(A tough night in so many different ways. Photo courtesy of SI.com)

Even our supercomputer had trouble dealing with the data from a bizarre main event at UFC 97.  We had to hit it with a broomstick a couple times just to keep it chugging.  Not a great Saturday night for the UFC, but at least it’s over now.  Let’s see who’s up and who’s down.

Anderson Silva -129
Against Cote, the computer was willing to cut him some slack based on past performances.  But two lackluster showings in a row, followed by an inability or unwillingness to comprehend why fans might have been unsatisfied, that equals a big drop.  Is this the Silva we can look forward to from now on?

Thales Leites -176
You get the opportunity of your lifetime and spend most of it flopping onto your back?  We think you’re going to regret that decision.  How Leites thought this strategy might yield a victory is a real mystery.  What the UFC can do with him now is another.

(Props: CageWriter)

Anderson Silva may not have had a problem with his performance at UFC 97, but Dana White wasn’t impressed, to put it mildly. Following Saturday’s excruciating main event, White sat down for an interview with Steve Cofield which quickly turned into an MMA version of Stewart/Cramer, with Cofield railing at the UFC prez for Silva‘s disrespectful showing, and White sheepishly taking the abuse. "I’m trying to wrap brain around this thing and figure this out, and I just cannot," White said. "I was seriously sitting in my seat going, ‘No, no this is not happening again’…I swear to God I wanted to leave tonight."

Echoing the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of screwed pay-per-view buyers, White said "I’ve never been embarrassed of a UFC fight like I was in the main event tonight." Dana now has the unenviable task of figuring out what to do next with Anderson Silva. The Spider is officially unreliable as a headliner (not that he ever drew big numbers), and Demian Maia’s impending title shot may have just gone up in smoke. Is a super-fight with Georges St. Pierre the only match that makes sense now?

Later in the interview, White re-states that Chuck Liddell is done fighting — for the UFC, or any other organization: "Yeah, he’s a big name, we could sell out arenas with him, we could still sell pay-per-views with him, but I don’t want to see that."

Mauricio "Shogun" Rua took home a $70,000 Knockout of the Night bonus for putting Chuck Liddell away, but he also ended "The Iceman’s" career with the TKO victory.  At least that’s what UFC prez Dana White said at the post-fight press conference, telling reporters "It’s over."

Liddell didn’t make any declarations that were quite so final, but he seemed resigned to the fact, admitting it was "probably the case" that he is now retired.  Man, what a downer.  Thanks a lot, Shogun.

The other $70,000 bonuses went to Matt Wiman and Sam Stout for Fight of the Night (really?), and Krzystof Soszynski for Submission of the Night.  Anderson Silva did not receive a bonus.  We imagine that when he asked Dana White why, Dana looked at him with disappointment in his eyes and said, ‘You know why.’

More videos are after the jump.

(Young kid named Thales goes to jail for the first time, and gets thrown in a cell with a mean-looking dude named Anderson. Anderson says to Thales, "so do you want to be the mommy or the daddy?" Figuring he doesn’t have much choice, Thales says "the daddy." To which Anderson replies, "good, now come over here and suck mommy’s dick." True story. Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

Let’s get ready to REDEEEEEEEEEM OURSELLLLLLVES! The Thunderdome has returned to Montreal’s Bell Centre, and the stakes are high. Can Anderson Silva make it a historic nine Octagon wins in a row? Who keeps their top-ten 205′er status in the Liddell/Rua fight, and who completes their dramatic flame-out? And…ah…who else is on this card again? Live round-by-round updates and commentary await you after the jump; refresh the page every few minutes to get all the latest.

CageWriter brings us this video of UFC 97‘s headliners weighing in yesterday in Montreal. Anderson Silva established his dominance during the face-off, coming so close to Thales Leites that the challenger had to take a step backwards (3:45 mark); he’s lucky the Spider didn’t give him two for flinching. Don’t forget to come back to CagePotato.com tonight as we liveblog the action beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.

