(Seen here: One of the fighters who still has a chance of competing at UFC 153.)

Let’s face it: There is little more we can say to convey our disappointment in the disintegration of UFC 153. The card began solid enough (see above), then it got a little less awesome, then it got significantly more awesome, and now it is resting in a state of awesome limbo that it may never return from, which is not really awesome at all if you think about it.

With rumors flying that everything from Wanderlei Silva vs. Chael Sonnen to Rashad Evans vs. Anderson Silva at a catchweight is being eyed as the replacement main event for UFC 153, it got us thinking:

What fight would you, the fans, like to see as the new main event of UFC 153?

We’ve placed a few of the most likely options after the jump, but feel free to choose the “Other” option and give us your picks/reasoning in the comments section. The sky is the limit, but we must warn you, we’ve already asked Dana to consider Zimmer-Martinez II, and he gave us a resounding “maybe.”

-J. Jones

(“What kind of backwards country is this? The game is called Whac-a-Mole, not Whac-a-Capybara, and the animals aren’t supposed to be alive!”)

Just a few hours ago, we promised that a few beautiful knockout videos would successfully help us all blissfully drift into a world where injuries no longer determined both the content of every other CP article and the makeup of every other UFC card, but it seems our vision of an impossibly awesome MMA utopia is merely that…an impossibility.

Be that as it may, some of you might be pleased to hear that amidst the UFC 153 clusterfuck of injuries lies a potential silver lining. According to FightersOnly, who have sited several anonymous sources, a grudge match years in the making between Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen is being looked at as a possible replacement for UFC 153 now that Jose Aldo — or perhaps, the general incompetence of Brazilian drivers — has massacred our dreams of a featherweight title superfight.

Details remain sketchy at the moment, but in a recent interview with Portal do Vale Tudo, Silva stated that he would be more than willing to step up for the good of the UFC and his home country’s fans if asked to do so:

I think fighting in Rio would be great. Under no circumstances could I turn that down. I would love to fight for the crowd in Rio, and if it were against that guy who everybody wants me to face, it would be beautiful.

Spoiler alert: Chael Sonnen is “that guy who everybody wants me to face.”

More on this potential showdown after the jump.

(Often misunderstood and unappreciated.)

By Elias Cepeda

UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones has been derided as immature, arrogant and selfish for much of his career, especially since turning down a short-notice replacement fight against Chael Sonnen at UFC 151 after Dan Henderson dropped out due to injury. But in a recent interview with the Associated Press, Jones sounded calm, collected and measured, especially in comparison to organization president Dana White‘s comments on the situation, as he spoke about what he’s learned. He also publicly criticized White for the first time, which probably won’t help his reputation among the fans who already despise him.

“I had to do what’s right for myself by turning down that fight, Dana had to do what was right for himself by putting the blame on everyone else except for himself,” Jones told Dan Gelston of the AP. “The lesson to be learned is, at the end of the day, you have to protect yourself and your family.”

Jones told the AP that he has not yet spoken with his boss about the comments, but appears to have had his eyes opened to how quickly UFC brass and fans can turn on him. ”I think in the future, this can make me and Dana even better off,” Jones said. ”For him to get out how he felt about me in that situation, it will help me look at things more business-oriented. A lot of good can come out of it. Fighters can learn the lesson of doing what’s best for themselves and not feeling like puppets. I think the UFC has learned a lesson of making sure they stay loyal to the fans and give them full cards.”

(Hey Bjorn, can you switch the big screen over to MTV 2? This fight is boring the shit out of meheywaitaminute!) 

You know, with all the talk of “fakeness”, “arrogance”, and “haters” that has utterly dominated any Jon Jones/UFC 151-related article we have posted since the infamous event occurred, perhaps we should be thankful that there are still a few guys out there who will tell it the way it is with little to no regard for their “brand,” their fanbase, or any fight promoters that might be interested in them. Honesty appears to be a fleeting quality in MMA fighters — and athletes in general — and is often swept under the rug in favor of the kind of politically correct, sponsor-gaining rhetoric that has been carbon-copied from athlete to athlete to the point of delirium. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a culture insistent on turning everyone who can throw a ball, a punch, or a kick into a “role model.”

So, like we said, maybe we should take more time to appreciate the select guys in the MMA biz who couldn’t care less about extravagance or endorsement in an ever-popularizing sport, and would rather just speak their mind when asked to do so. We’re referring of course, to Bellator welterweight champion Ben Askren, who has shown in the past that he gives not a shit what MMA fans, writers, or even certain UFC presidents think about his…let’s call it “routine” style of fighting.

Askren has seen his fair share of haters since exploding army-crawling onto the MMA scene back in 2009, mainly as a result of his seemingly carefree attitude in regards to finishing a fight. Although his record stands at a perfect 10-0, Askren has only finished two of his fights, and only one if you take into account that his submission victory over Ryan Thomas at Bellator 14 was the product of a referee blunder. Whereas most of Askren’s “lay-n-pray” counterparts would likely insist that they are at the minimum always looking for a finish in a fight that simply hasn’t present itself, Askren outwardly stated in an interview with MMAJunkie that he will probably never even look for a knockout in a fight no matter how long he is in the game.

OK, maybe honesty is an overrated quality.

Full story after the jump. 

(Great, so now he’s swagger-jacking Isaac the Bartender?)

