(Steve Cofield chats with Dan Hardy after UFC 95.)

By know you may have heard that Dan Hardy is following up on his big knockout victory over Rory Markham at UFC 95 by immediately angling for a fight with Marcus Davis.  He’s already taken some shots at Davis’ attempts to brand himself as a U.K. fan favorite, telling Sherdog.com that “The Irish Hand Grenade” is “not English; he’s not Irish. I was born here, and I’ve been bred here. I don’t mind taking on that challenge and showing him this is my home and not his.”

Boom.  Immediately this fight has a hook.  Not only does Hardy have a point – for all Davis’ attempts to sell us on his Irish heritage, the thick New England accent limits our suspension of disbelief, kilt or no – but he’s also taking a proactive role in his own matchmaking, which is a very smart move for a guy in his situation.

Dan Hardy made a successful UFC debut against journeyman Akihiro Gono at UFC 89, and now he moves up to the main card to take on Miletich camp slugger Rory Markham at UFC 95 this Saturday.  In this exclusive interview “The Outlaw” discusses his strategy for avoiding Markham’s big bombs, the U.K. MMA scene, and the trademark Mohawk that he sports in honor of his nation’s punk rock pioneers.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me, Dan.  What are you expecting out of Rory Markham on Saturday, and what’s your gameplan for dealing with him?

I expect him to come to try and knock me out.  I don’t think it’s any secret what his gameplan’s going to be.  My gameplan is going to be to stay out of the way of his punches and land my own strikes and wear him down.  I think I’ve got the endurance advantage.  I’ve been the distance in a few of my fights and he’s never experienced the end of that third round.  I think I’ve got the advantage in conditioning and I’ll be able to drag the fight on a little longer until I get the chance to knock him out.

(Props: MMA Mania)

Remember when Rory Markham told us that he thinks he’s the hardest hitter in the UFC’s welterweight division?  Well, his opponent at UFC 95, Dan Hardy, doesn’t seem too worried about it in this video from the UK’s Telegraph.  He doesn’t plan on letting Markham hit him with any clean shots.  Which, as game plans go, is a pretty good one.  Why doesn’t every fighter just do that?

Talking with The Mirror, Hardy was slightly less gentlemanly with regards to Markham:

(Skip to the 1:27 mark, where the ass-kicking begins.  And don’t try to act like you aren’t digging the music, either.)

In his time with the IFL, Rory Markham became known as the guy who didn’t really start fighting until he got hurt.  More than one of his bouts began with him getting dropped and ended with him getting his hand raised, so much so that trainer Pat Miletich used to plead with Markham to fight smart before he got rocked.

But as Markham admits in this exclusive interview, that’s just not his style, as anyone who saw his devastating head-kick KO of Brodie Farber in his UFC debut knows by now.  At UFC 95 next Saturday night Markham takes on England’s Dan Hardy in London.  Chances are, things will get ugly fast.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me, Rory.  Now that you’re in the UFC, how have things changed for you?

You know, I’ve been putting in a lot of time, trying to hone my skills since October.  I found that I was weak in certain areas and I knew I needed to improve.  Being in the UFC now, it’s improve or die.

What areas do you feel you needed to improve in?

I don’t want to touch on bad instances, but there was one moment in the Brett Cooper fight where I really felt like if he hadn’t gotten the takedown and I could have kept it on the feet, there would have been a drastically different finish to that fight.  Since then I’ve been really trying to hone my wrestling skills.  I see what wrestling has done for guys like Georges St. Pierre and even, I think people overlook what it did for B.J. Penn.  When he went out with Randy [Couture] and Matt Lindland, that’s when he really hit his stride.  That’s something I noticed that I needed to work on.  Definitely in the long run, maybe not in this fight or even the next one, I think it’s going to add to the longevity of my career.

With one day to go before UFC 89 (which we’ll be liveblogging, naturally), it’s time for everyone’s favorite self-indulgent exercise: Ben versus Ben. This time around we argue bonuses, the UK-centric undercard, and the mysterious/as-of-yet fictional Millerplata, among other stuff.

How exactly will Bisping/Leben end?

Fowlkes: As much as we’ve heard about Leben’s transformation from immature brawler to well-rounded tactician, a part of me (the part located in the brain region) isn’t totally buying it. Leben may be a more seasoned fighter, but he still knows one way to win a fight when things get hectic and it’s throwing big, looping bombs and hoping one catches his opponent on the chin.

This has worked at times. He hits hard and he can take enough punishment to make that strategy effective. But as strategies go, it’s relatively easy to prepare for, especially for a more cerebral fighter like Bisping. “The Count” is smart enough to avoid a street fight with Leben. He’ll accumulate points and damage but won’t dive in for the illusion of a quick finish, and this will frustrate Leben.

Leben knows he doesn’t want to go to a decision against a Brit in Britain, so the closer to the final horn he gets the more desperate he will become. This is where Bisping will find an opening, drop him with a straight shot, then pour on some ground-and-pound that looks worse than it is, causing the referee to stop it at 4:02 of round three. And Leben is going to be pissed.

Goldstein: I concur. Bisping is a more talented, complete fighter than Leben, and this business about the Crippler maturing is more manufactured narrative than reality. But I don’t think it’ll take Bisping until the third frame to get the stoppage win. As a middleweight, his kickboxing has looked razor-sharp — his last two opponents didn’t make it to the second bell — and his ground capabilities are underrated in general.

The headliners will give the crowd what they paid for in round one, slugging it out like a couple of drunken soccer hooligans, and Bisping will go about finishing the fight in round two, engaging the killer instinct that we’ve seen from him lately. If Leben starts to land more shots in that second round, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bisping clinch with Leben, bully him to the ground and finish him from the top. Either way, it’ll be a stoppage due to strikes at exactly the 4:15 mark of round two.

Who will win the Vera/Jardine and Sokoudjou/Cane fights?

(Props: JarryPark)

I was worried that UFC 89 (October 18th; Birmingham, England) was going to be one of those off-brand cards that are hastily thrown together for the British market — but it may have potential after all. Besides the requisite matchups of Bisping vs. Leben and (possibly) Davis vs. Kelly, and a reported welterweight feature of Thiago Alves vs. Diego Sanchez, the UFC has just added three more compelling bouts to the lineup.

First up is a light-heavyweight bout between Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou — who’s coming off a first-round TKO of Kazuhiro Nakamura at UFC 84 — and Luiz Cane, who recently knocked out Jason “Flapjacks” Lambert at UFC 85. Sokoudjou was already regarded as one of the top ten 205′ers in the world when he entered the UFC, and is probably still trying to shake off the humiliation of being the only guy that Lyoto Machida has finished in the last two years. Both him and Cane have a lot of hype behind them, and both like to throw bombs; could be a wild one.

Next is a heavyweight bout between Denver-based destroyer Shane Carwin (9-0) and British brawler Neil Wain (4-0). Like Carwin, Wain has won all of his fights by first-round stoppage — though I don’t think that little fun fact will matter much once the bell rings and Carwin starts charging across the cage. Like his 44-second mouthpiece-ejecting knockout of Christian Wellisch at UFC 84, this match might turn into another stunning KO win for the up-and-coming Carwin.

Finally, British welterweight star Dan Hardy (19-6) is set to make his Octagon debut against Akihiro Gono. Hardy is the reigning Cage Warriors welterweight champion, and has only suffered one loss (via disqualification) in his last nine fights. Gono (28-12-7) is a veteran of Shooto, Pancrase, and PRIDE who won his UFC debut last November by tapping Tamdan McCrory with an armbar at UFC 78; injury has prevented him from competing since.