(Track 15 on Shiny Happy Jihad.)

The one-hour stand-up comedy special that UFC color-man Joe Rogan filmed in Columbus before UFC 96 has finally gotten an airdate: June 20th at midnight ET/PT, directly following the broadcast of The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K. finale. As Rogan confirmed during an appearance on The Greg Fitzsimmons Show yesterday, his will be the first of several comedy specials that Spike will air this year, and the late-night time slot allows it to be aired uncensored. ("I couldn’t believe it. They don’t have to cut anything.")

Sounds like a kickass night of free entertainment. To refresh your memories, the TUF 9 finale card be lookin’ like this:

MAIN CARD
Diego Sanchez vs. Clay Guida
Welterweight TUF finalist vs. welterweight TUF finalist (TBA)
Lightweight TUF finalist vs. lightweight TUF finalist (TBA)
Nate Diaz vs. Joe Stevenson
Anthony Johnson vs. Matt Brown

UNDERCARD
Tomasz Drwal vs. Eric Schafer
Chris Lytle vs. Kevin Burns
Melvin Guillard vs.Thiago Tavares
Brad Blackburn vs. Edgar Garcia
Other matches between TUF 9 castmembers (TBA)

Technorati Profile

(‘Did you say lisp?  Sounded like you did, homey, and I’m just curious whose lisp you might have been talking about, ’cause I don’t see Richard Simmons around here anywhere.  Just me.’)

Looks like two more fighters are taking the step backwards from the numbered UFC events to small potatoes shows on Spike, as MMA Madness reports that Nate Diaz will take on Joe Stevenson at the finale of “The Ultimate Fighter” season nine on June 20 in a battle of lightweights who are in need of a win.

This is the same event expected to feature Diego Sanchez (who last beat Stevenson) taking on Clay Guida (who last beat Diaz) as its headlining bout.  So at least the four of them can all get together again, maybe have an awkward dinner at Chili’s.  Kind of like hanging out with your new girlfriend and your ex-girlfriend, who is now dating your new girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.  Just weird enough to be interesting.

MMATraining.com also reports that later in the summer, at an as of yet unannounced Fight Night event on August 5, Kurt Pellegrino will face Josh Neer, who recently saved his behind with a victory over Mac Danzig.  The fight’s expected to be the main event, though it’s also the only fight we’ve heard of for this thing and with it being so far in the future, who knows.  Best to keep Neer out of the bars between now and then.

(Photos courtesy of UFC.com)

After a long, arduous, bodily-fluid-filled season of The Ultimate Fighter, we’ve finally made it to the end. It’s time to see who’s worthy of the hype, who’s ready for the big show, who’s taking home the six-figure contracts. If you’re not psyched for this, go watch Bromance you freakin’ fairy. For everyone else, hit that "Read More" link and refresh the page every few minutes for live round-by-round updates and commentary.

SPOILER ALERT: This liveblog kicks off at 9 p.m. ET, but the broadcast is tape-delayed on the West Coast (and possibly other parts of the country). Check your local listings, and keep in mind that we may be writing about things you haven’t seen yet. So if you’re coming in, scroll carefully.

(Props: MMA Weekly)

Weigh-ins for The Ultimate Fighter 8 finale went down earlier today at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, and every fighter successfully made weight — except for Wilson Gouveia, who came in four pounds heavy for his middleweight tilt against Jason MacDonald. Way to set a good example for the new guys, Will. Full results are below…

MAIN CARD
Efrain Escudero (156) vs. Phillipe Nover (155)
Ryan Bader (205) vs. Vinicius Magalhaes (205)
Kevin Burns (171) vs. Anthony Johnson (171)
Wilson Gouveia (189) vs. Jason MacDonald (184)
Junie Browning (156) vs. Dave Kaplan (156)

UNDERCARD
Shane Primm (202) vs. Krzysztof Soszynski (205)
Jules Bruchez (205) vs. Eliot Marshall (203)
Kyle Kingsbury (205) vs. Tom Lawlor (204)
Shane Nelson (156) vs. George Roop (153)
Roli Delgado (155) vs. John Polakowski (152)

Update from UFC.com: "Gouveia did not make weight and for safety reasons, the Nevada State Athletic Commission won’t allow him to make a second weight cutting attempt. The bout will go on at a catch weight of 189 pounds, and Gouveia will forfeit 20% of his purse to MacDonald." Weigh-in photos are here.

