(David Rickels enlists the help of Steven Spielberg to secure the Potato Award for Greatest Walkout of 2013. They’re filling up fast, people. All gifs via ZombieProphet/BloodyElbow.) 

As has become the standard for a Bellator event, last night’s Bellator 94 was packed to the brim with exciting stoppages, grueling decisions, and a fair share of controversy thrown in for good measure.

The main card kicked off with a Season 9 bantamweight tournament qualifier bout between Rodrigo Lima and Ronnie Mann, the latter of which was making his bantamweight debut. As noted by the Bellator broadcast team, the characteristic speed that led Mann to the featherweight tourney semifinals in Season 6 was all but negated against Lima, who outgunned, outgrappled, and plain outworked Mann in every aspect of the fight en route to a unanimous decision victory.

The evening’s next bout was also a season 9 qualifier, this time at welterweight, and pitted Trey “That Just Happened?” Houston (Seriously, that’s his nickname. Do we have a Worst Nickname category for this year’s Potato Awards? Because I think we have found yet another front-runner.) against Luis Melo. In what turned out to be a rather entertaining affair, Houston attempted to turn things into a brawl while Melo opted to take things to the ground as often as possible. After getting rocked and nearly submitted in the second round, Melo was able to turn the tides on a fading Houston in the third and secured an arm-triangle finish just over a minute into the round.

(Props: 1inchBoom. Felice appears at 1:10, and bullrushes Clark at 1:53.)

Bellator is at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa tonight with an event that will decide the Season 8 Lightweight and Light-Heavyweight tournament winners. The fighters weighed-in yesterday, and if you’re reading this, it’s probably not because you care that David Rickels came in 0.1 pound heavier than Saad Awad. (Although he totally did; results are at the end of this post, via Sherdog.)

No, you probably just want to see how Felice Herrig looked in her latest scale-appearance. Never one to disappoint (see here and here), Herrig transformed into Supergirl on stage, then got directly up in the face of her much-taller opponent, Heather Clark, who was herself wearing a tiny bikini and high heels in an attempt to win the evening’s swimwear competition. Clearly, this enraged Herrig, and the two women had to be separated by Bjorn Rebney.

Check out a couple photos of Felice in her superhero outfit below, and watch her fight during the Bellator 94 prelims on Spike.com or Bellator.com beginning at 8 p.m. / 7 p.m. CT.

When we sat down with the lovely Felice Herrig just over a month ago, we talked about everything from the suspicious, last minute withdrawal of her opponent from Bellator 84 to the likelihood of seeing Felice fighting for the all female promotion InvictaFC down the line. But as any conversation with a woman as beautiful as Felice will inevitably touch upon, we ended up discussing sex, sex appeal, and the role of sex appeal in women’s MMA. As you can probably tell from a quick Google search of her name, Felice resides strongly in the “sex appeal as a positive” camp, not only because it boosts her marketability, but because it opens up completely new doors outside of the fight game that could provide a future career for Herrig down the line.

Taking that into account, Felice recently appeared on TMZ Live, of all places, to defend the role of sex appeal in female sports, and in the professional world in general. And for a show that usually spends 30 minutes insulting psuedo-celebrities for being fat and wearing people clothes, the discussion was honestly rather straightforward. I mean, it wasn’t Ronda Rousey and friends talking about Kat Dennings’ awesome boobage, but it was intriguing nonetheless. In short, Felice feels that as long as you can back up your looks with actual skill, then you’d be pretty foolish not to utilize both.

So check out the video above and let us know where you stand on the issue in the comments section. But we beg you, try and stifle your blatant misogyny just this once.

-J. Jones

This season, Bellator’s heavyweight tournament ended in the same place where it began – The Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana – but with far less fireworks than anticipated.

With Bellator fixture Richard Hale facing off against Alexander Volkov, a twenty-four year old Russian prospect who used to train with Fedor Emelianenko, fans anticipated a wild brawl would ensue for the heavyweight championship Cole Konrad vacated through his retirement. Hale would bring the fight to Volkov early, dropping the Russian with a right hook in the first round. However, that hook would end up being the only significant strike that Hale would land for the rest of the fight.

For the rest of the bout, the 6’7” Volkov was content to jab his way to a unanimous decision victory. It certainly wasn’t pretty, as the boos from those in attendance demonstrated, but it was enough for Volkov to take home $100,000 and the promotion’s heavyweight championship.

