(Photo via Heavy/Fightday)

Shane Carwin never needed to fight. For the last 13 years, the former UFC Interim Heavyweight Champion has worked full-time as a design engineer, and he could have made that his entire life if he wanted to. But Carwin happened to be blessed with some extraordinary physical gifts — a level of athleticism that helped him become the NCAA Division II wrestling heavyweight national champion in 1999 while competing for Western State Colorado University, and the kind of eerie, inhuman punching-power that made him one of the most intimidating heavyweights in MMA history.

Unfortunately, Carwin’s supersonic rise to the top was derailed just as quickly as it began, first by a failed challenge against unified champion Brock Lesnar at UFC 116 — with Carwin eating his first career loss thanks to Lesnar’s unexpected resilience and a poorly-timed adrenaline dump — and then by a seemingly-endless series of injuries and surgeries. Inactive since his June 2011 decision loss to Junior Dos Santos, Carwin announced his retirement yesterday evening with a simple message on twitter: Officially retired 2day:-) thank you to my family, friends and fans! #dreambig GOD BLESS!!!

Even before he entered the UFC, Carwin was something of an urban legend, a spook story that MMA heavyweights told their kids at night. Making his professional debut in October 2005, Carwin’s first eight fights all ended in first-round stoppage victories, half by chokes, half by way of his enormous fists. During one stretch in 2006-2007, he stopped three consecutive opponents in the first minute of the fight.

In 2008, Carwin got his well-deserved invite to the UFC, where he faced Christian Wellisch at UFC 84. Here’s what happened:

(Well, technically it *was* a training injury. Alexander was trying to train his dog to dance in a circle, and the dog clawed the shit out of his face. / Photo via AlexTheMauler)

As first reported yesterday by the Swedish news outlet SVT, UFC light-heavyweight Alexander Gustafsson suffered a gash in his eyebrow while sparring, which could lead to the cancellation of his UFC on FUEL 9 headlining bout against Gegard Mousasi this coming Saturday. A follow-up report from MMAnytt confirmed with the Swedish MMA Association that it will take several weeks before the injury heals up, and that Gustafsson won’t be medically approved for the fight “with 99% certainty.”

If Gustafsson indeed has to withdraw from his UFC on FUEL 9 match on short notice, it would be devastating, both for the event — which was being carried to a large extent by Gustafsson — and for Alexander himself, who was likely just one more impressive performance away from clinching a light-heavyweight title shot.

However, the fight hasn’t been formally canceled yet. As UFC president Dana White explained in a text message to Ariel Helwani, “The [Swedish Mixed Martial Arts Federation] has not said he can’t fight, and he wants to fight.”

We’ll update you if anything changes. In the meantime, you can bet that the UFC is turning over every rock to find a big-name backup opponent for Mousasi, because if the main event is switched to Ross Pearson vs. Ryan Couture at the last minute, you really couldn’t blame the Swedes for rioting.

(“It’s embarrassing, okay? Let’s just say I’ll be on penicillin for a while, and leave it at that.”)

As first reported by MMAFighting yesterday evening, UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem will be unable to fight former champion Junior Dos Santos at UFC 160: Velasquez vs. Bigfoot 2 (May 25th, Las Vegas), due to an undisclosed injury suffered in training. No word yet on the nature or severity of the injury, although it will reportedly require 4-5 weeks of recovery. [Update: Overeem has revealed that it was a slight tear in his quad muscle.]

As soon as news of the withdrawal broke, fellow UFC heavyweight Mark Hunt tried to organize a twitter assault to claim the replacement spot against Dos Santos. However, UFC president Dana White suggested that Overeem vs. Dos Santos will simply be postponed to sometime in the summer. Ah well. Would have been nice to see this happen again.

The injury couldn’t come at a worse time for the hormonally fluctuating Overeem, who just followed up his nine-month licensing timeout with an upset knockout loss to Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva last month. If Overeem does meet Dos Santos this summer, the fight will come a full year-and-a-half since the Reem’s last victory over Brock Lesnar in December 2011 — not a good look for a guy who spent the previous four years unbeaten.

