(Jon Jones defends his UFC light heavyweight title against Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 165)

UFC 165 wasn’t just better than most folks thought it would be, it featured one of the gutsiest, most grueling, surprising and just downright best main event that we’ve seen in awhile. The decision may be controversial, but Jon Jones managed to pull off a unanimous decision win over challenger Alexander Gustafsson despite being beaten up, taken down and out worked for most of the fight.

Jones refused to stop swinging despite apparent exhaustion and battered the Swede in the fourth and fifth rounds en route to his sixth successful title defense. For his part, Gustafsson pulled off a great strategy in almost flawless fashion, scoring early and often to the body and head of the champ with punches, stopping his take downs and becoming the first fighter to ever take Jones down himself.

Check out highlights of the fight above. After the break, see highlights of Renan Barao‘s exciting knockout interim bantamweight title defense against Eddie Wineland as well as the post-event press conference.

Spoiler alert – Dana White and many fighters made the presser but Jones and Gustafsson did not because they were both at hospitals. They truly left it in the ring Saturday night.

(Must-watch: “MMA Pay: Leverage & Power,” by CAINtheBULL)

Today’s Installment of “Football Players Using MMA Techniques”: Clemson Player Ejected for Devastating Lead Uppercut (BleacherReport)

EPIC video trailer for UFC 168: Weidman vs. Silva 2, by the legendary NickTheFace (CagePotatoMMA Tumblr)

Tomato Can Blues: The True Story of the Michigan MMA Fighter Who Faked His Own Death (New York Times)

Following Chael Sonnen’s Rihanna Comments, Dana White Says ‘He’s Got to Knock That S**t Off’ (MMAFighting)

Golden Boy: Mayweather vs. Canelo PPV Sets Records With Reported 2.2 Million Buys, $150 Million in Revenue (MMAMania)

Angels of Anarchy – Jade Bryce (BabesofMMA)

Anthony Perosh Takes on Ryan Bader at December’s UFC Fight Night 33 in Australia (MMAJunkie)

Spoil TUF and the UFC Will Sue You for Five Million Dollars (Fightlinker)

Get Down And Stay Down: MMA Style (Break)

Interview: Andy Samberg Fires Up ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ (MadeMan)

20 Job Search Hacks That Will Get You Hired (Complex)

Russell Wilson: The Quarterback That Connects (MensFitness)

Insane Russian Flattens Nails With Bare Hands (EgoTV)

The 33 Most Influential Events Of The Last 10 Years: A Summary For Average Joes (DoubleViking)

Supercut: Before They Were Famous (ScreenJunkies)

(UFC Heavyweight Pat Barry | Photo by Esther Lin/MMAFighting)

The UFC Fight Night 33 card taking place this December in Brisbane, Australia has just picked up its third match up as heavyweights Pat Barry and Soa Palelei are now set to face one another. Barry is coming off a TKO loss to Shawn Jordan at UFC 161 this past June and Palelei off a UFC debut win just over two weeks ago at UFC 164.

Palelei’s win is almost being treated like a loss by some, notably UFC President Dana White who, after UFC 164, criticized Palelei’s bout with Nikita Krylov saying that the fight was a poor representation of what UFC-level fighting is, calling the fight “sloppy” and the fighters poorly conditioned. We can’t yet know what kind of shape Barry and Palelei will come in to their fight in but we can make an educated guess that at least Barry will make the bout exciting.

Also already booked on the Brisbane card is Mauricio “Shogun” Rua vs. James Te Huna and Antonio Silva vs. Mark Hunt.

- Elias Cepeda

(No, that is not a lady’s hind quarters. It is Tim Gorman’s injured leg. And, some really fancy shorts. | Photo via @TimmyGormanMMA)

This week we learned that in addition to being a cocky loud mouth, The Ultimate Fighter Season 18 (TUF 18) cast member Tim Gorman, is also a committed, tough s.o.b. The male bantamweight tore a hamstring clear off before getting his chance to fight his way into the TUF house, still fought, won and looked to move through the season.

Meisha Tate and her coaching staff noticed that Gorman was hobbling around during early practices and asked him to explain, at which point he showed the results of his nasty injury (also photographed up top). Gorman was forced to get an M.R.I. scan, which confirmed that his hamstring was royally screwed and Dana White made him leave the TUF House over the fighter’s protests. Which, of course, led to this freeloading no goodnik getting another chance.

During a google hangout Thursday White told fans that Gorman will also get another chance in the UFC, however. “The kid’s a nutball, he’s a lunatic,” Uncle Dana said. “I like that, that’s not a bad thing. He wanted to continue to fight, I respect that. He’ll get another shot in the UFC, we’ll give him a shot.”

Great news for Gorman. Even better, Timmy went on The Underground forum and wrote that White personally paid for his much-needed hamstring surgery. The UFC’s health insurance policy didn’t cover Gorman’s medical procedures because they were treatment for a “pre-existing” condition, ie. he hurt himself before he stepped into the Octagon or UFC Training Center.

Gorman’s UG post below:

By Elias Cepeda

The first episode of The Ultimate Fighter season 18 begins with Ronda Rousey finding out that she will be coaching against Meisha Tate instead of Cat Zingano. She isn’t very happy. In fact, she loses her shit, storms around the TUF gym after Meisha walks in and surprises her, looking for Dana White so he can explain.

When he does, Rousey looks relieved. For some reason, she thought that seeing Tate there meant that she herself was being kicked off as a coach. Not sure why she’d assume that, but it just reaffirms that Rousey’s mind is a dark, scary place built to use everything it encounters as anger-inducing motivation. She’s a terrifying, awesome chick.

The reality sets in — Ronda will coach against Mr. and Mrs. Tate on TUF and will rematch Meisha when it’s all over. Rousey seems cool with it, finally, talking of destiny and broken limbs. This season, of course, will feature both men and women bantamweights vying for a UFC contract.

Thirty-two fighters, sixteen of each gender, have been invited to Vegas and will fight their way into the TUF house. First up, is the obligatory former female model turned fighter Jessamyn Duke out of Kentucky winning by triangle choke. The Invicta vet is 5’11 and somehow makes 135 pounds. Nuts.

Next up, David Grant from Britain faces Dominick Cruz’s teammate Danny Martinez. Martinez is desperate for the take down from the get-go. While defending a takedown against the fence, Grant throws a downward elbow to Martinez’ spine and has a point deducted.

Martinez finally gets a takedown near the end of the round but Grant immediately works a triangle choke. Time runs out and Martinez is saved by the bell. The second round starts and Martinez looks gassed.

Grant knocks Martinez down with a punch, then transitions to his back and, as Martinez gets up, Grant knees him to what he believes is the shoulder but what referee Herb Dean calls as an illegal knee to the head. Another point is deducted.

(Admit it — you completely forgot about this guy. / Photo via MMAJunkie)

By Elias Cepeda

After ripping the lightweight world title away from Benson Henderson this past Saturday at UFC 164, Anthony Pettis immediately called out dominant featherweight champion Jose Aldo in the Octagon. The two have “unfinished business,” Pettis said.

Indeed they do. Pettis was supposed to drop down in weight and challenge Aldo for his belt a month ago, but injured his knee and pulled out of the fight. Then, when #1 lightweight contender T.J. Grant got concussed in training and had to pull out of his UFC 164 fight against Henderson, Pettis filled in for him.

The rest is history…as well as an exciting mess of future match-up possibilities. Just days after the lightweight division was shaken up by Pettis’ armbar win, every one seems to be calling out everyone else, but some how no one’s interests are quite matching up yet.

After UFC 164 and Pettis’ call out of Aldo, the featherweight’s manager and coach, Andre Pederneiras tweeted in Portuguese, “I believe now we will see Pettis returning his lightweight belt and moving down to fight Aldo at 145 [pounds],” according to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz.

“We were not the ones who left the fight in Rio, and I want to see [Pettis] make 145. This fight will happen, don’t worry. We just want equal rights to the Brazilians,” he went on.

UFC President Dana White immediately reacted to Pederneiras at the post event press conference. “They are going to fight,” White said.

“I’ve known Andre for years. But when you come out and make a statement like that, you make it look like (Aldo) is afraid. And that might not be Aldo’s same opinion. It makes it look like he’s afraid of Anthony Pettis, which already gives Anthony Pettis an advantage.”

(For reference.)

It looks like there’s once again trouble a’ brewing between UFC president Dana White and UFC HOFer/lughead Tito Ortiz. If you recall, the beef between these two got to such a boiling point back in 2007 that Spike TV aired a special hyping up a boxing match between the two (one which never came to fruition, of course). And while it seemed that White and Ortiz had repaired their relationship for long enough to have Tito get beat into retirement, Ortiz’s recent signing with Bellator has reopened the trash-talking floodgates.

Things really kicked off when Ortiz compared DW to a slave master during a recent interview with Sportscenter:

I thought slavery was over a long time ago. It’s just one of those things where you can’t trust a word the man says. And when you can’t do that, how can you work for him? When you work for a person and they’re badmouthing you no matter what, how can you work for them? When you apologize for the things that did happen and he still goes behind your back and says things about you, for no reason at all. Dana’s thing now is bullying and he is one of the biggest bullies in the business. He’s a big bully. One of these days, karma, it always come back around. 

It’s hard to argue with Tito’s comparison when looking at the facts. As we all know, slaves regularly received compensation packages totalling upwards of $250,000 for their work in the fields, as well as top notch medical care whenever they came down with a bad case of “cracked skull.” In addition, it is a well known fact that all slaves drove Rolls Royces to and from their million dollar summer homes.

Being that White is slightly more aware of what gets said about him in the media than the average President of a billion dollar corporation, he responded with the vitriol of a “Ben Affleck is the new Batman” Reddit thread at the Fight Night 27 media scrum on Wednesday.

(The Fight Night 27 post-fight press conference via the UFC’s Youtube channel.)

We’ll admit to skipping over the very first fight on yesterday’s Fight Night 27: Condit vs. Kampmann card — a lightweight scrap between Abel “Killa” Trujillo and Roger “Fuck it, Dude, Let’s Go” Bowling — in our aftermath piece this morning, but not because we missed the fight and not because we planned on using it as a prime example for another article about potential rule changes in MMA. In my eyes (and therefore all of CP’s because BG is out of town. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!), there was simply no controversy to be had.

Trujillo threw two knees. The first was legal; to the chest. The second was not; it hit Bowling square in the jaw. In fact, the second was about as blatantly illegal a strike as you could ask for. When Bowling was deemed unable to continue, we assumed he would be awarded the victory via DQ, as was the case when Luiz Cane illegally kneed James Irvin’s eyeball through the back of his skull at UFC 79. When the ref informed Trujillo that the fight would be declared a NC because the knee wasn’t “blatant,” we scratched our heads a little, but knew that intention behind a foul is determined by the referee alone.

So what should have been a DQ win for Roger Bowling was now a NC. Fine. But to say that Trujillo should have not only won the fight but will be receiving a win bonus as well? Surely you’d have to be f*cking insane to utter such insanity.

Those shots were not illegal. The first one hit him in the chest, and the second hit him in the shoulder. That kid should’ve won that fight, and I’m going to pay him his win bonus.

Yup, that’s Dana White at the Fight Night 27 post-fight press conference (approximately 20 minutes into the above video), clearly high as f*ck. But here’s the thing: Dana is right.

Join us after the jump to see why.

(The Baldfather advertises yet another media outlet that won’t be lobbing any critical coverage his way. / Photo via Getty)

By Brian J. D’Souza

Ideally, the relationship between professional sports organizations like the UFC and media members should be about interdependence, where both parties rely equally upon each other. In practice, many MMA media members and outlets often exist as the clingy, powerless co-dependent partners that put the needs of the UFC before the need for factual and accurate sports journalism.

Last week, a Twitter war-of-words erupted between Yahoo! Sports reporter Kevin Iole and UFC president Dana White over whether the UFC was hiding TRT-user Vitor Belfort in Brazil to avoid the scrutiny of an American athletic commission.

(Screencap via Reddit_MMA)

It’s understandable why White feels threatened by media scrutiny; Iole certainly hasn’t pulled any punches regarding the lack of consequences for using performance enhancers in boxing and MMA. While the New York Yankees and Major League Baseball could survive for 211 games without Alex Rodriguez (or the other disgraced players) in the wake of the Biogenesis scandal, the already watered-down cards promoted by the UFC would lose even more star power if known TRT-users (Vitor Belfort, Dan Henderson, Chael Sonnen, Frank Mir — and counting) were culled from the promotion.

MMA fans on MixedMartialArts.com’s UG forum observed that Kevin Iole could be denied media credentials for his failure to toe the UFC’s company line. This is not an empty threat, as many different outlets and individuals including ESPN.com’s Josh Gross, SI.com’s Loretta Hunt, CagePotato.com and Deadspin.com are all barred from press row at UFC events.

(click screen-caps to enlarge)

The public needs to grasp the reality that being an MMA reporter isn’t just about having a nice buffet and a comped ticket at a fight card. It’s about access to prominent fighters, coaches, managers and promoters to get the inside scoop and flesh out stories not reported elsewhere. When newly-crowned UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman visited ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, Josh Gross was denied an opportunity to interview Weidman. Banned media members may also miss out on a PR mailing list where media outlets learn about breaking UFC news, conference calls that allow media to ask questions to the headliners of major pay-per-view shows, and other events that media can be invited to.

The fear of losing those perks remains a potent sanction by the UFC in ensuring media compliance. I reference Exhibit A: an e-mail written by Bleacher Report staffer Jeremy Botter (leaked by Deadspin.com) that outlined several ways for MMA writers to avoid conflict with the UFC, including the following points:

(Video via WandFightTeam Youtube)

It doesn’t look like Wanderlei Silva is interested in retiring just yet. The former Pride champion and perennial bridesmaid Chael Sonnen are eager to face one another but UFC President Dana White recently seemed to put the kibosh on the match up because he didn’t want to make the fight a pay per view bout and give Silva percentages of the buy rates – something often done for big stars.

“[Silva] said he won’t fight [Sonnen] unless he gets PPV [points] so I guess he’s gonna retire,” White told MMA Fighting.

You can see what we think about that nonsense here, and in the video above you can see, hear and feel what Wand himself thinks. In the video, we get the Wanderlei standard lines – that Sonnen is disrespectful, a less accomplished fighter than champions like himself, Anderson Silva and Shogun Rua, and that he cowardly says things on twitter and in front of cameras that he wouldn’t dare say to someone’s face. You know, well established facts about Chael P. Sonnen.

However, in the video we get all those undoubtedly sincerely-felt expressions from Silva in a seemingly forced and corny presentation. There’s a spot light, horribly bland stock metal guitar music and Silva telling fans to let Dana White know they want to see the fight. Clearly, this is Silva’s way of proving that there is interest in the bout and that White should reconsider giving him back-end money for a potential Sonnen vs. Silva pay per view main event.

Listen, Wanderlei has accomplished more in MMA than Sonnen ever has or likely will, has legions of fans for the way he conducts himself in and out of the ring and already called Sonnen out in the only way that matters – face to face. He’s also taken ungodly amounts of damage throughout his career and should have retired for his health half a decade ago.

There is no need for Wanderlei to fight Sonnen – who still appears in his prime and has avoided excessive damage with a career filled with screaming and tapping out – especially because he has a chance to go out on a win. Silva’s last fight was a brutal affair where he stopped and retired Brian Stann in what is the front-runner for nastiest fight of 2013.

But Silva is the master of his own fate and makes clear above that he wants to fight Sonnen just as much as Sonnen wants to fight him. Some of our favorite Silva quotes from the video after the jump: