Jon Fitch has a new blog entry up on UFC.com in which he discusses his training at AKA in preparation for the bout with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 87 next Saturday. Sounds like he’s none too pleased about all this GSP-B.J. Penn talk, as if it’s just a given that St. Pierre will walk though him en route to another meeting with “The Prodigy”:

Working like we do, when people are talking about how good certain fighters are, one of our first questions is, ‘who does he train with?’ That’s always a big question because I don’t care how good you are; if you don’t train with anybody at your level, you’re very limited in how good you can be and how good you actually are.

Outside of training, I’ve heard some talk over the last few weeks about BJ Penn moving up to 170 to fight GSP at the end of the year. Of course, they’ve forgotten that GSP has a fight with me first. But that just shows you where some people really are still in this sport and how they still have no idea what’s going on. There are a lot of so-called experts out there, but they know nothing about the sport. They’re spectators on the outside watching the sport through a telescope, and they think they’re on the inside and know everything, but they don’t. You can’t let that stuff bother you though. I think it’s funny and it’s just that little extra pleasure at the end of the day when you win and all those people are exposed.

Are we supposed to take this to mean that Fitch thinks GSP is generally overrated? We certainly hope not. Fitch’s win streak and overall skills make him deserving of the respect he’s getting, but so is GSP. Of all the strategic errors you could make when facing the welterweight champ, underestimating him really shouldn’t be one of them. Even if you are right behind him in the all-important Cage Potato Power Rankings.

(Patrick Cote: Dead man.)

The UFC has informed the Chicago Sun-Times that UFC 90 (October 25th @ Chicago’s Allstate Arena) will be headlined by a middleweight title bout between Anderson Silva and Patrick Cote. Get a load of how retarded Cote is:

“This guy will need 10 punches to my face to knock me out, and I’ll just need one,” Cote said. ‘”I have a good chance. He won’t exchange with me, and I’m not scared of him.”

Absolutely nothing in the above statement is accurate. And if that 10/1 ratio thing that “The Predator” mentioned sounds familiar, it’s because James Irvin said something idiotically similar before getting his lights turned out — with one punch! ha! — in his fight against Silva. But don’t worry, because Cote knows that the secret to defeating Anderson Silva is head movement:

“If you want to know how not to fight Silva, just watch tape of [the Silva/Irvin] fight,” Cote said. “He was flat on his feet with no head movement. He threw a lazy kick against a world-class Muay Thai fighter, and that’s what happens. I’m not like James Irvin. I’m a better striker, and I’m faster.”

Translation: Cote isn’t making it past the first round. In other UFC news, Five Ounces of Pain is reporting that if Georges St. Pierre successfully defends his welterweight title against Jon Fitch next month, he’ll face BJ Penn on December 27th, at a yet-unnumbered UFC event that is also slated to feature the heavyweight title clash between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir. One theory making the rounds is that the Penn/GSP match will be a non-title affair that will be marketed as a “battle of the weight divisions.” As cheesy as that sounds, there’s a certain logic to it — assuming the fight is contested at welterweight, it would seem a little unfair for GSP’s belt to be on the line but not Penn’s. We just hope that the UFC has special “superfight rules” in place that would make Penn vs. St. Pierre five rounds instead of three. More to come…

From BJPenn.com via 5oz.: BJ Penn wakes up Heath Herring at home before flying to Santa Barbara with Sean Sherk for the taping of a reality show on NBC Sports. Who knows what it all means, but it looks like Penn and Sherk have buried the hatchet — assuming their beef was legitimate in the first place.

Here’s the second episode of “Chris Leben: Evolution of an Icon,” which features the Crippler working with his suspiciously attractive students and attempting to install a heavy bag at the top of a mountain.

After the jump, Joanne of the MMA Girls spends a lovely day with Jon Fitch that includes shopping at the Ecko store and lunch at what appears to be Panda Express.

The MMA world was all a-flutter with the news that Georges St. Pierre had been nominated for an ESPY in the “Fighter of the Year” category. There were even brief efforts to get us all to band together and vote him in.

But in this recent interview with MMA Rated, “Rush” says he has no plans to attend the awards. Why? Because GSP ain’t in this to win awards, dammit.

He also talks about preparing for Jon Fitch, a possible fight with B.J. Penn, and what’s going on (or not) between him and Mandy Moore.

Clear your schedules for August 9th, people. Like UFC 84, the three headlining bouts at “Seek and Destroy” are worth the cost of admission and the rest is just gravy. So, GSP/Fitch, Lesnar/Herring, and Florian/Huerta…who ya got?

Sort of related: The UFC has confirmed what most of us already knew — Michael Bisping and Chris Leben will meet at UFC 89, which will be held at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, England, on October 9th.