(…and if you include non-Zuffa fighters who shattered their penises last year, that number jumps up to 2,057.)

Yes, one hundred and four. Triple digits, baby. That startling figure comes to us via MMAFighting.com researcher Steve Borchardt, who tallied up all the injury pullouts by UFC and Strikeforce fighters in 2012, and fed them all into this chronological spreadsheet. (Color key: Injuries to champions are in yellow, all other main event fighters are in red, and co-mainers are in teal. Also, “KO’d by sauna floor when cutting weight” really deserves its own color. An ugly brownish-orange, perhaps.)

We’re all reasonable men and women, right? We know that this explosion in high-profile injury withdrawals can’t really be explained by a “curse,” or bad luck, or terrible coincidence. Grueling training conditions — in which MMA fighters work all year round, scrapping against elite-level teammates rather than paid sparring dummies, executing body-motions that are specifically designed to blow out your knees — has to account for most of it.

But are there other explanations? When you look at all the injuries listed as “Undisclosed” on the chart, you can’t help but speculate…

(At times like these, you just have to keep telling yourself, “At least I’m not Ray Elbe…at least I’m not Ray Elbe…” / Image via MiddleEasy)

Can we all just pretend that Hector Lombard‘s UFC debut against Tim Boetsch didn’t happen? The heavy-handed killer we saw run down Rousimar Palhares like a frightened deer at the TUF Smashes Finale was the guy we’ve been waiting for and expecting since he jumped over to the UFC from Bellator. But there was a reason why Lombard’s dance partner looked tentative during the match — Palhares suffered ligament damage and broken bones in his foot after throwing a kick in the opening moments. Toquinho explains:

“During the fight, my kick was working well. But soon in the first round, one of my kicks hit Lombard’s shin below his knee. I heard a snap, and I knew something bad happened. From that moment on, I [started] feeling my foot more and more numb and without strength to walk around the Octagon.”

An injury early into a match can take a fighter’s mind completely out of the competition — just ask Travis Browne. As Palhares struggled to process his body’s new limitations, he turned into a sitting duck for Lombard’s power punches, and now the Cuban is officially a factor in the middleweight division. Meanwhile, Palhares has now lost his last two UFC bouts by first-round stoppage, including his TKO defeat against Alan Belcher in May. Get well soon, Stump.

In addition to being one of the least decision-prone fighters to ever grace the Octagon, James Irvin is also notorious for being the unluckiest bastard in the history of the sport. From poorly-timed injuries and ill-advised weight cuts to chemical misadventures and freak accidents, the Sandman has suffered through enough hardships to fill the careers of ten journeymen. So with the help of our friends at Havoc Store, we put together an illustrated timeline of the most unfortunate moments in Irvin’s MMA career, which you can check out after the jump.

Enjoy, share it with your friends, and show some love to Havoc Store by visiting their blog or following them on Facebook. And James? You have our sympathy, dude.

(“Whoa, tiger-claws, huh? Alright! Well, see ya later.”)

Despite regular treatments of…ugh…bloodletting?…Cung Le‘s right foot is still not fully recovered from the injury he received during his victory over Patrick Cote at UFC 148. That’s a problem, considering that his main event bout against Rich Franklin at UFC Macau (aka UFC China aka UFC on FUEL 6) is only nine days away. But as he told Ariel Helwani recently on The MMA Hour, the importance of competing in China is worth the danger of fighting hurt. Or at least that’s what he’d like us to believe:

“I would say [my foot is] 80% now. I’ve kicked a couple of my training partners in the head, [and] it still hurt a little bit, but I’m hoping by the time the fight comes on it’ll be 100 percent…whether I’m 80 or 100, I’m gonna fight…if [this fight] wasn’t in Macau, China, I’d give myself the right amount of time so my foot could really heal…I feel like martial arts basically started from China and my roots are the Chinese martial arts, and of course the UFC needed me to fight…I was not even cleared yet, [and Dana White] was like, ‘Cung’s gonna fight.’ So, a little bit of pressure, but pressure’s good.”