(Phillipe just has to finish up some nurse shit, then he’ll be right in to kick your ass.  Thanks for your patience.)

Trying to come up with odds on guys who most of us have only seen fight under very specific circumstances has got to be a difficult job.  For all we know, maybe John Polakowski really is "a mean guy" in the Octagon, and maybe Dave Kaplan only looked bad because he went with the ill-advised, "block with your face" strategy that he now knows is a mistake.  We just can’t be sure.

Fortunately internet bookies feel they are up to the task of sorting out all the woulda-coulda stuff, and as a result we can still throw our money away on Saturday night’s Spike TV TUF 8 Finale show.  Below are the best odds in town, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com.

Efrain Escudero (+334) vs. Phillipe Nover (-364)
Vinicius Magalhaes (-165) vs. Ryan Bader (+160)
Jason MacDonald (+119) vs. Wilson Gouveia (-125)
Anthony Johnson (-225) vs. Kevin Burns (+205)
Dave Kaplan (+322) vs. Junie Browning (-325)
Krzysztof Soszynski (-345) vs. Shane Primm (+315)
Eliot Marshall (-551) vs. Jules Bruchez (+501)
Kyle Kingsbury (-116) vs. Tom Lawlor (+106)
George Roop (EVEN) vs. Shane Nelson (-108)
John Polakowski (-122) vs. Roli Delgado (+112)

Thoughts…

(They’ve come so far, and ingested so much of each other’s bodily fluids.)

With The Ultimate Fighter 8 Finale on Spike TV just one day away, we go head-to-head on some of the most pressing issues surrounding this reality TV-generated fight card.  As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the action right here on the Potato come Saturday night.  Don’t miss it.

Who will emerge as the winners of TUF 8, and of the two, who has a brighter future in the UFC?

BF: Phillipe Nover and Ryan Bader are the two guys who will end up hoisting those weird transparent trophies over their heads on Saturday night.  Nover will win because he’s an animal, a straight-up criminal, dog.  Even though Efrain Escudero has some skills of his own, I don’t think he’s as well-rounded or aggressive as Nover, and I think it will cost him in the form of a late TKO. 

Bader will win because even though Vinny Magalhaes is a hell of a jiu-jitsu fighter, he doesn’t have a whole lot else in the toolbox from what I’ve seen.  Bader has plenty of time to get his submissions defense in order, and if he can sharpen his stand-up and/or ground-and-pound at all, he’ll do just enough to win a decision.

Of those two, Nover has a better chance of really doing something in the UFC.  I’d love to see him jump right in and face one of the many tough lightweights hanging around these days rather than be brought along at a Nate Diaz-type pace, but the opposite will probably happen.  Bader, he’ll probably end up dropping to middleweight and getting schooled by the first guy he comes across with good sprawl-and-brawl.  But that’s life.

BG: I’m going to have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there, buddy. If Bader has time to expand his toolbox beyond lay-and-snore, then Vinny can learn to do something other than viciously pull guard and tap his opponents in the first round, hot-knife-through-butter style. But why should he? Magalhaes is one of the scariest jiu-jitsu practitioners to ever appear on TUF and I’m not sure if Bader’s top-game will be tight enough to avoid being submitted if he decides to take Vinny to the ground. (Trust me, Magalhaes is not Eliot Marshall.) The Brazilian finishes fights, and I say he takes it via submission in the second frame.

People have been kicked off The Ultimate Fighter for less than what we saw Junie Browning do this season, but through it all he managed to stay on the show and endure to the semifinals.  After his loss to Efrain Escudero last night, Browning talks with Cage Potato about the person he was and the fighter he’s become, and he promises that we’ll all know the difference when we see him on next Saturday night’s Spike TV finale.

