(Photo courtesy of Kinya Hashimoto via MMAFighting)

[Ed. note: This is the third in a series of interviews with the fighters and promoters behind Metamoris II: Gracie vs. Aoki, which goes down June 9th in Los Angeles. Stay tuned for more, and follow Metamoris on Facebook and Twitter for important event updates. You can purchase tickets right here.]

By Elias Cepeda

Ryan Hall burst onto the public submission grappling scene much faster than most. As a young blue and purple belt, Hall was thrust into the public eye by a former coach when he starred in for-sale instructional videos, espousing him as already an expert. In competition, which Hall took part in with feverish frequency, the Jiu Jitsu player often used complicated-looking inverted, upside-down techniques.

To be honest, it was difficult for this writer to warm up to Hall as a spectator due to all this. Sure, he was good, real good. But, what is this kid doing selling instructional videos in a world filled with black belt legends trying to make a living? What was all this spinning, upside-down crap he did? Surely he was a BJJ practitioner of the least compelling variety — the ones who focus on parlor trick positions and techniques that would get you in a whole lot of trouble in a real fight.

Of course, Ryan Hall the person and Jiu Jitsu practitioner deserved a more thoughtful look than my initial and judgmental cursory one. Hall separated himself from that former instructor, opened up his own academy, 50/50 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and began to add major international titles to his resume.

Around the time he medaled at the 2009 ADCC (the Olympics of submission wrestling), it became crystal clear even to the most closed-minded, like myself, that Hall was the real deal. He wasn’t some kid winning regional tournaments with inverted triangle chokes, anymore. The techniques Hall used to win world titles were far from gimmicks and interviews showed him to be thoughtful, bright and humble.

“For better or for worse I was put out there in public when I was younger, a lower belt,” Hall tells CagePotato on a recent Saturday afternoon.

(Photo via Ricardo Bayona)

By Elias Cepeda

[Ed. note: This is the first in a series of interviews with the fighters and promoters behind Metamoris II: Gracie vs. Aoki, which goes down June 9th in Los Angeles. Stay tuned for more, and follow Metamoris on Facebook and Twitter for important event updates.]

When your father invented the UFC and passed the name ‘Gracie’ down to you, there’s got to be a lot of pressure to become great at Jiu Jitsu and fighting. However, with two older brothers who got a head start on training because of age, Ralek Gracie had to wait a long time before he could even begin to compete with Ryron and Rener, the oldest sons of Rorian Gracie.

“I was probably eighteen or nineteen [before I could begin to compete with Ryron and Rener],” Ralek admits to CagePotato.

“It was rough, for sure. But getting through it made me who I am. Pressure creates diamonds. It absolutely made me tougher. You’re only as good as who you train with. They were competing with each other and then with me, so I got the best of both worlds. They sharpened themselves and then sharpened me. Life is about accepting that you are sharpening yourself along your journey, every day.”

Getting beaten up every day by your trained-to-kill older brothers made Ralek more than philosophical, however. It can be argued that it made him a mean son-of-a-gun when he needed to be, namely in fights.

With their “Gracie Breakdown,” national product endorsements and television segments, the fight world is growing accustomed to hearing from Rener and Ryron Gracie. In addition to being extremely technical Jiu Jitsu practitioners, they’re charismatic, verbose, and gregarious in public.

They seem poised to replace their father Rorian as the voice of the Gracie family, and its related public relations/business operations. On the other end of the spectrum, Ralek isn’t heard from often.

As he tends to his infant son while speaking with us one recent afternoon, Ralek is thoughtful and well-spoken, almost a surprise given how rarely he has a microphone in his face and how quiet he seems on the rare occasions that he does.

(Shown wearing the t-shirt of a band that would obviously approve of limiting self-expression.)

It’s no exaggeration to say that Dana White was upset by Matt Mitrione’s appearance on “The MMA Hour” this Monday. I’m not just writing about, you know, his rant against transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox. I’m writing about Matt Mitrione simply agreeing to be on the show.

While addressing reporters at yesterday’s UFC on FOX 7 media conference call, Dana White discussed his stance on Mitrione’s controversial statements. And while he was obviously upset with Mitrione for referring to Fox as “a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak,” he seemed to be more annoyed over the fact that “Meathead” was giving what he deemed to be an unnecessary interview. Via MMAmania:

It’s one of those things, it’s just a pain in the ass. You know what I mean? First of all, he didn’t even need to be doing an interview. And I’m going to talk to these guys. The only time these guys need to be doing interviews is leading up to fights. It ended up being a nightmare for him.

What was the point of that interview? There’s no point in it. Now it’s causing him a bunch of headaches and problems for no reason whatsoever. He just fought and he wouldn’t fight again for another few months. And he is still over there enjoying himself in Sweden. What was the point of doing that interview? What was the upside to that interview? There was none. No upside.

(“Yup. That’s an Affliction shirt alright. This guy must be guilty of something.” #DanaWhite’sInnerThoughts.) 

You might have missed it during the UFC 158 post-fight press conference, but midway through Nick Diaz’s clusterfuck of a rant aimed at the UFC, wrestlers, his teammates, Stephen Hawking’s wormhole theory, etc., the Stockton native made note that there was something unusual about Georges St. Pierre’s hand wraps as well. Granted, Diaz also stated that GSP was on steroids, but while that accusation would require a little more, you know, evidence before anyone starts buying into it, the idea that St. Pierre and the Jackson camp might be stretching the rules in regards to his hand wraps didn’t seem that far outside the realm of possibility given the champ/camp’s history with greasing allegations.

It all started when fellow Team Gracie/UFC fighter Jake Shields sent out a vague, accusatory tweet (Author’s Note: Truly a Team Gracie member, amiright?) aimed at GSP in the moments leading up to the fight:

I just checked GSP’s gloves and the wrap looked shady…now commission won’t let me back. Been trying to for the past 30 minutes…. Not saying he’s cheating but wtf?! 

Things only got more tense once Team Cesar Gracie demanded to inspect St. Pierre’s wraps after he had already been gloved up. Thankfully, Dana White was able to make sense of the whole situation during the UFC 158 media scrum.

(Images via Sherdog, @MikeUSMCRichman)

By Elias Cepeda

You may have never heard of Brett Cooper (18-7), but chances are you know a lot of the guys he’s beaten. The middleweight has scored victories against six veterans of the UFC, Strikeforce, and WEC over the course of his eight-year career.

Tonight at Bellator 92, Cooper fights another UFC veteran – TUF 7 castmember Dan Cramer – in the semifinals of Bellator’s Season 8 Middleweight tournament, airing on Spike. The 25-year-old Southern-California native’s journey towards respect and notoriety has been long and hard since he decided he wanted to become a mixed martial arts fighter.

His interest was as it is now, simple but hard to explain. “I was always an athlete as a kid, and in all the sports I did I always wanted to be the best,” Cooper tells CagePotato.

“When I started training martial arts, I figured the way to show you’re the best at that was to fight in MMA. So, when I first walked into a gym, I told the coaches, ‘I want to be a fighter,’” he laughs.

Cooper admits that people like that often get dismissed or laughed at in serious gyms. But the kid stuck with it and threw himself into the deep end, fighting early and often. Cooper was seventeen the first time he fought as a professional, though it wasn’t until a couple years later that he says he started thinking of himself as a pro.

“I didn’t start to take it as a professional thing until I was around twenty years old,” he says. “Around that time, I fought Rory Markham, I fought [Jason] Von Flue. I started to take it more seriously and train even better, to fight those guys.”

(“What kind of backwards country is this? The game is called Whac-a-Mole, not Whac-a-Capybara, and the animals aren’t supposed to be alive!”)

Just a few hours ago, we promised that a few beautiful knockout videos would successfully help us all blissfully drift into a world where injuries no longer determined both the content of every other CP article and the makeup of every other UFC card, but it seems our vision of an impossibly awesome MMA utopia is merely that…an impossibility.

Be that as it may, some of you might be pleased to hear that amidst the UFC 153 clusterfuck of injuries lies a potential silver lining. According to FightersOnly, who have sited several anonymous sources, a grudge match years in the making between Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen is being looked at as a possible replacement for UFC 153 now that Jose Aldo — or perhaps, the general incompetence of Brazilian drivers — has massacred our dreams of a featherweight title superfight.

Details remain sketchy at the moment, but in a recent interview with Portal do Vale Tudo, Silva stated that he would be more than willing to step up for the good of the UFC and his home country’s fans if asked to do so:

I think fighting in Rio would be great. Under no circumstances could I turn that down. I would love to fight for the crowd in Rio, and if it were against that guy who everybody wants me to face, it would be beautiful.

Spoiler alert: Chael Sonnen is “that guy who everybody wants me to face.”

More on this potential showdown after the jump.

(We’ll give Anderson this, he has an ability to facially express himself that not even Ernest P. Worrell could hold a candle to.) 

Good afternoon, Potato Nation, Danga here. As many of you may or may not have realized/elated over, I have been out of the office since last Thursday, first taking a trip down to New York City, then heading out to Boston to move into the apartment at which I currently reside. Aside from being called a “fahkin retahd” by nearly every citizen who shared the road with me, it was a relatively painless move, but one that left me without Internet access for a good three or four days, which in Internet time is roughly 6 months.

At least that was what it felt like. When I fired up my computer this morning to peruse over CagePotato and see what the MMA world had been up to in my absence, I expected to find a couple sweet knockout videos and maybe a Labor Day-themed article or two. Suffice it to say, I was shocked to find that not only had CP managed to snag a “fight scientist” to impress us with his “graphs” and “numbers” and “empirical data,” but we were even granted access to a behind-the-scenes look at a local New Jersey-based event. And elsewhere, not only had Erik Koch been replaced by Frankie Edgar against Jose Aldo at UFC 153, but Aldo had been hit by a car (which I imagined looked something like this) and promptly told the injury curse of 2012 to go fuck itself. I was less surprised to learn, however, that Arlovski/Sylvia IV ended in controversy and bitter disappointment for those involved, but the fact that Tim Sylvia was even partly responsible for actual progress in the MMA world nearly made up for all the pain and suffering he has brought upon both himself and the sport in the past few years.

Of course, today is a new day, and with it comes a bit of mixed news. Regardless of who you feel deserves the next shot at Anderson Silva, the fact that “The Spider” is turning down fights in the weight class he resides over in favor of a possible superfight against GSP is a frustrating, if not equally intriguing prospect for MMA fans to digest. But as it turns out, Silva’s absence from the octagon in the near future may also be linked to something a little harder to swallow. Mainly, movie stardom. Because according to a report from metronews.ca, Silva may be heading to Canada down the line to promote and star in a major-budget MMA film called Tapped.

Details after the jump.

Despite the way he was portrayed during his run on The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights, which is to say, typical British asshole, it turns out that James McSweeney is actually a pretty cool dude in reality. But seriously, if you were to categorize McSweeney scientifically based solely on TUF 10, his name would’ve been Bispingus Douchebaggus. However, I first caught a glimpse of how well-spoken and down to earth McSweeney truly is during a recent interview he had with MiddleEasy, which I’ve posted above. In the video, he and Kit Cope break down everything from Jon Jones’ DUI to Nick Diaz’s suspension for weed, and he comes off sounding like a relatively enlightened individual in the process.

The reason I mention this is not only to try and prove that there are British MMA fighters out there who aren’t complete dicks, but to provide a little backstory that will prevent this news from catching you completely off guard. Because in the long list of MMA fighters who moonlight as vigilante, Bronson-esque heroes, McSweeney has just added his name.

Yesterday night, McSweeney was giving his family, who was visiting from England, a friendly tour of Las Vegas. As things are destined to do in Vegas, the night would inevitably end in them witnessing at least one person trying to stab another.

(Unfortunately, Ishanguly Meretnyyazov was the referee for this bout, and Velasquez ended up winning 13-11 on points.) 

Sorry, Alistair, it looks like you’ll just have to wait your turn.

In an interview with MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani that followed the UFC 150 post-fight press conference, Dana White was asked to answer a series of questions with simple “yes” or “no” answers. And although it seemed implausible that The Baldfather could ever go more than thirty seconds without uttering a certain curse word, he kindly obliged Helwani and spilled the beans in regards to several big questions currently circulating in the MMA world. Simply put, bullshit was cut through in record time.

