedor’s bee story was the joke, but Matt Hughes is the one enjoying the April Fool’s Day hilarity. It’s not quite like Fightlinker’s pony tomfoolery, the Tommy Lee vs. Kid Rock UFC fight, or the bastard in the forums who kept Rick Rollin’ everyone — I got it twice and had to shut my computer down, Bastard — but here is Matt’s blog entry from today:

Well, for a long time I’ve talked about going up in weight class and I’ve decided to finally do it. Only I’m not going up to 185, I’m going up to 205 to fight Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in June. I’m bulking up now and packing on muscle and I’m thinking that it will be nice to not have to cut weight for a change. I think it’s a great match-up for me and I’ve told Dana that if I win this, then I want a shot at the 205 title next.

Sorry for the short blog this week, I’m here in Colorado helping Tommy get ready for his fight, so I’ll try to have more for you all next week. I just wanted to break the big news. -matt

You’d think Matt would’ve picked a fake opponent who hadn’t already backed out of a June fight because of injury for his “joke.” I also don’t want him to shoot me for pointing that out. So let’s take this a step further: imagine Matt going up even further in weight against, say the recently UFC-departed Tim Sylvia. I’d guess it would end in Matt running for his life.

Wonder what little Matty had in that backpack? Snacks, juice boxes, and the latest Harry Potter novel would be my guess. As for the other most hated fool from the UFC, it’s always fun to be reminded again about Big Tim’s fear of spiders and love of girlie drinks.

Happy Fool’s Day to all.