(My qualifications? HERE’S my stinking qualifications!)

It looks like we’ll have to start drafting up new t-shirts to falsely promise you guys, because according to a recent interview with MMAFighting, UFC President Dana White was rather frank about his desire for both former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and former lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn to be placed in the UFC Hall of Fame in the near future. Though the jury is still out on whether or not Penn will return to the octagon following his hasty retirement in the aftermath of UFC 137, DW had nothing but positives to say about “The Prodigy” when asked on the possibility of his placement in the HOF:

Definitely. The thing about B.J. Penn is that what he brought to the lightweight division, there was a point in time when we first bought this company when people thought guys in the lighter weight divisions couldn’t be stars and couldn’t see pay-per-views and couldn’t cross over. B.J. Penn was definitely that first crossover guy for us. He’ll be back. It’s tough, when there are 16,000 people in the arena chanting your name, it’s tough to walk away from that. B.J. Penn is a fighter. You hear some of these guys, and Tito was one of these guys, he said he wanted to be famous. B.J. Penn is a fighter.

So there you have it, Penn will join long-time rival Matt Hughes, as well as Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Mark Coleman, Royce Gracie, Chuck Liddell, and Tapout co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis in that deluxe octagon in the sky. After a pair of unsuccessful title bids at 155, Penn won the welterweight title in his welterweight debut by defeating the then untouchable Hughes by first round rear-naked choke at UFC 46. Penn would vacate the UFC shortly thereafter, citing a lack of challenging fights, and would not taste UFC gold again until beating the ever-loving shit out of Joe Stevenson at UFC 80 to claim the vacant lightweight strap. He would defend the belt three times until being upended by Frankie Edgar at UFC 112.

When addressing the possibility of Tito Ortiz joining those illustrious ranks, White did not shy away from the pair’s well-documented rocky history, and in fact stated that, in retrospect, it helped make the UFC what it is today.

Hear more from The Baldfather after the jump. 

So here’s that ESPN Outside the Lines piece that got Dana White so hot and bothered. Even before it aired yesterday morning, the segment — and accompanying feature article by Josh Gross — drew criticism for its reliance on anonymous sources (as well as Ken Shamrock, who’s not exactly unbiased), and for downplaying the reality of the UFC’s business model, in which fighters are paid handsomely for performing well and drawing a crowd. Should a new UFC prospect deserve to make as much as an NFL player simply because he’s signed to the UFC? Lorenzo Fertitta doesn’t think so: “[L]ike any other company in America…You have to perform, to be able to get compensated.” There is also some mis-representation in the UFC’s $6,000/$6,000 system of payment for prospects (skip to the 5:03 mark), which ESPN seems to believe applies to all fighters who enter the promotion.

The segment does make a couple of solid points, pointing to the lack of a Muhammad Ali Act in MMA, and explaining that athletes in other major sports leagues are so well paid because they get 50% of the leagues’ revenues — while the UFC, according to “multiple sources” (all anonymous, of course), pays closer to 10% of its revenue to the fighters. Lorenzo Fertitta disputes this, saying it’s “in the neighborhood” of 50%, but since the UFC won’t disclose exactly what they’re earning (or exactly what they’re paying out to fighters, for that matter), it’s impossible to come away with a clear answer to this question.

Check it out and let us know what you think. After the jump, some unaired footage from the interview released yesterday by the UFC, in which Fertitta explains that the lowest-paid UFC fighter earns about ten times more than the lowest-paid boxer who fights on ESPN, so suck it.

(“Nice hipster glasses, buddy! Let’s see what they look like…SUPLEXED!!!!” Photo via Dan’s Facebook page.)

In this week’s installment of his mailbag column for CagePotato.com, UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn discusses a memorably bloody Vale Tudo match, the greatest night of his career, and the technique that he wants to see banned from the sport.

DARKHORSE06 asks: What is the worst injury you ever received?

The worst injury I’ve ever received in my career has probably been a cut. One time I was competing in Brazil back in the No Holds Barred days — known as Vale Tudo in Brazil — and my opponent hit me with a big overhand right that split open my top lip. When I grabbed hold of him to try and shake some of the cobwebs out of my head I noticed he was covered in baby oil so I couldn’t get him down.

In the clinch, my opponent threw a knee up that hit me in the mouth and split my bottom lip open. Somehow he was able to get me into the corner and I couldn’t really see as he started trying to attack me with knees, stomps and other techniques of that nature. I was trying to think of some way out when suddenly it dawned on me to suck the blood off my face and into my mouth. Once it was in my mouth, I would basically just spit the blood into my opponent’s face because it was not against the rules. As my opponent looked away so as not to get any blood spit at him, that’s when I got the upper hand, swept his feet out from underneath him and dropped him down on his butt.

(Severn and Shamrock: They were like the Michael Jackson and Prince of big, white grapplers who competed in early ’90s no-holds-barred matches.)

Happy Movember, everybody! In honor of the hairiest month of the year, we convinced UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn to write a weekly column for CagePotato.com. For the first installment, he plucked some topics from our Facebook page, but he’s up for answering anything about his life, career, and moustache, so drop your own suggestions in the comments section. Visit DanSevern.com and Dan’s Facebook page for more Beast-related updates, and join the CagePotato Movember team if you want to help support a good cause!

Matthew Poulin asks: How many fights do you still want?

Dan Severn: It’s not so much how many fights I want to have. I want specific fights right now. I’ve had some verbal offers but haven’t had the opportunity to bring some of these matches to life. Two particular matches I’m still interested are ones with Mark Coleman and Ken Shamrock. Realistically, I think that 2012 will be my final year as an MMA competitor. So whatever gets done gets done; whatever doesn’t, I’ll have to learn to live with I guess.

(LOL @ Toney trying to form a sentence at the 0:41 mark. I mean, dementia pugilistica is a tragedy and all, but come on, that’s hilarious. Props: ESNEWS)

I guess it was too good to be true. According to a recent press release from the James Toney camp, the highly(-ish?) anticipated MMA superfight between Toney and UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock has been delayed until early next year, which is probably just a nice way of telling us that it’s been canceled altogether. Instead, Lights Out will be focusing his efforts on boxing cruiserweight contender Denis Ledbedev, November 5th in Russia. If that fight comes together, it’ll be the first time since 2003 that Toney will compete at 200 pounds. Believe it, son.

BoxingInsider claims the Toney vs. Shamrock MMA match has “fallen apart over money issues.” Wait a minute, does that mean Chael Sonnen was right the whole time? As he so eloquently put it last month…

(Video courtesy of BallerStatus)

You would think that given the embarrassing loss he was handed by Randy Couture and the fact that he’s now set to fight Ken Shamrock in his return MMA bout, that James Toney would keep the names of UFC champions outta his mush mouth.

Apparently “Lights Out” done lost his mind on top of his language skills and is now calling out Rampage. James, Dana isn’t going to pay you a million again to throw a handful of jabs and flop around like a fish on your back until you tap out. The experiment is over just like the Kimbo experiment and just like the *sniff* PRIDE experiment. Deal with it.

By Jason Moles

Earlier this week, UFC announcer Bruce Buffer caught up with Chael Sonnen for a segment on his Sherdog Radio Network show ‘IT’S TIME!!!’. Buffer got Sonnen to open up about his highly entertaining fight with Anderson Silva, his thoughts on Tito Ortiz, and Ken Shamrock’s get-rich-quick scheme. Wait, what?!

Straight from the horse’s mouth to the screen in front of you, we’ve got the highlights of the interview.

On his loss to UFC Middleweight champion Anderson Silva:

“In what parallel scoring system do you punch a man three hundred times, he hits you eleven times, wraps his legs around your head for eight seconds and they declare him the winner? That doesn’t make you a winner.

In no form of society, from the jungle to the streets, does that make you a winner. I’m the People’s champion I’m the linear champion. I’m the best middleweight there’s ever been and I am the UFC’s true champion.”

On Tito Ortiz‘s role in the UFC:

(Video courtesy of YouTube/FightHype)

Okay, maybe he didn’t name us specifically, but the aging veteran who used to be known as “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” told FightHype.com that any reporters who think he should walk away from the sport are idiots.

Using an odd analogy that reporters who had never stepped into the cage saying he should call it a career are like if when we’re old the doctors refuse us medicine because they’re saving it for some younger patients. So because doctors have never been old or had a disease like cancer, they aren’t qualified to treat someone who is or diagnose someone who has it? Makes perfect sense.

Instead of proving him right by responding in typical CP style, instead I’ve written an open letter to Ken Shamrock.

Check it out after the jump.

(Video Props: LarryBrownSports.com)

Bad news: it’s starting to look like this thing is really happening. Worse news: as if the combatants themselves weren’t awful enough, the injection of special rules qualify it as an early runner for the least-meaningful highly-publicized fight ever.

(You’d better start sewing the dress for this little guy.)

There’s really no easy way to tell you this, so we’re just going to come right out and say it: As first reported by BJPenn.com, UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock and trash-talking boxing champ turned Randy Couture choke-victim James Toney have agreed to face each other in an MMA bout this fall. The original report pegged the match to an unnamed event in El Paso, Texas, on September 23rd, but Toney’s trainer Trever Sherman says the bout could happen in September or October, and that Texas was simply the most likely location at this point; more details will be hashed out this weekend between the two fighters’ camps.