(“You know what else doesn’t work on me? Left hooks to the fa-DAMN IT!” / Photo via Inovafoto)

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is the oldest 36-year-old in the history of humanity. And while he came into his UFC 153 fight against Dave Herman as a more-than 2-1 favorite, he didn’t inspire much confidence at the weigh-ins, where he dragged his way up to the stage, shook Arianny Celeste‘s hand (perhaps mistaking her for Burt Watson?), used his brother to brace himself while taking off his wind pants, removed his shirt to reveal a noticeably soft midsection, then limped his way to the staredown.

As it turns out, there’s a reason why Big Nog may have looked even more decrepit than usual that weekend (via MMAConvert):

Former interim UFC heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira fought Dave Herman at UFC 153 with a fractured rib. Nogueira suffered the injury a week into training for the short notice bout with Herman in Brazil. “Fractured my rib three weeks ago on my right side,” said Nogueira, in an interview with SporTV. “I went to the doctor, took a local anesthetic to be able to train.”

(This fan-made hype video was first posted to YouTube on September 30th. Wow. CletusDamVan must have read The Secret.)

Ugh, you guys, I had the worst dream last night. I was at home, but it was actually the house I grew up in, you know? I was watching TV, and suddenly all the lights went out. Dana White walked in through the back door. He told me — and here’s the freaky part — that Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen would be coaching the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, and they’d actually be fighting for the light-heavyweight belt in April. I was like, “Why? Why are you doing this?” And he said, “Because I fucking hate you.” And when he said that, I realized it wasn’t Dana White, it was my own father. Then, my teeth started cracking and falling out one by one, and-OH MY GOD NO! AHHHHHHHH! THIS CAN’T HAPPEN! THIS CAN’T HAPPEN! [scene]

Look, we’re not alone in our utter distaste for this booking. Elsewhere on the Internet, pundits have called Jones vs. Sonnen (vs. TUF) a thinly-veiled money grab that reeks of desperation and sets a horrible precedent. But this matchup is now our reality, and we have to deal with reality on reality’s terms. Here’s a sample of the fallout and news updates that yesterday’s bombshell kicked up:

- Tweet of the Day, from Dan Henderson: “I guess I should just quit training to win fights and to be exciting for the fans and just go to shit talking school. @danawhite”. Dan and Chael might be bros from way back, but that clearly doesn’t make this news any easier for Hendo to swallow. It’s insulting, really. Henderson is still the most rightful challenger to Jones’s belt, but an ill-timed injury has apparently put him on the UFC’s “pay no mind” list. Don’t make us say it.

- More sour grapes: Of course, Sonnen’s new opportunity now leaves Forrest Griffin without an opponent; FoGriff was originally supposed to meet Sonnen at UFC 155 in December. As you can imagine, Griffin doesn’t seem too thrilled about this latest development either, telling Ariel Helwani, “I’m not mad at him. Why fight your way to the top when you can talk your way to the top? I’m actually happy I’m not fighting him anymore, because watching his fights was boring and tedious.” The hot new rumor is that Griffin could possibly face the recently-wrecked Stephan Bonnar instead. Fine, whatever.

- And now, the Chael Sonnen reaction video you’ve all been waiting for/dreading…

(Between the facial hair and the t-shirt, the dude was kind of asking for it. / Photo via @RockholdMMA)

Strikeforce’s already-struggling November 3rd event just lost a title fight. Multiple sources have reported that middleweight champ Luke Rockhold recently suffered a wrist injury, and has withdrawn from his scheduled belt-defense against Lorenz Larkin next month in Oklahoma City.

The 11/3 event was originally headlined by Daniel Cormier vs. Frank Mir, before Mir dropped out last month due to an injury of his own. A replacement opponent for Cormier still hasn’t been booked yet — no thanks to Meathead — and now that the card has lost its co-main event as well, the lineup has gone from “damn good” to “damn, are they going to cancel this one too?”

The supporting bouts still scheduled for the card include Jorge Masvidal vs. Bobby Green, Tim Kennedy vs. Trevor Smith, and Sara McMann vs. Liz Carmouche. We’ll update you when Strikeforce figures out what the hell its going to do. Our suggestion: Put the remaining fights on Showtime Extreme, and use the original timeslot for Gigolos reruns.

(“Welp, that’s the last time I try to use left-handed scissors.”)

From Tito’s neck to Lensar’s gut to Cruz’s knee to Belfort’s hand, injuries to TUF coaches have become the rule lately, not the exception. And Shane Carwin nearly became the latest name on that list after injuring his knee in training. According to MMA Weekly, Carwin suffered no major tears or damage to his knee, but it was enough to prevent him from traveling to England this weekend for a scheduled autograph signing.

As of now, Carwin is still scheduled to face rival Roy Nelson at the TUF 16 Finale on December 15th. But as Dan Henderson and Jose Aldo recently demonstrated, sometimes fighters try to tough out their injuries until the last possible moment, before dropping out when reality sets in. And since Carwin already withdrew from a UFC 125 fight against Roy Nelson, and because he’s spent much of the last two years recovering from neck and back surgeries, the appeal of just getting in there and throwing down against a guy you can’t stand must be overwhelming.

While we certainly hope that’s not the case, and that Carwin is close to 100% by December, this is the 2012 UFC Injury Curse we’re talking about — Carwin’s knee could merely be a red herring for the horrid fate that lies in store for Roy Nelson.

(Welcome, gentlemen. We’ve been waiting for you.)

For the second consecutive month, Zuffa has canceled an event on very short notice due to one of the headliners pulling out with an injury. As confirmed in a press release on UFC.com, Gilbert Melendez suffered an injury in training, and was forced to withdraw from his lightweight title fight against Pat Healy at this Saturday’s Strikeforce show in Sacramento. As a result, the 9/29 card has been scratched altogether.

As with UFC 151, the relative weakness of the “Melendez vs. Healy” supporting card was surely a factor in the event’s cancelation. But what makes this situation unique is that Showtime essentially made the decision, not Strikeforce. From the press release:

Without the Melendez-Healy title bout, SHOWTIME®, which determines which fights are televised on the premium network, decided that it would not air Saturday’s scheduled event.

“When SHOWTIME informed us that it would not be airing the event, we made the difficult decision to cancel Saturday’s card in Sacramento,” STRIKEFORCE CEO Scott Coker said. “Without a television partner, we simply could not move forward with this event. We wish Gilbert a speedy recovery and will work diligently and quickly to reschedule the fighters affected by this news on upcoming cards.”

Being the poster-designer for the UFC must be a horrible job. You spend all day selecting the perfect photos of each headliner, tweaking size and shading until they’re juuuuust right, and then you get a frantic phone call from your boss just as you’re leaving for the weekend, saying that so-and-so blew out his such-and-such, and it’s time to start over.

Case in point, check out the poster above. For a brief moment between UFC 151 being canceled and Jones vs. Belfort being booked, some poor bastard actually had to make a Jones vs. Machida 2 poster, and Lyoto Machida hadn’t even accepted the fight. I’m not saying a lot of time was spent on this, I’m saying that no matter how long it took, that time could have been better spent napping.

We’ve compiled a lot more outdated UFC posters in the pages below. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be reminded of great fights that were sunk due to injury, and of the fragility of human ACLs. If we’ve left out any good ones, shoot us some links in the comments section.

(Who ordered the mahi mahi?) 

You’ve gotta feel for Mark Munoz. In the past year, the dude has suffered not only one of the most disgusting elbow injuries on record (see above), but one of the most brutal, not to mention late stoppages of the year at the hands and elbows of Chris Weidman (see below). And he did the latter while rocking one of the goofiest haircuts in MMA history.

And just when you thought that Munoz might be headed down the path of recovery and redemption, it appears that he could be out of action for an entire year to deal with a foot injury he suffered in preparation for the ass kicking he would receive courtesy of Weidman.

Talk about adding injury to insult.

Full story after the jump. 

(And he *still* looks like the smaller fighter. / Photo via MMAJunkie)

We had a feeling that dropping to featherweight would be Frankie Edgar‘s quickest path to another title shot — we just didn’t think it would happen this fast. As first reported by USA Today, Edgar will step in to face Jose Aldo for the UFC featherweight title at UFC 153 (October 13th, Rio de Janeiro), after original challenger Erik Koch was forced to withdraw due to an undisclosed injury.

If Edgar is victorious, he will become just the third fighter in UFC history (after Randy Couture and BJ Penn) to win a belt in two separate weight classes. We feel awful for Koch — who has already been inactive for nearly a year due to injuries and postponements — but you have to admit that this is one of the rare times in which an injury to a main event fighter results in a more compelling matchup. Said UFC president Dana White of the booking:

(Jon Jones is now the UFC’s public enemy #1. Does that mean we can come out of hiding now? / Photo via MMAJunkie)

The rumors were true — and even worse than we thought. Due to a knee injury suffered in training, Dan Henderson has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled light-heavyweight title fight against Jon Jones at UFC 151, and because the UFC couldn’t find a suitable main event replacement, the UFC is canceling an event for the first time in the Zuffa era. Dana White confirmed the news in a press conference held earlier today — describing the cancellation as “probably one of my all-time lows as being president of the UFC” — and he made no attempt to hide his heated emotions during the call. Here are the brass tacks…

- Henderson suffered a partial tear in his MCL during training, which was serious enough to keep him from competing.

- According to Dana White, Chael Sonnen immediately jumped up to take the fight (“I’ll fly to Vegas tonight and fight him,” White quoted Sonnen as saying), and the UFC immediately began preparing behind-the-scenes to promote Jones vs. Sonnen on eight days’ notice. But Jon Jones turned down the matchup, refusing to fight Sonnen on short notice.

- White is extremely upset that Jones, a UFC champion and pound-for-pound candidate, would turn down a fight that would save an event. Even Tito Ortiz never pulled this shit, he pointed out. White lambasted the idea that Jones would turn this fight down for business reasons. “If he was a businessman, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” he said. White agreed that his relationship with Jones would change “a lot” after this: “Me and Lorenzo are both disgusted.” Later in the call, White pointed out how Jones turning down the fight now screws all the supporting-card fighters out of paychecks.

- White saved additional venom for trainer Greg Jackson, who reportedly told Jones, “There’s no way you take this fight on eight days notice, it would be the biggest mistake of your entire career.” Said White: “How much faith do you have in your champion and your guy? [Jackson] is a fucking sport killer. This guy’s from another planet….Greg Jackson should never be interviewed by anybody ever again, except by a psychiatrist.”

(Its a trap.)

Some of Chael P. Sonnen’s recent statements in advance of UFC 148 this Saturday almost make sense. Almost. Speaking to the media about the rash of recent injuries and subsequent match-up shuffling in the UFC, Chael said that he believed any fighter that pulls out of a fight because of injury should have it counted as a loss on his or her professional record.

“I think there should be forfeiture,” he told MMA Junkie. ”It’s not realistic with the architecture that we have, but we’re the only sport where you can just not show up. Every event is set. The Super Bowl for 2015. The kickoff time, the venue — it’s set. If one team doesn’t want to show up, a Super Bowl champion will be crowned that day.”

On one hand, it’s worth examining if the recent wave of UFC injuries is the result of fighters pulling out of scheduled matches simply because they feel their health is less than 100%, and they might be more competitive at a later date. The reality is, everybody fights injured, and pulling out of a fight just because you’re a little banged up is a way of gaming the system, and screws the fans out of fights they already paid to see.