And among the questions present in the back of Ariel’s (and everyone’s) mind was that of heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos and who would be the next man to get viciously mauled to death  bravely sacrifice himself for the good of The Colony ”challenge” him for the title. To put it in the words of DW: Overeem – No, Velasquez – Yes. Although an event has yet to be named, White said in a seperate interview that the pair would likely collide on the annually stacked New Year’s Eve card, also known as the card that Overeem will totally be fighting on.

After the jump: A full video interview, which details everything from the future of the BJ Penn/Rory MacDonald match to the specifics of Jon Jones’ Nike deal, and more.

(When Mendez refused to kiss Koscheck’s boo-boo and make it all better, a rivalry had officially been started.) 

There are few things that are simply a given in the MMA world, and they are:

1. The ref cam is fucking awesome.

2. People will always hate Jon Jones, regardless of how great a fighter he is.

3. Bruce Buffer is fucking awesome.

4. Octagon > Ring (THIS IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE.)

5. Pat Barry and everyone he knows or comes into contact with is fucking awesome.

6. Knees to the head of a downed opponent and soccer kicks should be allowed.

7. Michael Bisping and Josh Koscheck are *not* awesome.

With that in mind, take a look at this video, in which Kos has a casual conversation with friend and former training partner Jon Fitch, and discusses the beef with former camp American Kickboxing Academy (specifically, coach Javier Mendez) that he apparently just can’t let go of. In the video, he admits that he hopes AKA “burns to the ground” with “maybe one person” in it. Hint: Mendez is the person he’s hoping for. To be fair, Koscheck also openly admits to being a D-I-C-K dick, so at least he’s willing to man up about that whole issue.

See Javier’s response, courtesy of MMAFighting, after the jump.

MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani recently took some time away from interviewing mentally handicapped freakshows to get back to his roots as MMA’s top correspondent, questioning UFC 146′s headliners, Frank Mir and Junior dos Santos, on everything from Nick Diaz’s recent suspension to whether or not Daniel Cormier should be the man to face the winner of their Saturday night title fight.

When asked his opinion on the NSAC’s aforementioned ruling in the case of Mr. Diaz, Mir seemed to side with the “what kind of bullshit is this?” crowd, stating that “…obviously just having metabolites in his system means that he was not under the influence of marijuana in contest the night they tested him, but I guess that’s why they wear suits and I wear no shirt when I go to work.” I hear you there, bro. Mir also discussed his plans for dos Santos, mainly, that he will pull guard on the champ if need be, because shooting on “Cigano” will likely not be a viable option.

Join us after the jump for Helwani’s interview with dos Santos, who makes some pretty ballsy claims to say the least. 

(Who’s got at least one thumb and is going to royally screw me over in the future? THIS GUY.)

Ever since Alistair Overeem cost the UFC one of the biggest fights of the year by pissing dirty at his surprise UFC 146 drug test, it seems like Dana White has been a lot more adamant about the necessity of drug testing fighters on a regular basis. Whereas his attitude toward testing could previously be construed along the lines of “we’re doing the best we can, but we can only do so much,” it seems that The Baldfather has really begun to step up his game, so to speak. In fact, during a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, White made a promise that before too long, the UFC will be drug testing fighters themselves in order to try and limit the amount of positive tests per year:

The steroid, [performance-enhancing drug] thing affects the whole sport. The key is to make sure these guys never get on it, because once they do, they change. The problem with Overeem is that I want to sit in a room with him man to man and believe him. He told me before he ever fought for us, ‘Don’t worry, I’m the most tested athlete in sports.’ But I think we have about 42 fights a year … you have a guy or two popping [positive tests] here and there, that’s a pretty good ratio…. Yes, we’re going to do our own testing, order these guys into [a lab]; we’re sorting it out now. You have to do this to save the sport. You can’t have these guys fighting on this stuff.

So there you have it, Potato Nation. It looks like a day may finally come where we don’t have to worry about the Ubereem’s of the world spoiling our mid-summer blockbuster cards. Then again, illegal steroids were sooo last year, nowadays fighter’s just call it “therapy” and we collectively put our heads in the sand.

(Be warned, Dana, Barnett only comes as a package deal.) 

Well, you can add Josh Barnett to the small list of people that Dana White has said will never fight in the UFC again, but will now likely fight in the UFC again. Money does strange things to people, doesn’t it?

Believe it or not, the man who once offered to urinate in DW’s mouth for a steroid test, and stated that he believed “a trained monkey” could do the UFC President’s job will almost definitely be getting a call from the UFC if he is able to walk away victorious from his upcoming Strikeforce Heavyweight tournament final match with Daniel Cormier on May 19th. Here’s what The Baldfather had to say:

The way that Showtime wants to do it is when that fight finally happens, whoever wins it, they wanna do another fight on Showtime, so that guy would probably come to the UFC. We’ll see what happens, you know? Josh and I have been playing nice with each other for a little while, since he got into the UFC. It’s more than just, ‘Does he win? Does he do this?’ You gotta be able to come to terms with the guy and be able to deal with him. If he wins the fight, I can’t see why he wouldn’t come here, unless we weren’t able to make a deal with him.

(How can you say no to that face?) 

Aside from its placement atop nearly every MMA fan’s “Favorite Fights” list, Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin‘s war at the first TUF Finale is widely considered to be the fight responsible for popularizing MMA into the near mainstream sport it is today. Well, believe it or not, that fight almost didn’t happen on account of Bonnar’s uncontrollable desire for bottom shelf alcohol, specifically, Mad Dog. Although Bonnar has told this story with a slightly different spin before, Dana White recently discussed the craziness that was the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, and how Bonnar almost got himself kicked off the show:

The first season of the ‘Ultimate Fighter’ was the longest season we’ve ever done. It was something like 8 weeks and those guys were losing their (expletive) minds. I almost kicked (Stephan) Bonnar off the show. 

Bonnar turned the shower on, climbed out the window and went to find a liquor store. Remember we took all the liquor out after that big fight? These idiots…we had been driving these guys around for six or seven weeks and the house is in the middle of nowhere. There was no liquor store near there. The guy was walking around for an hour and thirty minutes. So much crazy (expletive) happened that first season. Imagine if I had kicked off him off the show for going to a liquor store? Forrest (Griffin) and Stephan would have never happened. 

No Dana, we would not like to imagine a world in which Griffin/Bonnar never existed. We’d rather imagine one in which Motley Crue serenades our lovemaking sessions with Adriana Lima, thank you very much.

Jacob Volkmann is a man of many faces; he is an excellent, if somewhat frustrating grappler, a small business owner, and someone who knows how to pick a nickname. But among those faces, you will not likely see Volkmann donning “the fight finisher” or “the comedian” anytime soon. If you, like Joe Rogan and the few audience members present for his decision victory over Efrain Escudero at UFC 141, didn’t find Jacob Volkmann’s “glassectomy” bit to be all that amusing, then you weren’t alone. Lucky for us, our buddies over at MiddleEasy were able to catch up with “Christmas” recently, and allowed him to clarify his statement:

 I heard that joke when I was six years old. ‘Glassectomy’ is when they cut your belly button out, put a piece of glass in there, and when you have your head up your butt so you can see where your going.

We guess that it’s just one of those “you had to be there” kind of jokes. Then again, we’re glad we weren’t there the day that one of the Volkmann clan opted to have this procedure carried out. But apparently one visit from the Secret Service was not enough to convince Volkmann that he might want to tone down the threats aimed at the leader of the free world, because when questioned on the specifics of his beef with Obama (and what he would do to him in a fight), Volkmann had the following to say:

(Props: MMAFighting.com)

In an unofficial sequel to “People Like That Get Slapped,” Ariel Helwani attempted to interview Quinton “Rampage” Jackson yesterday, and barely escaped with his life. After some warm-up insults about Helwani’s tie and shoes, Jackson realized who he was talking to, and the vibe immediately became hostile. Apparently Jackson didn’t appreciate that Helwani asked him about “Queen Mo” during a recent MMA Hour appearance — while Rampage was eating, no less — when ‘Page just wanted to discuss his UFC 130 fight against Matt Hamill. Plus, his peoples told him that Ariel had been hatin’.