CagePotato.com: So after everything that happened, how surprised were you that Dana White didn’t kick you off the show?

Real surprised, actually.  Especially after what Dana said the first time and what happened.  But I’m sure everyone wanted to see me get my ass kicked, so that was a good reason to keep me on.

Were you knowingly sabotaging yourself and trying to get kicked off?

It was more the fact that I didn’t really care.  I wasn’t ready to fight.  I knew I was out of shape.  I wasn’t prepared to fight so I just didn’t really care about the consequences.  I would have rather just gone home rather than embarrass myself on TV.  That’s not necessarily the way I look at it now, but that’s the way I was thinking then.  It’s not a good way to look at it, but that’s how it felt.

You say you weren’t ready to fight, but in the beginning you seemed to be doing pretty well.  Why do you think you weren’t ready?

The beginning of the fight, that wasn’t pretty well for me.  That was horrible.  I knew it at the time, while I was fighting, that it was horrible.  I felt like every day I was on the show I was getting worse.  I just wasn’t fighting the same.  I wasn’t fighting explosive like I normally do.

If it was just that you were out of shape, why didn’t you spend more time beforehand working on your cardio so you would be ready?

(I love to see a man so bald and yet so happy.)

The Ultimate Fighter‘s Krzysztof Soszynski (known around these parts as K-Sos) came up short in his semifinals match-up with Vinny Magalhaes on last night’s show, but his skills certainly caught Dana White’s eye enough to land him a fight against Shane Primm on next weekend’s finale.

In this exclusive interview, K-Sos recounts his experience, discusses life with Junie Browning, and what we can expect when he gets in the Octagon next Saturday night and fights to keep his dream alive.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me Krzysztof.  Watching the show, it seemed like you were one of the few guys who didn’t get too bothered by being in the house.  Did it ever get to you like it did with some of the other guys?

Oh, absolutely.  To be honest, it’s a mental game more than anything while you’re there.  It’s a six-week mental challenge.  That’s what it is.  The physical part was easy.  You’re only training about four hours a day.  You can go when you want, you can miss practice if you need to rest, but you’re in that house for twenty hours a day no matter what.  That was the real challenge.  Those who passed will probably go on to do well.  Those who didn’t, they might have some problems down the road.  

It sounds like we’re talking about Junie there, so I’ll just ask, did you think he should have been kicked off?  Did you guys really want him to stay, or did Dana White kind of talk everybody into that?

To be honest, everybody expected him to get kicked off.  We expected him to get kicked off the first day he got in when he became the crazy drunk kid.  But when he threw that glass, we thought for sure that one of the other guys was going to get a shot at Efrain.  So it was very surprising that Dana didn’t kick him off.  

We kind of understood that the kid wanted to be gone, he wanted to leave on a good note so he could say, ‘I didn’t lose.  I would have been the best fighter, but Dana White kicked me off.’  So I see Dana White’s point.  And, we all wanted to see him lose.  I think everyone in that house wanted to see him lose.  Justice was served.

C.B. Dollaway tapped out in his fight with Amir Sadollah. That seemed clear to everyone but Dollaway following the bout. His vague protest of the stoppage seemed to be rooted in the belief that just tapping once wasn’t really a tap. That’s basically the MMA equivalent of trying to tell your girlfriend that it wasn’t cheating because it was with a prostitute. In other words, it’s an argument that’s doomed from the start.

In an interview with MMA Weekly, Dollaway kind of owns up to it:

“With the tap, I didn’t fully commit to the tap, but I did hit him once. I guess they ruled that a tap. I thought you had to go on and start tapping out. I did hit him once. Right as I did that, I felt my arm get into a position where I could get out. At that point Herb (Dean) ruled it as a tap out.”

Maybe the reason he felt his arm get into a better position after the initial tap was because Herb Dean stepped in and Amir began to let him go? You know, since by tapping his leg Dollaway indicated that he wanted to stop fighting. That’s usually how it works.

Whether he fully committed to the tap or not, tapping once is the same as tapping a dozen times. It’s a signal that you want to quit, which is why you probably shouldn’t tap at all if you don’t want to quit.

Good for him for sort of owning up to it in a very oblique way though. That’s kind of dignified almost.

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle. Check out the full album.)

You watched a lot of reality TV and sat through the lame TUF theme song countless times just to get to this point. Now we finally get to discover who is The Ultimate Fighter…by watching the rematch of a fight from the tournament semifinals.

Okay, so that part may be anti-climactic, but there’s a whole lot of other action on tonight’s fight card, including the always fun loser-gets-fired match between Kendall Grove and Evan Tanner. The Cage Potato liveblog starts at 9 pm EST. Remember to hit refresh so you can get the most updated acerbic wit possible.

(Do you trust this man with your money?)

There’s yet another UFC event this weekend, which means another chance to throw your money into the bottomless pit of online sports wagering. As always, we’re happy to help you burn through your savings with our helpful advice, because who says your children need to go to college? If the Merchant Marines was good enough for you, it’s good enough for your little girl, too.

Betting odds are courtesy of Bodoglife.com. Read this if you still haven’t figured out what the + and – stuff means.

Evan Tanner (-190) vs. Kendall Grove (+160)

Right off I’ll say it, these odds seem a little reckless. It’s just so difficult to know what to expect out of either of these two. Tanner hasn’t won a fight since 2006 and that was against the consistently mediocre Justin Levens. He took an extended hiatus from the sport in order to wander the earth like Caine from Kung Fu, and then he returned to get KO’d by Yushin Okami. Now suddenly he’s the favorite?

Grove is coming off two straight losses, but against two pretty tough guys in Cote and Rivera. It’s understandable that his stock has dropped, but we still don’t know if that was a bad run for him or if he was never as good as his TUF victory made him appear.

Bottom line, this is a difficult one to call, which is why it’s surprising that the odds aren’t closer to even. Might be worth small action on Grove, but betting on this fight is like betting on a coin flip.

C.B. Dollaway (-160) vs. Amir Sadollah (+130)

(Da Spyder)

Two years ago Kendall Grove was on top of the world. He came through season three of “The Ultimate Fighter” and beat out Ed Herman in a climactic bout to win the finale and a UFC contract. Now Grove finds himself back on another “Ultimate Fighter Finale” card, but in a much different situation. Coming off two straight knockout losses, he’s fighting to prove he belongs in the UFC, as is his opponent, Evan Tanner.

In this exclusive Cage Potato interview, Grove opened up about what it means to fight for your job, and how he plans to pull himself out of the lowest point of his career and get back in the win column in a fight neither man can afford to lose.

CagePotato.com: Hey, Kendall. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. What have you been doing in training for this fight to prepare for Evan Tanner?

Kendall Grove: I moved back to Hawaii. I moved back to Maui, but I’ve been in Hilo working with BJ Penn. I’m just getting ready for a fight where anything can happen. Whatever happens, happens. I know he’s going to want to take me down so I’ve been working with some big wrestlers to get ready for that. I’m just ready for war.

Do you expect him to come in with a sense of desperation in this fight?

Yeah, I do. I think we’re in the same position that way. We both need to win. This is a do-or-die fight for both of us.

Does that mean you’re assuming that the loser of this fight will be cut from the UFC?

I think so. Nobody likes a loser. That’s just how it is. I think that makes for a great fight. We’re both fighting for our jobs, you know? When you’re fighting for your job you have to go out there and give it everything you have. That’s all you can do.

What’s it like fighting as the main event for an Ultimate Fighter Finale, fighting for your job, when just two years ago you were fighting as a contestant and it seemed like a high point in your career?

Yeah, it’s weird. I evolved there as a fighter. That’s where I was born into the UFC. I had my ups and suffered some downs since then. But it’s not like I was fighting punks. I was fighting tough guys and I had some tough losses. That’s why I’m in the fight game, to fight tough guys.

It was very nice two years ago to be fighting in the finale and it’s cool to see those guys coming out of it now, but I’m a different person now than I was then.

How are you a different person now? How is the Kendall Grove of today different than the guy who won TUF?