On the other hand, Sonnen’s analogy falls apart almost immediately. Athletes can and do pull out of competition due to injury in every single sport on the planet. This includes the aforementioned Super Bowl, where players on teams that have made it to the big game often miss out because of injuries they’ve sustained. And just as the Super Bowl still goes on when players get injured, UFC title bouts still happen when an opponent pulls out. It just might not be the title fight that was originally scheduled.

(“I call that punch the ‘parlay-wrecker’.”)

When Jamie Varner returned to the UFC last month as an injury replacement against Edson Barboza at UFC 146, virtually nobody gave him a chance. (We called it “the biggest UFC squash-match of the year,” if you want to get specific.) Barboza was the undefeated wheel-kickin’ buzzsaw in the lightweight division, and Varner was just a WEC washout who had lost a decision to Dakota Cochrane the previous year. Varner admitted that Barboza was literally the only guy in the UFC he didn’t want to fight. And yet, he stormed the Brazilian golden boy, knocking him out in one round, and earning another tour of duty in the UFC. The question is, can he do it again?

It was reported yesterday that Terry Etim has withdrawn from his UFC on FOX 4 match with Joe Lauzon — yeah, yeah, that godforsaken UFC injury bug, the world is ending, etc. — and will be replaced by Varner. Inconsistent as of late, Lauzon has gone 3-3 in his last six appearances, most recently getting knocked out by Anthony Pettis in February.

(Fernandes came down with a sudden case of “wandering into Stockton by accident and getting his fuckin’ ass beat.”)

UPDATE, 11:46 a.m. ET: And now, Bibiano Fernandes is denying that he signed with the UFC in the first place. Huh…

How powerful is the 2012 UFC Injury Curse? It’s now attacking fighters who have just signed with the promotion. One week after DREAM bantamweight champ Bibiano Fernandes was inked to face Roland Delorme in his Octagon debut at UFC 149 (July 21st, Calgary), Bibi has withdrawn due to an injury suffered in training. Delorme is expected to remain on the UFC 149 card, against an opponent to be named later.

One big name who won’t be sticking around is Erik Koch, the featherweight contender who was originally slated to challenge for Jose Aldo’s belt at the event. Instead of taking a fight against a late-replacement, MMA Weekly reports that Koch will withdraw from the card and wait for Aldo to recover. Aldo reportedly suffered a thigh strain while preparing for the fight, and won’t be out for an extended period of time. But since Koch hasn’t competed since his decision win over Jonathan Brookins last September, he might be looking at a total layoff of a year or more — not an ideal situation when you’re heading into your first title fight.

Any guesses on who the UFC Injury Curse will strike next? You have to figure that at some point It will run out of fighters to ruin and move on to peripheral figures like ring girls and announcers. Please, please be careful with that thing, Bruce…

(I know, dude. I know.)

I think we can officially call it a “wave” of injuries now: The latest UFC fighter to withdraw from an upcoming marquee matchup is middleweight Brian Stann, who will not be making his UFC on FOX 4 main event date with former Bellator champ Hector Lombard due to a shoulder injury. According to MMA Fighting, Stann will not require surgery, but will be sidelined for six-to-eight weeks.

No word yet on who will come in to replace Stann against Lombard, if anybody — but theoretically, that person will need a strong chin if he hopes to last past the first round. The co-main event for UFC on FOX 4 (August 4th, Los Angeles) is a just-as-marketable light-heavyweight feature between Lyoto Machida and Ryan Bader, which could be bumped to the top as a last resort. We’ll keep you posted when we know more.

(Looks healthy to me. Rub some dirt on it and suck in that lip, kid. / Photo via @vitorbelfort)

When we finally get around to making our “Ten Top Injury-Cursed MMA Fighters of All Time” list, Vitor Belfort has to be in the top 3 based on the number of marquee fights that have been scrapped due to his horrifically bad luck. The UFC announced over the weekend that Belfort has suffered (another) broken hand in training, and won’t be able to fight Wanderlei Silva in the main event of UFC 147 (June 23rd; Belo Horizonte, Brazil). The event will go on as scheduled, with the Axe Murderer headlining against an opponent to be named later.

This isn’t just awful news for Vitor — it’s even worse news for UFC 147, which was originally supposed to be headlined by the Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen mega-rematch. After that match was moved to Vegas, Jose Aldo was briefly considered for the headlining spot, before his title defense against Erik Koch was made official for UFC 149 in Calgary. The point is, Belfort vs. Silva might not have been enough to carry a pay-per-view in the first place, and now the card is almost completely at square one less than a month before showtime.

So who would you like to see step in against Wanderlei Silva? And should the UFC consider scrapping this card altogether?

(Props: @JoshLBarnett)

Now, if that happened to my hand, it would be a wrap — you wouldn’t be able to stop me from sobbing. But Josh Barnett is cut from a different cloth than you or I. Despite suffering this uncomfortable-looking break within the first 30 seconds of his Strikeforce headlining fight against Black Fedor/Bro Cop on Saturday, the Warmaster bravely battled on for five agonizing rounds, only letting the pain show after the match was over. That’s what you call a savage and a true champ. Daniel Cormier also re-broke his hand early in the fight, but until he provides us with x-ray evidence, we’re going to have to proclaim Barnett the winner of their unofficial Gnarly Hand Injury contest.

(Photo via ocregister.com)

UFC welterweight James Wilks — who became the welterweight winner of The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K. after slicing through Che Mills, Frank Lester (twice), and DaMarques Johnson — has announced his retirement from MMA. The 34-year-old Brit has been sidelined due to injuries since his decision loss to Claude Patrick in October 2010, and finally gave in to doctors’ warnings that he could become paralyzed if he continued to compete.

As MMAJunkie explained, Wilks has spent his entire MMA career fighting with a fractured vertebrae from an old rugby injury, leading to a condition called spinal stenosis: ”My bones are touching the spinal cord,” Wilks said. “There should be a gap, so when you get hit, you’ve got some leeway for it not to cut into the vertebrae. But my vertebrae have grown from the front and back, and they’re touching the spinal cord…I think if I was single and didn’t have a wife and a son to look after, I probably would have risked it. But I thought about it for quite a while and made the decision (to retire)…It sucks because I don’t feel I’ve shown what really have in the Octagon, and I didn’t want to go out on a loss.”

Wilks compiled an official record of 2-2 in the Octagon, including a decision win over Peter Sobotta at UFC 115. He’ll now turn his attention to teaching at his Lightning MMA gym in Laguna Hills, California, and extolling the virtues of a plant-based diet.

(The truth is, Ronda walked into the gym and Dominick’s knees buckled on their own. / Photo via @RondaRousey)

In light of the sly gamesmanship in that recent Urijah Faber video, UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz went on MMAFighting’s The MMA (After) Hour to explain how his knee injury came about, and that it wasn’t the result of being beat up by a girl. Here’s what he had to say, as transcribed by MMAMania:

“I was in training camp, I had just gotten done with TUF, and I usually get done about 11. I got to practice at 11:30 and I was sparring that day with kickboxing and takedowns and a guy got behind me in a scramble and he went for a trip, the trip, his hips went in on my knee and it just buckled my knee right then and there. I sat out the rest of the round, threw some ice on my knee, it was pretty painful. I was just kind of hoping for the best to be honest. I was hoping and praying that it was nothing crazy because it was a very, very loud pop. I kind of went into denial mode for the rest of that day saying ‘Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ So I took some ibuprofen and that night I went in to get my normal workout in and I go to move around and get my shadowboxing going to warm up and me knee just pops right out. And I just knew right then and there that I needed to go get an MRI and get this checked out because me knee wasn’t stable and it kind of felt like I was walking on ice. I went in and got an MRI that day and got the bad results, the bad news…

Just to shut down some rumors that Faber thinks is funny to start and makes jokes about an Olympic bronze medalist and her taking out my knees. To me it’s not really funny, it’s just another way to know, for the world to know why me and Faber don’t get along. I wasn’t training with her at all. I brought her in to help my team on TUF…

(The ouchie comes at the 1:56 mark.)