By Jared Jones 

In less than an hour, Bellator’s final card of the year will kick off live from The Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana. Fighting in the only women’s bout of the night will be none other than Felice Herrig, a former Muay Thai wrecking machine turned MMA starlet who has been featured in such programs as Oxygen’s Fight Girls. Tonight, she squares off on the preliminary card against late replacement opponent Patricia Vardonic in a strawweight fight that is sure to convert more than a few fans to this thing called WMMA.

Being the humanitarian that “Lil’ Bulldog” is, she recently set aside some time in her busy schedule to discuss everything from the great injury plague of 2012 to the role of sexuality in female sports with us, so join us after the jump to get inside the head of one of WMMA’s fastest rising prospects in this surprisingly candid interview.

CagePotato: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Felice. First off, we were wondering if you could talk about the controversy surrounding Michele Guitierrez’s withdrawal from Bellator 84. When did you first suspect that she wasn’t being exactly honest about the alleged injury that forced her out of your scheduled fight? 

Felice Herrig: “I had suspected since I signed to fight Michele that she was going to do it. I’ve been in this game a long time and I heard a couple people that trained around her say that she was like 20-some pounds overweight, that she wasn’t going to make it, and that she was asking [her training partners] for tips on how to cut weight. For so long, Michele has done so many things to me that I’ve had to keep quiet about and now I feel like I got to expose her for what she really is.”

(Whoa! Those are some nice hardwood floors!) 

Although I technically have a Twitter account, I am not what you would consider an avid user, whatever that may mean. In my mind, the best addictions are the old fashioned ones: cocaine, air duster, and drunk driving – preferably at the same time. But if there’s one person out there I consider myself a “follower” of on the Twitter, it’s Felice Herrig, and it’s not just because she occasionally tweets out photos like the one above (although it doesn’t hurt). And after finishing off my last can of Gust last night (which we all know is the Rolls-Royce of air dusters), I happened to stumble upon quite the little story while perusing over Ms. Herrig’s account.

You see, Herrig was set to return to the bright lights of Bellator for the first time since 2010 at Bellator 84 on December 14th. Her opponent was supposed to be the 3-3 Michele Gutierrez. However, it was recently announced that Gutierrez had suffered a hand injury in training and would not be able to fight. And while we were just about to chalk up another victory to that God forsaken injury curse, Herrig came out of the woodwork to declare that not only was Gutierrez faking the injury, but that she had solid proof to back her accusations.

The alleged proof is after the jump. 

(And here we have Ronda Rousey dumping Karo Parisyan on his head. Props: DantheWolfman)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere…

- The Great ‘Must Retire’ List of 2011 (MMA Convert)

- Bellator’s 10 Best Fights of 2011 (The Fight Nerd)

- Photo Gallery: Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos Training for Hiroko Yamanaka (Lowkick.Blitzcorner.com)

- The 25 Most Outrageous MMA-Related Videos on YouTube (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- Spike TV to Counter-Program ‘UFC on FOX 2′ With ‘UFC Unleashed: Evans vs. Davis’ (MMA Payout)

- Arianny Celeste: Chael Sonnen Is Very Polite To Me Backstage (FightLine)

- Keith Kizer: Urine Is ‘Obviously’ Better Than Blood for Steroid Testing (Fight Opinion)

- Dana White Sees Jon Jones as #2 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Joseph Benavidez Inspired to Become a Great Champion in New UFC Flyweight Division (MMA Mania)

- Demian Maia: I Know I Can Submit Michael Bisping (MMAFighting)

- Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira Avoids Surgery on Broken Arm (5th Round)

- Can Someone Please Help Felice Herrig With Her Wardrobe Malfunction? (MiddleEasy)

(Tito Ortiz tells The Voice where to stick it.)

I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff go down at my local dive bar, and yet I’ve never had a beautiful woman proposition me by giving me the finger. (Oh, but what a magical world that would be.) In honor of Wild Turkey‘s “Give ‘em the Bird” campaign — which is definitely intended for people who live dangerously — we decided to round up the greatest obscene gestures in MMA history. Enjoy these unquestionably rude photos, which continue after the jump, and shoot us some links in the comments section if we’ve left out any good ones.

(Felice Herrig puts it all out there.)

(Cuddly New York Jets coach Rex Ryan shares his opinion on Strikeforce matchmaking.)

(Jake Salyer of Tulsa, Oklahoma, manages to pull off a double-armbar submission in his MMA debut. The Diet Butcher would be proud. Props: GorillaTacticsMMA via ‘Okwiseguy’)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail feedback@cagepotato.com for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…

- Lorenzo Fertitta: I Would Love to Do Anderson Silva vs. Dan Henderson at UFC on FOX (MMA Mania)

- Cain Velasquez Talks UFC 139 Title Fight, Jon Jones, Alistair Overeem, and Being a Father (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- Going Streaking: Anderson Silva’s Record UFC Run on the Line at UFC 134 (NBC Sports MMA)

- Phil Baroni: Nobody Dry Humps the New York Bad Ass and Gets Away With It! (Exclusive Interview) (LowKick)

- ‘MiddleEasy/Whoa! TV Gym Expeditions’ Visits Birmingham, England (MiddleEasy)

- Felice Herrig on This Weekend’s Cancelled Fight and State of Women’s MMA (TheFightNerd)

- Royce Gracie Wants One More UFC Fight, but Ready to Move on Without It (MMA Fighting)

- “Strikeforce HW GP Semifinals” Official Trailer (5thRound)

- Josh Neer Headed Back to the UFC Against Keith Wisniewski in October (Five Ounces of Pain)

- “(UFC) Is the Only Sports Property That Is Pure and Works Literally Around the Entire World.” (FightOpinion)

- UFC Hopes to Be in Pre-Production on Australian Version of The Ultimate Fighter by the End of the Year (MMA Convert)

- FOX Deal May Be Just What New York Needs (MMA Payout)

(Like we needed a reason to run this photo again. Props: MMARecap via MiddleEasy)

There were a lot of questions coming into last night’s XFO 39. Would this mark the last appearance of Jeff “Big Frog” Curran? How would Jamie Varner fair in what is not only his first fight since being released by the UFC, but a welterweight bout nonetheless? Can Felice Herrig vs. Nicdali Rivera-Calanoc possibly live up to the pre-fight staredown? The short answers are maybe, pretty well and of course not. Tune in after the jump for more details.

(Props: MMARecap via MiddleEasy)

XFO 39 goes down tonight at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, featuring Jeff Curran’s “win or retire” match against Billy Vaughn, Jamie Varner‘s first post-WEC match against Tyler Combs, and a women’s bout between the lovely Felice Herrig and 7-4 Tulsa-based scrapper Nicdali Rivera-Calanoc. At yesterday’s weigh-ins, Felice and Nicdali produced one of the greatest staredown photos in recent memory. (Whether you prefer this one or Anderson Silva vs. Vitor Belfort pretty much depends on if you prefer chicks or dudes. Sorry. That’s the deal.) XFO 39 will be streamed live on alienwarearena.com/mma; the card kicks off at 7 p.m.

(Does this look like the face of a retiree?)

Former UFC lightweight champ Jens Pulver squeaked out his second win in the past three years over the weekend, beating 13-13 Central Illinois Combat Club fighter Wade Choate by split decision at Chicago Cagefighting Championship III Saturday night. Before the comments start pouring in about how, “Lil’ Evil should retire after narrowly beating a Choate with a record like that,” FYI, Pulver fought the majority of the bout on a broken foot he sustained in the opening frame of the fight, and according to several sources the one judge who gave the nod to his opponent defied the popular opinion of the majority in attendance that Jens clearly won the bout.

Pulver, who is 2-0 since he began training at Curran Martial Arts in Chicago, tweeted the pics after the jump of his foot during, immediately following and one day after the bout, explaining that the injury occurred when he connected with Choate’s elbow.

Champion kickboxer turned MMA fighter Felice Herrig will be facing Barb Honchak in the co-main event of Hoosier Fight Night 6, tonight at the Porter County Expo Center in Valparaiso, Indiana; it will be the first women’s bout in HFN history. So we figured it was an ideal moment to post a bunch of hot photos of her. Follow Felice on Twitter, and join her Facebook fan group right here. Kick her ass, Lil’ Bulldog!

More photos after the jump…