If you can put down your haterade and suspend your disdain for just a bit today, we suggest listening to UFC light heavyweight Jon Jones discuss his decision to not fight Chael Sonnen on short notice at UFC 151, in a full-length interview with The MMA Hour. The full interview is after the jump.

Having had a week to reflect on it, and despite all the criticism that has come his way since he “murdered” this weekend’s scheduled event, Jones does not regret his choice to not fight Sonnen. “I actually think it was a really smart personal career decision,” the champ said.

Jones said that immediately after he got the offer he assembled all of his coaches to get their opinions. Jones said that while they all told him that they had “no doubt” that the light-heavyweight champ could win a fight against Sonnen, they also let it be known that the trash-talking middleweight was a totally different fighter than his original UFC 151 opponent Dan Henderson.

“They honestly believed I could win the fight. They also said, ‘I want you to be aware of the fact that you prepared for a complete opposite style.’”

(Will it ever get old?)

Here at CagePotato we don’t mind doing things by the book if we can still have a good time doing it. So, we didn’t mind enjoying a few modern classics when the UFC made them available through youtube.

After the jump you can too. Full fight videos of Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen II, Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping: Comeuppance, and Jon Jones vs. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

These are all good’uns so if you’re in America, enjoy part of your day off by watching some of the world’s best fighters get after it. And if you don’t have the day off, get back at your employer passive aggressively by wasting a couple hours watching these on the job.

(What a nice-looking young man.)

UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones spends a lot of time on twitter. These days, it takes a lot of guts for him to do so.

When would be-challenger Dan Henderson pulled out of his scheduled UFC 151 engagement with the champ and Jones turned down a short-notice replacement fight with Chael Sonnen, Jones was thrown under the bus by UFC President Dana White and fighters and fans alike joined in on the hate-a-thon, bashing Jones in interviews and on twitter. Jones has been all over the map since then.

First, he sequestered himself away with no comments, then he was defensive. Eventually he was apologetic. Last night he jokingly set on blaming Henderson on Twitter for their not fighting last night as he had planned.

When a fan tweeted Saturday that thanks to Jones, “he had no plans tonight,” Jones retorted with a Hemingway reference. “Thanks to the old man and his knee I don’t either,” Jones replied.

Plenty of fighters publicly criticized UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones for not accepting a last-minute change-of-opponent fight with Chael Sonnen after Dan Henderson pulled out of their scheduled Sep. 1st UFC 151 title fight because of a knee injury but Daniel Cormier added a lil something extra to his. In a recent interview with BJPenn.com, the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix champion said that Jones owed it to the UFC to fight Sonnen and help keep UFC 151 together and also mentioned that he’d be happy to take Jones on himself.

“Right now no one wants to fight Jon Jones, but shit, I’ll do it. I’ll fight Jon Jones,” Cormier said.

“Guys are turning down the fight; you have to go to an old school fighter like Vitor Belfort to step up to the plate. That’s no knock on Machida or Shogun, but if those guys want to coach on The Ultimate Fighter and move off to the side and let me fight Jones, I’ll do it. If no one wants the title shot then give it to Daniel!”

(UFC champ Anderson Silva has been married with kids for a decade and a half but says that as a youth many people assumed he was gay)

Fighters Only Mag‘s John Joe O’Regan reports that in an interview for the September issue of the Brazilian monthly magazine Tatame, UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva said that “a lot of people thought I was gay,” growing up. We’re not sure of the context in the interview or Silva’s tone when he said it, but it is nice that he isn’t ashamed to talk about it.

Just like Mike Tyson before him, Silva is an in-ring killer that happens to have a relatively high-pitched voice. Because of baseless notions of masculinity such a voice in a man can often be seen in societies as not incongruent with being a tough guy. That was prejudice that Silva ran into as a youth, he says.

That he allowed his sister to dress him up in her clothes until he was about fourteen also contributed to people judging him, according to Silva. “We would wear a dress, put on her shoes,” he said.

(“Okay, new plan. We change our names, cross the border into Mexico, and open a bar on a nice beach somewhere. Nobody ever has to know about what happened here. Twenty years from now, we’ll be laughing about it.”)

If you’re one of the last remaining Jon Jones supporters on Earth, it must seem that we’re just piling on at this point — like we wake up every morning searching for new ways to drag down the UFC light-heavyweight champ and steal his swag. But honestly, this stuff finds us. And as much as I’d rather spend my time on more relevant MMA coverage, I just can’t let this one go. Here’s an unbelievable detail from a new Wrestling Observer article, passed along by BloodyElbow:

Jones was very upset after Chael began calling him out and mocking him on Twitter, going as far as to contact [UFC president Dana] White and ask him to tell Chael to stop.

Let’s just state the obvious, here — this is the kind of thing a child would do. And it’s the last thing Jones needs at a moment when many MMA fans already view him as a coward for the way he wouldn’t accept a fight against Sonnen on short notice. (Once again, Chael’s ability to get inside a rival’s head is astounding, and he just picked up a boatload of new ammunition for their inevitable fight. And yes, Jones vs. Sonnen will happen someday. Dana dislikes Jones too much and loves money too much for it not to happen.)

Meanwhile on the UG, Joe Rogan made a post trying to put the recent Jon Jones hate-orgy into perspective: