(The shirt says it all.) 

Roy Nelson’s UFC 143 scrap with Fabricio Werdum was truly an exercise in futility for “Big Country,” because it more or less showcased what we already knew about him (the man can take a beating like no other), while at the same time reinforcing the idea that Nelson has damn near refused to evolve as a MMA fighter. Yes, he has recently shown a commitment to slimming down and yes, not many of us expected him to try and submit Werdum on Saturday, but if Roy doesn’t start switching up his striking routine (aka looking for anything but a big overhand right), he can expect several more axe wounds like the one above in his future.

We love you Roy, but it might be time to depart from The Country Club for a while, because you can only change the tee box and hole locations for so long until you just get sick of playing the same course over and over again.

Speaking of axe wounds, join us after the jump for a brief look back at some of MMA’s nastiest cuts…

(Photo courtesy of twitter.com/martinkampmann)

The poor bastard you see in the picture above is UFC welterweight contender Martin Kampmann, who had to pull out of his UFC 111 fight against Ben Saunders on Tuesday due to a stomach-turning gash over his right eye, which he suffered in training. (Damn, those Xtreme Couture guys need to take it easy with the broken-glass kickboxing matches.) Kampmann hopes to return to the cage in May. Saunders, who’s coming off his first-round knockout of Marcus Davis at UFC 106, will now take on Jake Ellenberger, who’s fresh off his TKO victory over Mike Pyle. In other UFC matchup news…

— According to a report on MMA Weekly, TUF 7 winner/Master Tweeter Amir Sadollah will compete next against undefeated Judo specialist Dong Hyun Kim at UFC 114 (May 29th, Las Vegas). Sadollah is riding back-to-back unanimous decision wins against Phil Baroni and Brad Blackburn; due to injury, Kim hasn’t competed since his decision win over TJ Grant at UFC 100 last July.

10. Randy Couture vs. Gabriel Gonzaga
(UFC 74, 8/25/07)

At 44 years of age, Randy Couture was the one who was supposed to look busted up after his heavyweight championship match with 29-year-old Brazilian wrecking ball Gabriel Gonzaga. But in one of the greatest triumphs of his career, Couture broke down the bigger, younger fighter with his wrestling and dirty boxing. About three minutes into the first round, blood began to pour out of Gonzaga’s shattered nose, giving Randy’s back a nice, red coat. The steady flow interrupts the challenger’s breathing and vision, leading to a brutal ground-and-pound finish in the third.

9. Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith
(EliteXC: Unfinished Business, 7/26/08)

In the second round of their EliteXC middleweight championship do-over, Scott Smith nailed Robbie Lawler with a series of standing elbows that opened up an ugly gash on the top of Lawler’s head. With blood pouring out of the wound, Lawler turned up the intensity, doing his best to finish Smith before a doctor could stop the fight. About 90 seconds later, he succeeded — but not before a spray of “plasma” fell into commentator Mauro Ranallo’s lap. The video doesn’t really do it justice; you should also check out this photo from the fight, and this photo of the aftermath.

8. Chase Beebe vs. Eddie Wineland
(WEC 26, 3/24/07)

It may have been the most grisly demolition of a cauliflower ear in MMA history. Midway through a five-round bantamweight title match, challenger Chase Beebe dropped an elbow from the top that burst Eddie Wineland’s overripe right ear, causing it to spray blood several feet across the mat. Wineland, who had already suffered multiple cuts near his eyes from Beebe’s precision striking, soldiered on to the fifth-round bell with what appeared to be a gaping hole in the side of his head. Beebe took home the belt and Wineland hasn’t fought in the WEC since.

After the jump: Things really start to get disgusting.

Nobody likes to lose, but there’s losing like a man and there’s losing like a six-year-old. In the above video from NBC Sports Jon Fitch ups his stock by taking his loss to Georges St. Pierre as well as can be expected. Not only did he prove his toughness by hanging in against GSP for five rounds, he also showed up to the press conference even though his face looked like he’d just made out with a wolverine. That’s an honorable competitor, right there.

For fighting his heart out and for this display of gentlemanly sportsmanship, we extend to Jon Fitch our rarely-awarded Cage Potato ‘Atta Boy (award has no implied or actual monetary value). We’d like to also give one to Dana White for trying to subtly replace Fitch’s beer with a bottle of water while he’s answering questions from reporters, but we only have so many of these fake awards lying around.

Joe “El Dirte” Doerksen has become the latest UFC middleweight — after Kalib Starnes and Travis Lutter — to be released from his fight contract as part of the league’s roster cuts. Doerksen’s recent TKO loss to Jason MacDonald at UFC 83 brought his UFC record to 1-5 (and 38-12 overall). As he told Sportsnet.ca:

“(The UFC officials) made it very clear they’re very happy with the way I fight and they want me to come back. But they need me to go put a couple of wins together (first)…I’ve come and gone several times over my career and I’m sure I’ll be back again. It’s not really devastating news. It’s just the cycle I have to go through….I’m just going to go out and do what I always do, put five or 10 wins together and come back and try again. At the end of the day, I know the fight was very well received by the fans and that’s the most important thing to me personally.”

Doerksen has scored notable wins over Lee Murray, Denis Kang, Chris Leben, and Ed Herman outside of the UFC, but seemed to be cursed inside the Octagon. After losing his UFC debut against Joe Riggs at UFC 49, he came back to submit Patrick Côté at UFC 52, but then picked up two more losses against Matt Lindland and Nate Marquardt. Doerksen won six straight fights outside of the UFC before Zuffa took another chance on him, putting him up against Paulo Filho for the vacant WEC middleweight title (which he lost), then giving him UFC fights against Ed Herman and MacDonald (both of which he lost).

No matter how gently the UFC let Joe down, it’s hard to imagine someone with his Octagon track record being given another shot unless he can put together a monumental win streak. Good luck out there, brotha…

(From MMAWeekly.com via Fightlinker)

At Saturday’s Cage Rage 24, Murilo “Ninja” Rua choked out Xavier Foupa-Pokam, Elvis Sinosic got KO’d in 21 seconds, and Ross Pointon dropped his one-fight win streak after Marios Zaromskis ripped off a significant chunk of his forehead. Despite the fact that his record drops to 5-10 and he’ll be bleeding out of that gash for the rest of his life, Pointon wants to get right back in the cage, telling MMAWeekly “I want that fight again. I know I can beat him and want the chance to prove it. He didn’t hit me with anything I couldn’t handle.”

Ross Pointon is like The Black Knight reincarnated as a too-stupid-for-his-own-good brawler. (“‘Tis but a scratch.”) Please, Ross, retire while you still have your…whatever it is you still have. Because the way you’re headed, it won’t be long before we find you sitting outside of a bus station somewhere with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a “punch me in the face, £2″ sign in the other. After a while, the people will get tired of punching you in the face, and they’ll want to do other things to you. Then, they’ll get tired of those things. And then where will you be?