(It’s all about the hair.)

The TAGG Radio Network did an interview with Jake Shields this week, where the EliteXC welterweight made some pretty bold statements. Shields is certainly one of the most exciting up-and-coming fighters in action today and soon he just might add a 170-pound title to go with his impressive 20-4-1 record. Shields faces former UFC-er Drew Fickett and his 31-5 record on March 29th at the Strikeforce/EliteXC event.

Remember that whole “one game at a time” shit that coaches are always preaching to their players so they won’t overlook their current opponent? Apparently Jake Shields doesn’t buy into that. And the fighter he has his eye on happens to be one of the legends in the sport: Frank Shamrock.

Shamrock is headlining the March 29th event and will put his Strikeforce middleweight title on the line against Cung Le.

TAGG provided the following for MMA Junkie:

“I would do that tomorrow,” Shields said regarding the match-up with Shamrock. “In fact, when there was that whole Baroni thing going on, I actually got a phone call asking me if Baroni didn’t come through would I be willing to take that fight. It was about four days before the fight, and I said I would take it… I was willing to step up on four days’ notice and fight him.”

The report says Shamrock would possibly be interested in the fight, but would want Jake to go up to middleweight. Shields says, “Fine, Bee-otches!” – in so many words.

Not many people know how to brand their name like Frank Shamrock. Frank followed in his adoptive brother Ken’s MMA footsteps and built a legendary career for himself, winning titles in the UFC, Pancrase, WEC, and Strikeforce, and knocking off some of the greatest fighters of all-time along the way. After stepping away from the sport for a while earlier this decade, Frank has returned with impressive wins, and since 1997 has suffered only one loss by disqualification.

Shamrock’s next fight will be against Cung Le on March 29th where he will defend his Strikeforce middleweight title against the former kickboxing champion and fan favorite. And of course, his “Blood Brothers” fight with Ken is still on the horizon. CagePotato recently chatted with Frank about the bad blood between him and his brother, the UFC’s exploitative business tactics, exactly when he’ll retire, and what makes him so damn weird.

CagePotato: How long has the fight with Cung Le been in the works?
Frank Shamrock: We really got serious about it three or four months ago. But it’s kind of been on my horizon for a while now.

Le’s a fantastic striker. How do you feel you match-up with him?
I’m hoping to stand up with him. I think MMA striking is a little bit different than traditional striking. And I don’t think he’s ready for the type of strength I can put on him. He’s going to be a good test for me.

Dana White has been quoted as calling you “a weird guy,” and you’ve had more than one public feud. Are you weird or just misunderstood at times?
I’m sure I’m weird in his book because I’m a damn good fighter who believes in my brand and won’t sell my brand to [the UFC]. To him, that’s weird.

The UFC has been losing big-name fighters lately for one reason or another. Where do you see the sport going as far as organizations, marketing, and free agents in the near future?
The truth is just catching up to the UFC. They’ve been the big business that’s been taking advantage of the fighters for a long time. Now everyone’s sort of figuring it out. Unfortunately, they have a big monopoly on the industry at this point, so it’s going to be difficult for other fighters to make it and get recognition elsewhere.

(Tito Ortiz: Planning his next move?)

Too boring to get posts of their own — just boring enough to be lumped in with a few other stories!

— UFC 81 drew 10,583 spectators at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on Saturday, with 7,167 of those asses-in-seats actually paying for their tickets. That’s the lowest paid-attendance figure for a Mandalay Bay UFC event since UFC 48, which featured Ken Shamrock vs. Kimo Leopoldo as the main event. “Breaking Point” took in a live gate of $2,437,890, which is the sixth-lowest total out of the venue’s past seven UFC events. This could all be explained by an inordinate amount of comp tickets being handed out for Brock Lesnar’s Octagon debut, and the UFC could have easily gotten their money back on pay-per-view buys. But since the UFC isn’t required to release information on PPV revenue, we may not hear the full story for some time.

— Tito Ortiz may be planning a 10-year-anniversary re-match with Frank Shamrock outside of the UFC. The two fighters first met at UFC 22 back in September 1999, where they battled for the UFC’s 205-pound title. Shamrock won by submission due to strikes near the end of the fourth round, then retired from the UFC with a perfect 5-0 record in the organization.

— Zuffa has filed a motion for preliminary injunction against Randy Couture, with a hearing date set for March 4th. The injunction will likely be focused on preventing Couture from making further breaches of the non-compete agreement in his employment contract.

— Though most Canadian provinces have given MMA their blessing, the sport is totes unkosher in Ontario.

— I just finished eating some thai food. It wasn’t bad.

Two things occur to me after watching this training video, which Frank Shamrock recently sent out as a bulletin from his MySpace page:

1) Not that the ability to control a balance ball directly correlates to the ability to control a human being, but I’m starting to get the feeling that Cung Le is going to get his ass kicked.

2) I need some kettlebells immediately.

For more Frank, check out this new audio interview from Jarry Park, where the Strikeforce middleweight champ breaks down his match-up with Le, marketing the fight (he’ll be the “bad guy”), the new YouTube “mockumentaries” he’ll be dropping beginning next week to taunt his opponent, the status of his fight against his brother Ken, and his rejected CourtTV reality show. (Apparently, Frank TV already exists…)

(*No*, Quan, I do *not* need a *spotter* in the *bathroom*!)

I’m starting to get the feeling that EliteXC doesn’t want to be taken seriously.

Ten days after they announced that Kimbo Slice’s next victim would be washed-up “pit fighter” Tank Abbott — who MMA fans born after 1982 do not give a fuck about — Elite distributed a new press release stating that the organization has signed Ken Shamrock (!) and his 19-year-old-son Ryan (!!) to multi-fight deals. Ryan Shamrock fights as a bantamweight, and scored a victory by rear-naked-choke in his professional debut in April; his father is that dude who was supposed to retire after Tito Ortiz beat him for the third-straight time in 2006. Both Shamrocks will compete at “EliteXC Presents: Cage Rage 25’’ on March 8th at Wembley Arena in London, against yet-unnamed opponents.

To be honest, if Elite had announced that Kimbo Slice’s next opponent would be Ken Shamrock rather than Tank Abbott, I would have bitched a lot less. Sure, Shamrock and Tank have both lost seven of their last nine fights, but at least Ken takes the sport seriously; Tank’s training regimen seems to consist of carbo-loading and 12-ounce curls.

According to this official-looking website, a date has been set for the fight between adoptive brothers Ken Shamrock and Frank Shamrock that was first announced at HDNet Fights: Reckless Abandon. Though MMA Fightline claims that “Blood Brothers” will go down Thursday (?), April 10, the countdown on BloodBrothersPPV says the match will go down in 83 days, 8 hours and 10 minutes, putting it at an even odder Monday, March 31st (promptly at 11 p.m. ET!). The event is being presented by Mixed Martial Arts Entertainment (MMAE), whose President and CEO happens to be Frank Shamrock. No word yet on a location or an undercard, but the match does have a MySpace Page, which plugs it as “a fight of Biblical proportions,” and refers to “Frank Shamrock VS Ken Shamrock” as a 51-year-old male from San Jose. A countdown bar on the page says there’s actually one year, two months, and 24 days until the fight, which by my calculations is a Tuesday. Listen guys, all those dates sound awesome, but trust me, you’re gonna wanna hold the fight on a weekend. It’s just good business!

…or else you’ll make the kind of outlandish claims that Frank Shamrock was making during a ProElite.com forum chat yesterday. Like, such as:

“I would easily beat Kimbo Slice and Brock Lesnar.”

Alright, fair enough. But how about:

“I’d knock [Anderson Silva] out in 7 minutes.”

Really! Two minutes into the second round, that’s how you’re calling it? The balls on this guy! Shamrock also confirmed that he’s down for fighting his brother Ken in 2009 (“I gotta fight my brother, it’s bigger than mma, it’s what will take the sport mainstream”) and that he’s looking to take on Renzo Gracie and Cung Le next year. To read all of the insanity, go here.

Something else I learned about Frank today: Though the dude just turned 35, he has a nineteen-year-old son. I’m not judging or anything, but my God, do the math on that one.

First, the boring stuff — Jason Miller defeated Tim Kennedy in a unanimous decision and Frank Trigg submitted Edwin Dewees via kimura in the first round at Saturday’s HDNet Fights: Reckless Abandon show. Check back later for videos of both matches…

The real action came from a series of statements made through the course of the night. In order of importance:

1) Randy Couture hopes to fight Fedor Emelianenko as early as October 2008. In an interview during “Reckless Abandon,” Couture said the following: “Unless the UFC wants to do a co-promotion with M-1 and make the Fedor fight happen, I’m going to have to wait ’til my contract expires. I have no intention of breaching that contract — that expires in July, my employment contract expires with them in October, so I would assume that the soonest you’d see me fight Emelianenko would be in October.” At a post-event press conference, he said “I have a contract with the UFC that I have to honor. I can’t breach that or I’ll end up in litigation, so I don’t intend to do that.” Asked for his take on the upcoming Emelianenko/Hong Man Choi fight at Yarennoka!, Couture said, “I hope it goes successfully for him because I want to be the first one to beat him.”

2) A fight between Ken Shamrock and Frank Shamrock is on the horizon. In a separate interview with Ken Shamrock during the HDNet Fights broadcast, Ken addressed the rumors of a match between him and his semi-estranged adoptive brother: “We’re gonna make that happen. It’s not a dirty thing, we don’t hate each other. Fact is, I respect what he’s done with himself, so I’m looking forward to getting in there, and me and the brother doing a little sibling rivalry in the ring…I don’t know where we’re gonna do it yet…but it’s gonna happen.”

Since Bas Rutten is the former coach of the IFL’s L.A. Anacondas team, Kimbo Slice’s trainer, and a personal hero of CagePotato, you’ll be seeing a lot of him on this site, and it would behoove you to get acquainted with his work. A good place to start is this video of Rutten taking on Frank Shamrock in a 1996 Pancrase match. For those of you who grew up on the UFC, the Pancrase rules might throw you off — wikipedia has a decent overview here.

The fight was so theatrical that some have accused it of being a work. Check out Rutten and Shamrock toppling out of the ring at 5:00-5:06; Shamrock’s backward somersault at 7:14-7:18; the exchange at 9:02-9:18 that I won’t even try to explain; and Bas’s celebratory “Rutten Jump” beginning at 11:50, after the fight was stopped due to a cut near Shamrock’s eye.