We’re not sure why every anti-MMA writer out there feels the need to compare the sport to some form of pornography, but when doing a write-up on the historic UFC 157 event some two weeks ago, OnMilwaukee contributing writer Dave Begel did just that, labeling women’s MMA a “disgrace” before declaring that women should just stick to tennis or golf or some sport that wont immediately be viewed as “some kind of porn” by male audiences nationwide.

Unfortunately, we here at CagePotato only have so much time each day to educate these fools via scathing emails, so you can imagine our excitement when we saw that Bas Rutten and Kenny Rice decided to take Begel to task for us. Although the dynamic Inside MMA duo did their best to try and shake some sense into this stubborn old bastard –bringing up such classic pro-MMA arguing points as “Hey, it’s not as bad as boxing” and “Hey, do you watch the Olympics?” — their words clearly fell on deaf ears.

“I don’t want to defend boxing or judo or Brazilian whatever,” Begel states, in doing so proving that he would totally be prepared to defend any of those sports if given the chance, “MMA is designed to hurt somebody. Boxing is one thing, MMA is another.”

Oh, and on the topic of WMMA? Begel believes that — and we’re paraphrasing here — because some of us men have fantasies about two women going at it, therefore the sport is pornographic in nature. We’re not going to delve into the fact that his “theory” could just as easily be applied to the men’s side of the sport, or wrestling, or couple’s ice skating, etc. Instead, we recommend that if you are seeking more sage-like wisdom of this nature, make sure to pick up Begel’s new book , Research: What Gives? – the follow-up to his groundbreaking bestseller, Women: Where Do They Get Off (And How?) — on Kindle today.

-J. Jones

And yet he STILL hasn’t learned that only tools wear Affliction…

We’re just a few days away from UFC on FOX 4, which will be headlined by arguably the most confusing contender fight in modern UFC history. While most fans can kind of justify Shogun earning a title shot with a victory given his track record (especially if Hendo manages to put away Jones at UFC 151), Brandon Vera remains a gigantic question mark. With his most notable victory being a TKO over heavyweight Frank Mir back in 2006, it’s hardly a surprise that most fans and pundits are completely unable to make sense of this bout even headlining the card, yet alone being for a title shot.

If Brandon Vera attempted to justify all of this through his appearance on “Inside MMA,” he ended up just raising even more questions. Case in point: Vera talked about his training camp leading up to his bout with “Shogun” Rua. Aside from bringing back his Muay Thai coaches and sparring with Alexander Gustafsson, Vera commented that he was ”doing the things he should have been doing since day one.” Specifically, he’s actually caring now about his career. As he told the “Inside MMA” crew:

(Nope. Nothing suspicious here.) 

Fact: Next to the DMV and Detroit, airports are the most terrible places on the face of our dying planet. Fact: Stephan Bonnar is a dog-fighting, gun-toting, BAMF who is not afraid to to stare Death in the eyes and wipe that bitchy smirk off his face. Being the “gives not a fuck” type of guy that “The American Pyscho” is, the MMA apparel company he co-founded, NGAUGE, have found themselves in quite a bit of hot water lately, mainly due to the “gives not a fuck” attitude of their “Trash Talkin Kids” t-shirt line. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

After getting into a little legal tossup with Josh Koscheck last summer, you would probably think that Bonnar’s t-shirt based troubles were over. You would be wrong, and I would implore you to stop being so Goddamn ignorant.

You see, alongside Rich Franklin and Keith Jardine, Bonnar was kind enough to travel all the way to Bahrain to visit some of the U.S. Troops recently. He was likely charming, and he likely brightened their day. But proving that no good deed goes unpunished, on Bonnar’s way out of the country, he was detained by airport security, interrogated for over a day, and bitten by a poisonous camel spider before finally being allowed to leave. Why, you ask? Because apparently airport security didn’t appreciate the subtlety of the Melvin Guillard “Young Assassin” shirt that Bonnar was wearing.

He recounted the ridiculous story on Tuesday’s episode of Inside MMA: 

We’re getting ready to leave Bahrain, and I get detained at the airport. Jardine and Franklin get on the flight, and they take me in the room. They’re asking me all these questions, and they’re furious. One guy’s comin’ in the room and pointin’ at me, all furious, like that. And, what I think is that, I had on the ’Young Assassin’ shirt, with Melvin Guillard, and there’s a guy with a turban with his brains spillin’ out. I don’t think they liked that too much.

Check out more from Bonnar’s interview, along with a nasty photo of the spider bite and two video updates taken by Bonnar himself while the ordeal was occurring, after the jump.

(Overeem likes his pecs like his K-1 trophies: abnormally large.) 

On a recent episode of Inside MMA, commentators Joe Rogan and Michael Schiavello sat down alongside Josh Barnett to discuss the topic that has thrown the MMA world into chaos over the past few days: Alistair Overeem’s positive drug test. Barnett wisely chose to remain silent for the duration of the conversation, likely because his last positive test was responsible for destroying the Afflicition promotion before it could spend itself into its own grave.

But it was Schiavello, a long time friend of Overeem, who took an interesting stance on the issue, basically saying that, if a fighter pisses hot anytime other than fight week, why should they be held accountable? Here’s what he said:

You know, while we’re talking about the subject, Kenny, I just wanna chime in here on a couple things that have been playing on my mind, the last week or so, since the news of Alistair (Overeem) broke. Alistair doesn’t have a license with the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC), so how are they testing him in the first place when he doesn’t have a license with them? By what jurisdiction are they testing him? And ‘B,’ everyone seems to be hanging Alistair out to dry. They’ve been nailing him to the cross and crucifying him, but it’s still two months away from his fight. You know, he hasn’t technically cheated. Because, unless he pisses hot on the fight night, how could he possibly have cheated? There’s still an opportunity he can get from the 14:1 down to the allowed 6:1 level by fight time. But we’re calling him out as a cheat, two months out from a fight?

Yes, Michael, we are calling him a cheat. Probably because he fucking cheated.

Check out the video, along with Mark Hunt’s reaction to the news, after the jump.

(That moment when you get hit so hard you shit your pants in front of the whole gym.) 

Having worked with everyone from Manny Pacquiao to Andrei Arlovksi, it’s fair to say that Freddie Roach knows damn near all there is to know about the stand up game.

So when he sat down alongside current WBA (super), WBC, and The Ring super middleweight champion Andre Ward on last night’s edition of Inside MMA, the inevitable question came up: who does he think are the top five best boxers in MMA?

Check out Freddie’s top five, along with his thoughts on GSP vs. A. Silva, after the jump.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/HDNetFights)

HDNet only had to use one of six degrees of separation when adding “That 70′s Show” actress Laura Prepon to the Inside MMA guest list this week alongside former UFC light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin.

An avid MMA fan who is often seen on camera during pay-per-view events, Prepon is rumored to have dated former UFC and Bellator heartthrob Roger Huerta. Moving on.

In the segment above Fo-Griff and Donna take some reader questions about preparing for the apocalypse and who “The Red Dragon” would fight if she had to pick one of her former co-stars.

SPOILER: No, it wasn’t Mila Kunis.

(You will be hit with the creepy at the 0:11 mark. Props: HDNetFights via MiddleEasy.)

Ian “Uncle Creepy” McCall made a recent appearance on Inside MMA to discuss the UFC’s addition of flyweights, and Jesus Christ, would you look at that guy. It’s like him and her had a baby. The long-haired surfer vibe that Ian used to rock in his WEC days is gone, replaced by a gentleman who looks like he might drive a surprise van in his spare time. Are the UFC’s fans ready for such mustachioed intensity?

(Video courtesy of YouTube/HDNetFights)

Proving Ground winner and Potato Nation member in good standing Nick Newell appeared on Inside MMA on Monday with Ron Kruck to talk about his upcoming XFC fight and the tragic passing of his good friend Abi Mestre back in April.

“Notorious” Nick’s XFC debut will be a bittersweet one as Abi won the XFC contest for a slot on the promotion’s roster and Nick came second. After Mestre was killed in a motorcycle accident in the spring, the XFC reached out to Nick and offered him the contract in Abi’s place and he accepted with the blessing of Abi’s family.

(Video courtesy of IronForgesIron)

Nick Diaz has quickly become one of the most polarizing figures perhaps behind only Chael Sonnen in the sheer even number of fans and haters, but it looks like some facets of the Stockton native’s act may be more calculated than we thought.

While making a rare media appearance on HDNet’s Inside MMA last night Diaz told hosts Kenny Rice and Bas Rutten that his callout of UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre wasn’t a spur of the moment decision he made after beating BJ Penn at UFC 137. He explained that he was pretty sure he’d get his previously promised title shot if he chose his words carefully for his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan and that he was happy that St-Pierre took the bait.

Once again, our boy ZombieProphet over at IronForgesIron has come through with an awesome bit off MMA related goodness to help your work day along. Today, we have the musings of Mustache King, life advice expert, and former UFC fighter Don Frye from yesterday’s Halloween themed episode of Inside MMA.

Donning the most appropriate Halloween costume imaginable in Magnum P.I., Frye provided us with more gems in a minute than most of us can come up with in a lifetime:

(VidProps: YouTube/ZP420MMA)

With the opening bouts of the Strikeforce heavyweight tournament less than a month away, embattled grand prix participant Josh Barnett turned up on HDNet’s Inside MMA over the weekend, where he and Bas Rutten both just started saying stuff. Protest if you want, but it makes for great TV when nobody is around to check facts or rein in the insanity. Clearly, Barnett and Bas just want to bro down, have a couple of drinks and reminisce about how radical it used to be to be King of Pancrase, leaving poor Kenny Rice to try to bumble his way through some actual journalism.

Things reach a fever pitch of awesomeness at about the 3:40 mark, when Rice asks Barnett a serious question about his efforts (or lack thereof) to get relicensed in California. Barnett dismissively waves his hands and pretty much says he doesn’t give a damn, that he doesn’t need no pencil-pushing lawmakers to tell him when and where he throws down. All the while Bas just chuckles to himself and mumbles stuff like “Right! Yeah!” as if to say “You tell it, brother!” Seriously, these guys are two peas in a pod …

Chael Sonnen only did one interview following his hearing with the California State Athletic Commission, (which is said to have been set up for weeks) with HDNet’s Mike Straka which appeared on Friday’s episode of Inside MMA.

During the segment, Sonnen said that he basically paid the issue no mind as he was dealing with the much bigger issue of getting his name cleared in the real estate issue that forced him out of the Oregon State political race this year.

"A commission is a pretty small entity, but a commission has a lot of power over a guy like me. I hadn’t really dealt with this matter until today. I had a team of lawyers [do it for me]. I’ve been dealing with the federal government all the way dating back five years ago, which interfered with a campaign I had for public office," Sonnen explains. "That’s where my attention has been. I’m getting really close to reaching a deal with the federal government on that issue. That’s where my focus has been. The lawyers handled things and business went well today."

When asked by Straka how he intends to deal with those who don’t buy his story, Sonnen stated simply, that he doesn’t have any plans to entertain the notion that he cheated, regardless of who is asking about it.

"I don’t plan to deal with it at all. I don’t know really anybody that thinks I was on steroids and if they do I wouldn’t offer an explanation or an apology," he says. "The facts were the facts and that’s it. That was between me and the commission and we dealt with it."

(Video courtesy HDNet/InsideMMA)

On tonight’s episode of HDNet’s Inside MMA, the guest panel is shown an inflammatory clip from New York Assemblyman, Bob Reilly, in which the oblivious councillor compares "Ultimate Fighting" to dogfighting and prostitution, and let’s just say the guests are not impressed.

Before we get to that, here’s what Reilly’s latest bout of verbal diarrhea contained:

"Wait! Let’s have dogfighting and make money. We could make money off of dogfighting. We might make more money off of dogfighting than we could make out of human fighting. We certainly could make money off of prostitution as they do in Nevada. We don’t want prostitution here and we don’t want dogfighting here and we don’t want Ultimate Fighting here."

(Video courtesy HDNet)