Below: Yesterday’s edition of Dana White’s video blog, in which DW finally loses his UFC Undisputed championship title to Georges St. Pierre ("I think there was Vaseline on the controller"), hangs some more with his Army vet buddy, and gives his fighters the traditional F-bomb-laced pep talk.

(Yep, still painful to watch.)

Want to know how Chuck Liddell’s going to beat “Shogun” Rua at UFC 97?  Simple: keep his eyes open and avoid right hands.  That’s essentially what Olympic gold medalist boxer Howard Davis Jr., who helped train Liddell for this fight, told MMANews.com.  Davis said he spent a lot of time working with Liddell on “avoiding the right hand, slipping and blocking the right.”

That sounds almost so basic as to be stupid, but then you remember Liddell’s recent knockout losses to both Rashad Evans and “Rampage” Jackson.  The right hand counter did him in both times.  Now he’s got Davis helping him, so, problem solved?

(‘No, it isn’t funny. What happened to the dress I bought you? The one with an actual neckline? It’s like you want people to stare or something. Oh, now I get it.’)

You know what time it is.  Time to get serious about the important questions surrounding UFC 97.  Questions like, ‘What the hell are we getting for our money here?’ and ‘What’s up with your stupid face, stupid?’  That’s right.  It’s Ben vs. Ben time.

What exactly does Chuck Liddell have to do to prove that he’s still got it?  Is anything less than a devastating KO going to be enough?
 
BG: It’ll either have to be a knockout, or an incredibly dominant decision victory where all three judges score it 30-24 and Shogun Rua‘s face looks like hamburger afterwards. Here’s the deal: There’s no way that Shogun could have magically set the clock back to 2005 in the three months since he barely defeated Mark Coleman at UFC 93, and I think we all expect a shabby performance out of him tomorrow night. So Chuck basically has to prove that although he may no longer be able to hang with younger, more complete fighters, his skills haven’t deteriorated as much as Rua’s have.

If both fighters turn in mediocre efforts, the UFC will have a hard time figuring out what to do with them. (You can’t cut the winner and the loser. Can you?) That was probably Dana White’s motivation for calling out Liddell in public and demanding a dazzling performance — if Chuck fails again, there’s no obvious next step with him, promotion-wise. Do you throw him against talented up-and-comers like Luis Cane and Jon Jones, who might smash his old ass?  Do you try to build him back up against complete cans? Either way, he won’t be in important fights anymore, and that may not be an option for the UFC, or for Chuck himself.

BF: The only way a decision victory would be enough for Liddell is if a) Rua fights like it’s the 2005 Pride GP all over again, b) Chuck still comes close to finishing him several times, and c) after the fight all we can talk about is what amazing heart and conditioning Rua showed in merely surviving that assault.

(Miss, your fly is…uh, you know what? Forget I said anything.)

You might remember a while back when we linked to a very strange/insipid video by porn star Jayden Jaymes in which she played up all the awesome partying she did in Mexico with what appeared to be a still-engaged Chuck Liddell and Red Sox pitcher Brad Penny.  Even if you don’t remember it, it doesn’t really matter because Liddell says a) his engagement was already broken off by then due to other reasons, and b) that chick was just using “The Iceman” for cheap publicity.  Damn, it’s self-promoting porn stars like Jaymes (who can be seen on a porn-focused episode of MTV’s "True Life" asking her parents if they’re proud of her and receiving blank stares in response) who give the rest of them a bad name.

(After he was so excited about finally meeting Kevin Federline, Chuck was extremely disappointed to find out that K-Fed had a better picture pose than he did.)

The Gambling Addiction Enabler had a somewhat rough go at Strikeforce thanks to Frank Shamrock deciding to go ahead and get old out of nowhere (okay fine, in retrospect, probably should have seen that one coming), but he managed to cut his losses by picking Scott Smith to pull off the minor upset against Benji Radach.  With underdogs proving profitable, maybe your favorite compulsive gambler will have to take a long look at some of the major ones on the UFC 97 lineup.  Maybe put down a big bet on a certain middleweight challenger who nobody thinks has a chance in hell…

Odds today come from BestFightOdds.com:

Anderson Silva (-500) vs. Thales Leites (+456)
"Shogun" Rua (+170) vs. Chuck Liddell (-172)
Brian Stann (+151) vs. Krzysztof Soszynski (-150)
Nate Quarry (+110) vs. Jason MacDonald (-110)
David Loiseau (-112) vs. Ed Herman (+110)
David Bielkheden (+240) vs. Mark Bocek (-255)
Antoni Hardonk (+275) vs. Cheick Kongo (-261)
Steve Cantwell (+265) vs. Luis Cane (-275)
Eliot Marshall (+120) vs. Vinny Magalhaes (-150)
Xavier Fouka-Pokam (+300) vs. Denis Kang (-300)
T.J. Grant (+177) vs. Ryo Chonan (-187)
Sam Stout (-125) vs. Matt Wiman (+120)

Best bets…

(ESPN talks redemption with "Shogun" Rua.)

While much has been made about the ‘dazzle me or hang ‘em up’ ultimatum that Dana White issued Chuck Liddell in the press, the man across from him in the Octagon is also in an obviously dire situation.  Mauricio “Shogun” Rua is 1-1 in the UFC and has yet to look like he belongs in a light heavyweight division thick with talented fighters.  But unlike Liddell, Rua’s problem isn’t that he’s slowing down as a natural side effect of age.  Instead he seems to have lost his explosiveness while at the same time developing the cardio of a toddler.

There are two commonly offered explanations for why this happened to the man who looked like Pride’s best 205-pounder just a couple years ago.

1) Knee injuries, followed by surgeries and rehab, have left him with too little time to train hard, resulting in him fighting at far less than 100%.

2) Now fighting in the UFC and subject to actual drug tests, he has to perform without the oft-rumored pharmaceutical assistance that was said to be rampant in Pride.

(Props: MMA Scraps)

With Dana White laying low for a while, Chuck Liddell has been recruited to handle video blog duties in the days leading up to UFC 97 — and the Iceman quickly proves that he can be just as boring as his boss. Watch as Chuck does a radio appearance, hangs with boxing coach Howard Davis, defends Dana’s recent controversial vlog (without actually having seen it) and gets his toenails did.

Below: What, you thought the White Cure was just smoke-and-mirrors, player? News flash — it’s manna straight from heaven. After preparing for a fight by smoking weed and snorting Stevia, poet-warrior Dan Quinn taps out some guy at some show last week. Somebody tell Quinn’s cornerman Ross Clifton to join the pound-a-month club, stat…

On this Sunday’s episode of Bully Beatdown (MTV, 9:30pm ET/PT) Jake Shields stops by to kick the garbage out of a roller-skating doofus named Jonathan, who is an absolute animal on the heavy bag. This is probably the most predictable installment of BB yet, but you should still tune in on Sunday to see if Jonathan changes his ways after his beating and starts wearing big-boy shoes without wheels on the bottom.

Below: The season premiere of Spike TV’s surprisingly entertaining new series Deadliest Warrior aired Tuesday night, and answered the question that has baffled historians for years — who would win in a fight between an ancient Roman gladiator and an Apache warrior? To gather evidence, a dude named "Snake Blocker" smashes the fake-brains out of a model head, and Chuck Liddell shows up to beat a bag with spiked gloves. It’s kind of like Sport Science, but way more badass. Segment one is below; if you dig it, go here to watch the rest.

(Props: Fightlinker)

Brock Lesnar talks with "Inside MMA’s" Ron Kruck about Frank Mir and that silly "make believe" belt that Mir took off of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.  Isn’t it adorable the way Frank thinks that hunk of metal and leather is real?  Just precious.

Joe Rogan swigs Diet Coke and waxes philosophical about the Chuck Liddell of old and the old Chuck Liddell of the present ("the guy’s thirty-nine years old, cut him some slack").  Honestly, it’s a pretty candid assessment of where Liddell and Shogun Rua are at this point in their respective careers, if perhaps a little too apologetic on Shogun’s behalf.  Rogan didn’t seem as willing to make excuses for Rua’s poor conditioning back when he was burying him from the broadcast table at UFC 93.

After the jump, something extremely disturbing, and at the same time boring.

(Via RawVegas.tv)

Well, this is far less awkward than Wanderlei Silva’s advertisement/guided tour of his own gym, because this time around we have a native English speaker to help us make sense of what the hell’s happening.  Dave Farra is also crafty enough to use the tour of the facility as a ruse to ask Silva the hard questions, like, does he think GSP cheated?  ("He dominate the fight, he don’t need this, no?")  Does he want another shot at “Rampage” Jackson?  ("Of course.")  ‘Sup with the playground?  ("The kids need to have fun too, you know?")

I’m satisfied with those answers.  Although I am surprised to hear that Silva had a six-month training camp before the Jackson fight.  On one hand, that can’t be a good idea.  On the other hand, if only you could put Silva’s work ethic in B.J. Penn‘s body.

After the jump, Dana White talks more about the death of TapouT’s “Mask” and explains why the news hit Chuck Liddell especially hard.

(Go ahead.  Tell Chuck you forgot to order the ice cream cake for his birthday party.  I’m sure he’ll understand.)

As Chuck Liddell prepares to try and prove to Dana White and the rest of the MMA world that he still belongs in the UFC, some recent comments seem to suggest that he maybe he has suffered serious head trauma after all.  Regarding his goal to take back the UFC light heavyweight strap, Liddell told Fighters Only:

“I don’t plan on letting [Rashad Evans] stay champ for long. I thought I was winning that fight. I made a mistake, got caught and dropped. I was winning the fight up until then.  People ask me about retiring after that fight. It wasn’t like I got my ass kicked and then got knocked out. I was winning the fight, got sloppy for a second and got caught. I made a mistake.”

[Sigh]  I can’t help but feel like he’s using the old ‘got caught’ explanation as a crutch here.  Yes, he got caught in the sense that he left himself wide open and was absolutely hammered by a right hand from Evans.  But he wasn’t really winning the fight up until then.  He wasn’t losing, either.  The fight was fairly even with little significant action.  And then he got knocked out.

#10: Shinya Aoki’s Flying Guard Pull/Japanese Backpack

(Aoki vs. Cavalcante and Moore, respectively.)

When you fight Aoki you know he wants to get things to the ground, and he knows that you know it.  Takedowns and sweeps can be hard to come by against an opponent looking to defend them and almost nothing else, so Aoki has had to find other , more creative ways of getting the fight where he wants it, even getting thrown and briefly mounted from time to time.  One of our favorite maneuvers is his flying guard pull.  It may look silly, but more often than not you’re coming down with him and playing the ground game.  If you defend that, he can always jump on you from behind like a kitschy Japanese backpack.  Think "Hello Kitty," only way more dangerous. 

#9: Matt Hughes‘ Slam

(Hughes KO slams Newton at the 1-minute mark, Frank Trigg gets his at 3:20.)

When wrestlers first emerged as a dominant force in MMA they faced an obvious problem: nothing in their background had prepared them to finish fights.  In the UFC, pinning dudes will just get you boos and a call for action from Big John, so you’d better come up with something else.  Matt Hughes did, and that something was his farmboy slam.  He knocked Carlos Newton out with it at UFC 34, and used it as a staple in his game for years.  Even if it was rarely as effective in ending fights as it was against Newton, it still looked cool when he walked across the cage with an opponent on his shoulder like a sack of flour, and it sure got the fans fired up, like it did in Hughes’ dramatic comeback victory against Frank Trigg at UFC 52.

Loyal readers of this site know how much we love video highlights and lists of things, so it should be no surprise that we really enjoyed the latest effort from KingAtRock (who you might remember from such videos as this one or that one).  So yeah, we probably would have posted this regardless, but it sure didn’t hurt that he gave us a little shout-out at the end.  Let this be a lesson to the rest of you: never underestimate the power of pandering to our collective ego.  

On the real though, this is a pretty solid list of upsets.  It does seem a little strange, considering what we know about each man’s career trajectory, to think of Rashad Evans’ brain cell-destroying knockout of Chuck Liddell as an upset.  At the time it was a shocker, sure, but now it seems like we probably should have seen it coming.  Who knows, maybe someday we’ll be saying the same thing about Thales Leites’ dramatic victory via flying triangle choke over Anderson Silva.  Probably not, though.

(As long as he still has his hearing, he’ll always have a puncher’s chance. Props to AmidaHidan.)

Like Kendall Grove before him, UFC president Dana White has made it clear that Chuck Liddell‘s job might be on the line if he doesn’t step up his game. The Iceman, who has lost three of his last four fights, takes on Mauricio "Shogun" Rua at UFC 97 (April 18th, Montreal) and simply winning might not be enough. As White explains to the Telegraph-Journal:

We assumed that because of his drawing power and history with the company, Liddell would be able to fight in the UFC for as long as he wanted to. But it sounds like Dana is genuinely concerned for Chuck’s health. His reaction time is slowing, and rival fighters have figured out the increasingly predictable holes in his standup game. That only translates to more brain-rattling KO losses in the future.

Luckily, Mauricio Rua is as good a comeback opponent as any. If Shogun shows up in the kind of piss-poor shape he was in for the Mark Coleman fight in January, Liddell has a great chance of coming out on top, and maybe even "dazzling" his boss with a dramatic knockout. And if that happens, it’ll be interesting to see if Rua is given a similar "win big or get lost" ultimatum for his next fight — or if he’s simply fired on the spot.

The full 12-fight lineup for UFC 97 was confirmed on Friday; you can check it out after the jump.

          
(Not pictured: Chuck Liddell’s bloated-stomach attachment. Photos courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

If you still play with dolls (or have children that do), you may be interested in JAKKS Pacific’s upcoming line of UFC-related action figures and accessories, which will hit stores this fall. MMA Weekly passes along this press release laying out the details:

Now that they’ve got the green light from Montreal, the UFC has released the official lineup and bout order for UFC 97: Redemption, which will go down April 18th at Montreal’s Bell Centre. The event is headlined by the middleweight championship match between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites, and the true "redemption" match between sullied superstars Chuck Liddell and Mauricio Rua. Here’s how things will be arranged:

MAIN CARD
Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites (for middleweight title)
Chuck Liddell vs. Mauricio Rua (LHW)
Krzysztof Soszynski vs. Brian Stann (LHW)
Cheick Kongo vs. Antoni Hardonk (HW)
Steve Cantwell vs. Luis Cane (LHW)

UNDERCARD
Denis Kang vs. Xavier Foupa-Pokam (MW)
Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry (MW)
David Loiseau vs. Ed Herman (MW)
Mark Bocek vs. David Bielkheden (LW)
Ryo Chonan vs. TJ Grant (WW)
Sam Stout vs. Matt Wiman (LW)

It’s somewhat surprising that TUF 8 vet Krzysztof Soszynski is the only Canadian fighter on the UFC 97 main card, considering the north-of-the-border popularity of Denis Kang, Jason MacDonald, and David Loiseau; surely one of their bouts could have replaced Cane vs. Cantwell. The Montreal fans will just have to appreciate the undercard, which has a distinct "Canada vs. The World" flavor to it. Make your country proud, MacDonald and Loiseau, because Stout and Kang are pretty much dead weight at this point…

 
(Props: MMA Mania)

Maybe the epic visual presentation for St. Pierre vs. Penn 2 has spoiled us, but we’re getting the sense that the UFC’s design department doesn’t really care about their upcoming Montreal show. Above is the poster image they’ve released for #97, which features old stock images of the four headliners in front of a generic cage background, surrounded by a cloud-like fog. Are these the men that are guarding the gates to MMA heaven? And what’s up with the janky-ass bubble-block lettering?

It seems significant that UFC 97 will be just the second UFC pay-per-view event since September to be identified with a word ("Redemption") rather than by the headlining matchup (i.e., "Couture vs. Lesnar," "Franklin vs. Henderson"). We’re guessing that’s because the idea of "Silva vs. Leites" headlining a card tends to bum people out. Still, "redemption" works well as a unifying theme. Liddell and Rua will be battling to rescue their careers after putting in woeful performances in their last fights, and Silva will be trying to redeem himself in the eyes of fans after his oddly restrained and anti-climactic performance against Patrick Cote in October.

Still, if it were up to us, we’d call the card "Silva and Liddell," have the two of them on the poster by themselves, and hope fans are duped into thinking that they’re fighting each other. And we’d dial back the fog machine by at least 50%.

After the jump: The latest announced and rumored matchups for UFC 97. [Updated at 12:16 p.m. PT]

Despite looking sloppy and tired against Mark Coleman at UFC 93 in Dublin on Saturday, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua apparently did enough to pocket some bonus money and secure a fight with Chuck Liddell at UFC 97 in Montreal this April.  All for beating a very beatable Coleman, whose gas tank seems to have shrunk to a gas can with age.  Now Rua’s got a few months to get ready for Liddell, who is not quite as old or easy to punch in the face.  Good luck, buddy.

Rua’s labored attempts to put Coleman away earned them both a $40,000 bonus for one of the event’s two (2!!) Fights of the Night. 

The other went to Chris Lytle and Marcus Davis, for putting on the promised stand-up battle that we will probably not end up talking about at the water cooler, except perhaps to wonder outloud why, if Davis wanted such a memorable war, he spent so much of the fight moving backwards and away from his partner in this particular dance.

(Respect the tights, or lose the fight.)

Man, you people do have inquisitive minds, don’t you?  Not only do you have a ton of questions, some of you even write whole, coherent paragraphs while asking them.  The least we can do is try and provide you with some answers in another edition of Ask the Potato.

Got a question of your own?  Head on over to the forums (particularly this thread) and let us know.  Go on, don’t be shy.  Remember your first-grade teacher, the one who said there’s no such thing as stupid questions?  Well she was just killing time until happy hour, so forget everything she told you. 

I hear so much about "The Best Pound-for-Pound" fighter. Is this really a legit "title" of worth or just a lot of "hooey"? Is it really, and I mean REALLY, a legit argument to crown someone the best PFP fighter? – Old, Bald, & Irish

Is it a lot of hooey (interesting word choice, OB&I)?  Yeah, basically.  Not only is it not an actual title in the sense that it can be won and defended, it’s also based on subjective judgments and is ultimately a pointless exercise.  But you know what else?  It’s fun.  So that’s why we keep doing it.

The concept of the pound-for-pound title is generally attributed to boxing observers who wanted a way to celebrate “Sugar” Ray Robinson’s greatness.  He was a middleweight, and the boxing world has always revolved around the heavyweights, even more so back then.  So they started calling Robinson the pound-for-pound best boxer, mostly as a way of giving him the credit they thought he deserved.

In the MMA world, we don’t have the same problem.  We love all our fighters, and not just the big boys.  But we keep the concept alive because it gives us something to argue about, and because – much like chaos moves toward order and order toward chaos – the day we created weight classes was also the day we started trying to imagine what it would be like without them.  

In other words, don’t take it too seriously.  Pound-for-pound rankings are more a thought experiment than anything else.  And we all know Anderson Silva wins any p4p argument, anyway.

im a Norifumi Yamamoto and Shinya Aoki fan. is there any possiblity that they’ll fight in the US and i was wondering if ufc (aoki) and wec (yamaoto) are interesed in them when their contracts are up. and also when are their contract r up? – eat my buns

I don’t want to speculate as to what kind of diet Alistair Overeem has been on, but as Robert from Free Fight Videos points out with this helpful timeline, dude has gotten progressively bigger over the last few years.  He dwarfed Badr Hari when they squared off at Fields Dynamite, weighing in at 254.3 lbs for the fight.  This is a guy who used to be tall and lanky.  Now he’s a mountain of muscle, with a noticeably bulkier face, and the transformation has happened mostly while fighting in Japan.  There, I said it. It’s now officially MMA news.

Just take a look at this video of Overeem’s fight with Chuck Liddell back in 2003.  He looks like a beanpole compared with the monster who knocked out Hari.  They must have some really excellent weight-gainer shakes in Holland…

(There may be only one man on earth who can make the Santa hat look cool.)

I don’t want much this holiday season.  Well, besides that Red Ryder BB Gun I ask for every year.  And a pony.  But there are some fights I’d like to see in 2009, and while I don’t think that mall Santa I tried to talk to is going to be any help (let’s just say it got heated and we both said some things we didn’t really mean), I’m holding out hope that the powers that be will hear my pleas and make some of these happen.  

Here’s my wish list of ten fights for 2009.  Some are very likely.  Some are just barely feasible.  But I tried to stay away from the downright impossible, hence the absence of Fedor vs. The Highlander.  Feel free to let me know all about what’s on your list in the comments section:

1. Anderson Silva vs. Georges St. Pierre: Whether GSP beats Penn or not (magic eight ball says, “all signs point to yes,”) this has the potential to be the UFC’s biggest superfight ever.  They have precious few opportunities to settle pound-for-pound debates, but this is their best shot.  If MMA becomes legal in New York this year, as it probably will, this fight could do a Jay-Z and sell out the Garden in a day.

2. B.J. Penn vs. Kenny Florian: Perhaps no fighter in the UFC has improved so much by sheer force of will as KenFlo.  Penn is the lightweight champ, and he deserves to be, which is why I really wish he’d stop chasing fights in other weight classes and set his sights on defending that title.  Winning a belt is great, but defending it is how you cement your status as a dominant champ.  Penn probably beats Florian in a tough fight, but there’s only one way to find out.

3. Fedor Emelianenko vs. Josh Barnett: If he beats Arlovski, this is the only realistically possible bout for Fedor that would still be compelling.  I know they’re friends and all, but Affliction is starting to feel like a narrowing path leading only to this fight.  Hopefully all parties concerned – Affliction, Barnett, Fedor, Fedor’s management team – can hold it together long enough to make it happen.

Remember Anderson Silva, the UFC middleweight champ, the guy who got so pissed at the reaction to his fight with Patrick Cote that he wanted to be put on another UFC card as fast as possible just so he could punch a hole in someone’s face and shut everybody up? 

Well he’s calmed down now.  Despite Dana White’s indications that Silva would headline UFC 95 in February, possibly against Thales Leites, Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, says they’re thinking they’d rather wait until April to fight again.

"With our timing and our scheduling, it just makes more sense to come back [in April]," Soares said.

"As of right now, nothing has been 100 percent decided yet," Soares said. "It looks like we’re looking to fight in April. We don’t know what can happen, but as of right now, I think we’re going to be fighting in April."

Okay, so that’s not a firm declaration that Silva absolutely will not fight in February.  He seems like a guy who can be convinced to strap on the gloves and hurt somebody if Dana White sweetens the deal and gives a speech that includes the phrase “it’s the boss’s car,” but it still sounds like bad news for the UFC 95 card.

(One of several great WEC action shots from NBC Sports.)

- California’s drug-testing system is fixed already. (MMA Weekly)

- Chuck Liddell doing work with American Top Team, son. (Fighters Only)

- Josh Koscheck talks Yoshida bout. (CBS Sportsline)

- King of the Cage takes a swipe at Zuffa over Booyaa ban. (MMA Payout)

- British boxers exchange barbs over MMA. (The Sun)

- NBC goes Cung Le crazy this Saturday night. (MMA Mania)

- Diary of a madman who decides to train with Matt Hughes and the rest of the HIT Squad. (NewBreedFighters.tv)

- Flowchart guide to losing your virginity. (Holy Taco)

- Michael Bay’s Amazon wish list. (Screen Junkies)

- Street corner executive search. (Wall Street Fighter)

- Incredible diving basketball shot wins game. (Nothing Toxic)

In this video interview with Fighters Only, Chuck Liddell shoots down rumors that he may face Anderson Silva in February or Randy Couture in June, saying that a potential fourth fight with Couture, “doesn’t make sense.”  He seems to have his sights set on a fight some time in March or April.  The opponent sounds less important to him than the date, but then that story could change once he sits down with Dana White and looks at his options.

Liddell also makes the case for continuing his career after the knockout loss to Rashad Evans, pointing out that he was winning the fight (technically true, since not much had happened) before getting caught with Evans’ brutal right hand.

Fair enough, but he has to realize that the situation will only become more desperate if he can’t notch a win in this mystery bout in the spring.  As long as he’s turning down interesting possible fights for himself, he might as well throw out a name or two of someone he would like to fight.   And don’t say James Irvin.  Just please, don’t.

(Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly)

For the first time since February 2006, an Ultimate Fighting Championship event will be televised in Germany, as the UFC has struck a deal to have their June ’09 card broadcast on the TV network ProSieben. Tentatively numbered UFC 99, the event is slated to go down at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany. If you’ll recall, this was the card that was supposed to feature the hell-why-not fourth match between Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. And although the TV deal is now in place for a visit to a new European country, the main event is less certain.

According to Franklin McNeil, bout agreements for Liddell/Couture IV have not been presented to either fighter yet, and neither of them is particularly interested in the match; it’s possible that Liddell and the German-speaking Couture will be featured on the Cologne card in separate bouts.

Of course, lack of a superfight is just one obstacle in the UFC’s quest to invade Deutschland. The reason that German PPV provider Premiere stopped carrying UFC broadcasts in 2006 is because the buy rates were so low; coincidentally, the last event they offered was UFC 57: Liddell vs. Couture 3. And unfortunately, the German media hasn’t quite warmed up to the sport of MMA, or its central figure, Dana White. Check out these excerpts from a recent Der Spiegel profile:

(One of MMA’s greatest rivalries is about to get a completely unnecessary epilogue. Photo courtesy of ko.susumug.com.)

Bloody Elbow and The Sun are both reporting that the UFC is currently in negotiations to have dethroned heavyweight champion Randy Couture and former light-heavyweight champ Chuck Liddell face each other for a fourth time in Cologne, Germany, on June 13th. As BE’s Michael Rome writes:

The UFC wants to have Randy on their [first-ever] Germany show because he speaks the language and can do all the promotion. The winner of the fight would face the heavyweight champion in a big fight at the end of the year.

Couture is uninterested in moving down to 205 where Forrest Griffin is champion and Wanderlei Silva is also a contender. Both are close to him and in his camp, and weight cutting takes a toll at his age…

For Liddell, the thought is that…whereas he would have to win a bunch of fights to get back at contention at 205, the heavyweight division is thin enough where he could jump in and be an immediate contender with a win.

It is believed internally that Couture/Liddell will draw better than Silva/Liddell, and they know that a potential Liddell/Lesnar match would probably be the biggest PPV in the history of MMA.

You can’t really argue with the business logic of angling for a Liddell/Lesnar superfight, what with Anderson Silva’s disappointing PPV numbers. And if Couture vs. Liddell IV goes like the previous two installments in 2005 and 2006 (which Chuck won via knockouts), the UFC will get their wish. But where does this leave the Spider?