In case you haven’t been keeping up with The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil — and sure, I’m one of those people — Team Wanderlei finally got its first victory on Sunday’s episode, after losing the first five quarterfinal matches to Team Vitor. Featherweight Rony “Jason” Mariano Bezerra put the Axe-Murderers on the board with a first-round submission win over Anistavio “Gasparzinho” Medeiros de Figueiredo, who proved why it’s rarely a good idea to slam your way out of an armbar. Jason will now meet Hugo “Wolverine” Viana in the featherweight semis.

The arm-snappage led to a shouting match between the coaches, which you can check out after the jump. If you understand Portuguese, please enlighten us with a summary…

(“Also? I think my nuts be all hyperextended and shit.”)

In today’s installment of “God damn it, Rampage,” the PRIDE fanboy wet dream rematch between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua has been canned just as quickly as it was announced, due to Jackson needing surgery on both of his knees. As Jackson tweeted (and keep in mind that “2″ = “to”):

“2 keep it real,the Shogun fight will have 2 wait,I just found out that I have 2 get surgery on both knees, but I heal fast don’t trip…John Jones fucked the left knee,n my sparing partner @antiheromma fucked the right 1,thanks guy!! But I’m not worried I got the best docs”

Surgery? Just rub some testosterone on those creaky knees and get back in the game, homey! There’s no current timetable for Jackson’s recovery and return, but it’s certainly bad timing for Rampage to be dealing with such a major procedure before his final fight with the UFC. As Shogun could tell you himself, your first fight back after knee surgery doesn’t always go so well.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/

With all of the resistance New York and it’s crooked supporters have put up against the legalization of MMA in the Empire State, it’s surprising that none of these do-gooder groups have ever raised a stink about any really dangerous sports like football, or cheerleading — the latter of which accounts for nearly 67 percent of catastrophic sporting injuries in females.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/katrinaberarducci)

A recent report showed that between 1982 and 2007, there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries and three deaths recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority occurring in cheerleading. The study went on to say that 25% of NCAA Insurance program funding went towards cheerleading-related injuries.

(“As soon as I get this pesky bleeding stopped, I’ll return to the cage.”)

Sean Sherk was on MMAJunkie Radio on Monday and the 38-year-old former UFC lightweight champ revealed that he only has a handful of fights left in him.

“I want to fight again. I’m a fighter. At this point in time, do I plan on fighting five or six more times? Probably not, to be honest with you. That’s why I want big fights. I want co-main-event or main-event type fights that are going to cement my place in the UFC Hall of Fame,” Sherk says. “Absolutely, I think at this point in time, I’ve done enough to be a hall of famer, but I’d like a few more fights to make my mark.”

“Listen, I know we’ve had our moments, but before you make your list just hear me out…” (Photo: Gossiboocrew.com)

We’re only a few hours into the new year, but unless your head hit the pillow just as the ball dropped, you’ve probably already carried some of your bad habits with you into 2012. We are creatures of habit, and change doesn’t come naturally to us. If it did, we wouldn’t make such a big production out of our ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. The sport of mixed martial arts and its fans are no different. Here’s a quick look at some of the bad habits we’ve picked up and poor decisions we’ve made over the past 12-months. Let’s hope we can leave them behind in yesteryear.

(“I am not impressed with the UFC’s injured champions statistics.”)

Add Georges St-Pierre to the list of UFC champions who have been sidelined by injury in the past year.

According to a tweet by UFC president Dana White, the 30-year-old French Canadian has been forced out of his scheduled UFC 137 title defense against Carlos Condit.

With the injury, St-Pierre brings the UFC’s injured champions list from the past year to 100 percent. Each of the promotion’s title holders from bantamweight up to middleweight has been on the DL list in the past 365 days.

Check out the injury curse list as it stands today after the jump.