Ariel offers to squash the beef at the 2:52 mark. Unfortunately, that phrase means the exact opposite in Memphis than it does everywhere else, and Jackson raises up on Ariel, who does his best to change the subject. Rampage gets upset again later when Helwani brings up nutritionist Mike Dolce, who wasn’t with Rampage for this training camp. (“I’m fighting Matt Hamill, I’m not fighting Mike Dolce. What’s Mike Dolce got to do with me winning or losing a fight?”)

The interview ends in a more cordial fashion, but Jackson clarifies that if it wasn’t for his friend Anthony Evans, who’s a friend of Ariel’s, “I probably would have smacked the shit out of you.”

(Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

By Elias Cepeda for CagePotato

Losing is always miserable, but in a combat sport like MMA, getting beaten is no figure of speech. If you lose, you hurt; physically and badly. The risk and danger involved in MMA competition helps make it more exciting than other sports, but behind every highlight-reel knockout and submission is ugly and unfortunate pain — at least for the guy laid out.

Over four years as a pro and nearly twenty fights Cole Miller (15-4) had never been the guy on his back, unconscious after a fight. But there he was being revived and staring up at the lights last September after being dropped by Efrain Escudero.

The hardest part for Miller was not losing in and of itself, or the headache he had to deal with for a bit afterwards. He says it came down to having so much seemingly productive work and sacrifice be rebuffed so abruptly.

“Knowing that I trained that hard, sacrificed a lot in my personal life for the 10-12 weeks in camp all for three and a half minutes and it didn’t go my way. That was disheartening to say the least. Being able to let it go. Accepting that that kind of thing happens and happened for the first time and that it could happen again. Knowing that I’m just a man, you know? These were the hardest parts of dealing with that loss,” Miller says.

(Askren’s most recent fight vs. Matt Delanoit, 8/28/09. Props: Pure Fight.)

Ben Askren was a four-time All-American wrestler at the University of Missouri and an Olympic hopeful at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. He came home without a medal, his dreams temporarily dashed, and has since turned his focus toward MMA, racking up a 3-0 record in smaller promotions. But now the former wrestling standout has signed on to compete in Bellator’s welterweight tournament in the spring of 2010, though that doesn’t mean he’s forgetting all about his goals in the world of wrestling. Far from it, in fact. He seems to think he can someday be the best in the world at both MMA and wrestling, and nobody can talk him out of it.

CagePotato.com: You’re one of the more well known wrestlers. You were a two-time national champ at Missouri and you got a lot of press heading into the Olympics. What made you decide to sign with Bellator?

It’s the best offer I had right now. They made me a good offer and they said they’d let me keep wrestling on the side, so that played a big part in my decision.

Nick Diaz Interview – Watch more Funny Videos

Our good buddy Ariel Helwani was on the scene after Strikeforce: Shamrock vs. Diaz, and got some camera time with Stockton’s conquering hero Nick Diaz. Diaz was his usual gregarious self — making sure to never make eye contact with either Ariel or the camera — and he attributed his win to intense preparation and top-shelf sparring partners. He also says he could have finished the fight on the ground, but sometimes it’s easier just to throw punches. Does he regret anything he might have said in the buildup to this fight? Not so much, homey.

Below: Tito Ortiz (at left, with sunglasses on the wrong side of his head) says he’d love for Strikeforce to make him a big offer so that the UFC can match it. Ortiz has just finished up physical therapy following his back surgery, and will soon begin training again so he can get back in the cage in August or September.

Tito Ortiz Interview – Watch more Funny Videos

After the jump: Will we see MMA pioneer Royce Gracie return to competition in the near future? Gracie plays it close to the vest, but "anything’s possible." You can see all of Ariel’s recent one-on-ones at Break.com/ArielHelwani.

 

More importantly, we’ve watched as the octagon has inched closer to the mainstream and it’s cool to see peeps like ESPN giving MMA more and more web space every month – even if they are looking at it through Dana White-colored glasses. Stay tuned for our full preview of the night later this week where we’ll break it down all proper for you.