I’ve always said that broken English is the world’s universal language. So while I would need a translator to understand what the hell this Brazilian interviewer is saying, him and Georges St. Pierre understand each other perfectly — and the multi-lingual “Rush” also shows off some of the Portuguese he’s been learning. Impressive! In this Sherdog viddy, GSP talks about his upcoming matchup with Jon Fitch, but doesn’t want to reveal his strategy for beating him, which is understandable. Anybody think Fitch has a chance in this one?

Oh, by the way, the greatest martial arts movie in history is after the jump.

(Oh my God that looks fun!)

Despite being offered a four-fight contract extension before his bout with Lyoto Machida last Saturday, and despite his vague statements during the post-fight interview, Tito Ortiz confirmed last night that he’s absolutely not coming back to fight in the UFC. “Me going to somewhere else is 100% happening,” Ortiz said, like some sort of caveman, or Indian chief, or Yoda. “The way [Dana White] treats me, I can’t continue on with them. He’s a monster and I’m going to go elsewhere where they respect me.”

Ortiz will now begin a three-week tour in support of his autobiography This Is Gonna Hurt, and will then go about deciding where to fight next. He hopes to compete again this fall, and according to MMAWeekly, he’s considered starting his own MMA organization.

In other UFC news you can use…

— The Ultimate Fighter 7‘s resident psycho Matt Brown (6-6), who was out-hustled by Amir Sadollah on last night’s episode, will be taking on TUF 6 castmember Matt “No Regard” Arroyo (3-1) in a welterweight match at the TUF 7 Finale (June 21st; Las Vegas, NV). Brown and Arroyo previously met at an RFC event in November 2006, where Brown won by TKO. At this point, Brown is only the fifth TUF 7 fighter expected to have a spot on the finale card, in addition to the show’s two finalists, and an all-but-confirmed match between Matthew Riddle and Dante Rivera.

(Carneiro and Chonan during a DEEP match in 2005, which ended in a controversial TKO loss for Carneiro due to a cut.)

Joe Silva’s hands have been full this week piling on fighters for UFC 87, and scrambling to replace them for UFC 85. First, the word on “Bedlam” (London, England; June 7th):

— Ryo Chonan has pulled out of his rematch with Roan Carneiro for unknown reasons. Replacing him will be Kevin “The Fire” Burns, a 4-1 UFC newcomer with possibly the cheesiest nickname we’ve ever heard. The UFC is doing Fire no favors by putting him against “Jucao,” who already boasts wins over Rich Clementi and Matt Horwich.

— Speaking of undercard bouts few people will care about, British fighter Neil Wain has broken his nose and won’t be able to face Antoni Hardonk. Filling in for him will be Eddie Sanchez, who has won his last two UFC matches against Soa Palelei and Colin Robinson, and will do his best to deal with fighting across the Atlantic Ocean on two weeks notice.

As for “Seek and Destroy” (August 9th; Minneapolis, MN):

— Frankie Edgar, who took his first career loss against Gray Maynard at UFC Fight Night 13, will be returning at UFC 87 against an opponent to be named later. With Sean Sherk indicating that he wants to be part of the first UFC card in his home state of Minnesota, an Edgar/Sherk bout isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Is Cain Velasquez the future of the UFC’s heavyweight division? His AKA teammate Jon Fitch thinks so, and the rest of the MMA world will find out in less than a month when he takes on Brad Morris at UFC 83. In the meantime, do some scouting by watching this December 2006 clip from Bodog Fight: St. Petersburg, which shows Velasquez’s second pro fight against Jeremiah Constant. We suggest watching the first four seconds (huh huh), then skipping to the start of the fight at 5:15. Morris might not roll over like Constant did, but the dude definitely seems to have potential…

— Further support for the “Andrei Arlovski is leaving the UFC” theory: Though he got a rapturous response from the crowd on Saturday, Andrei Arlovski wasn’t given the honor of a post-victory interview with Joe Rogan, like Jorge Gurgel, Diego Sanchez, and Josh Koscheck were granted in earlier undercard fights. As soon as he chalked up his win, a commercial for Harley-Davidson filled the jumbotrons. Nothing to see here, folks. Luigi Fioravanti was similarly snubbed after his win over Luke Cummo, but I just figured it was because nobody cared to hear him. Anyway, all appearances of civility are out the window.

— Speaking of the Pitbull, one of his current sponsors is do-it-yourself online print shop CafePress. So that’s another thing we have in common.

— In the press conference after UFC 82, Dana White said that Jon Fitch would be next in line for a title shot after “this whole Matt Serra and Georges St. Pierre thing gets figured out.” White implied that Fitch could have sat out and waited for his title shot, but instead he stepped up and took the fight with Wilson. Ouch, Karo! With his win over Chris Wilson, Fitch tied Royce Gracie’s ’93-’94 streak of eight-consecutive victories in the Octagon, which hadn’t been matched since.

— Also during that press conference, Dana White revealed that he recently made Randy Couture another offer to fight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. “We’re waiting to hear back from him,” White said.