Look, we all had a good time laughing at Toney’s misfortune after all the smack he talked leading up to his humiliating MMA debut at UFC 118.  But we gotta give him credit for getting back up on the horse. And to be brutally honest, he stands a much better chance against Shamrock, who hasn’t had much success over the last few years, outside of a plodding decision over the rotund Jonathan Ivey last year. (We’re not counting Shamrock’s 2009 submission over Ross Clifton as a legitimate victory, considering he tested positive for steroids after the fight, and Clifton was just seven months away from death at the time of the fight.)

(Since this sculpture seemed to be a major talking point…)

Minoru Suzuki was born 43 years ago.

Why he matters: One of the co-founders of Pancrase — the pre-cursor to the UFC — Suzuki was of the best Japanese submission specialists of his era. He holds wins over Ken Shamrock, Vernon White, Matt Hume and Guy Mezger and Maurice Smith. A former Olympic alternate freestyle wrestler for Japan and former Japanese freestyle wrestling national champion, Suzuki retired from MMA competition in 2002 with a record of 27-20 to focus on professional wrestling, in which he is still active today.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/MrDartzero)

Many MMA luminaries from Bas Rutten and Ken Shamrock to Josh Barnett count Suzuki as one of THE best catch wrestlers the sport has ever known.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/scientificwrestling)

(Video courtesy of YouTube/TheFightNetwork)

Ken Shamrock spoke Fight Network Radio recently and stated that he believes that if the UFC would look past their personal and legal issues and give him a rubbermatch with Royce Gracie at UFC Rio in August, they will sell out and set pay-per-view records much like his pair of fights with Tito Ortiz did.

($kala got yo’ eyeballs all up on EliteXC. Mission accomplished.)

With the recent news that ProElite has risen from its the ashes to make an offer on Strikeforce before Zuffa quashed them like the insignificant mosquito that they’ve always been known as, inquiring minds have begun asking who will be at the helm of the company’s latest incarnation.

One name you won’t see on any of  ProElite’s offices is Jared Shaw.

The former EliteXC matchmaker who used to prefer to be known as his hip hop name $kala says he is done in the MMA business.

In a recent interview he did with Sherdog’s Jeff Sherwood, Shaw says he is concentrating on boxing and rapping and shed some light on the reasons he says ProElite and EliteXC collapsed.

Check out  what Shaw had to say after the jump.

(“So, which one of you broads is the lucky lady?” PicProps: Esther Lin)

We never thought we’d say this, but Old Dad’s latest “My First Fight” piece with Frank Shamrock actually makes us look at the metal-mouthed Strikeforce color commentator in a whole new, halfway positive light. Say what you want about his broadcasting skills (oh, and we do, we do) but after reading this story on MMA Fighting.com it’s hard not to consider the man’s life on the whole an overwhelming and unlikely success story. As an added perk, you also find out why Shamrock’s nose looks so funny on TV. It’s because when he was 24 years old, Bas Rutten kicked him in the face.

We’ll get to that in a minute. First though, this gem: Within the first two graphs of the narrative, our man Fowlkes deftly tells us that Shamrock may have been the first and last person in the history of mankind to (fresh out of prison) find himself deciding between a career as a health care professional, a mixed martial arts fighter and a male stripper. Channeling his 1994 self, Shammy explains thusly: “I was going to be a physical therapist or an exotic dancer, or I was going to do this no-holds-barred fighting thing that Ken (Shamrock) was doing. And I didn’t know anything about any of them.”

A decade later we all know the path Shamrock chose, in the process likely saving the bachelorettes of the early Clinton years an incredibly awkward night they would remember forever …

("When the first thing a doctor says to you is ‘Can I get an autograph?’ it’s pretty easy to get any drugs you want." Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

By CagePotato contributor Jason Moles

Coming off a loss to Jorge Oliveira in December, James Irvin returned to action last weekend at Gladiator Challenge: Young Guns 4 — and he would have gotten his much-needed rebound victory, if it wasn’t for the meddling of celebrity referee Ken Shamrock. (Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.) Freak occurrences have plagued Irvin’s career from the beginning, and that night was no different. "The Sandman" recently gave us on opportunity to chat with him about his anti-climactic match against Mike Crisman, his battle with painkiller addiction, and his plan to make another run in the UFC. 

CAGEPOTATO.COM: First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us at CagePotato. Tell me a little about the physical toll your body has taken after fighting three times in the past four months.
JAMES IRVIN: It’s been good for me. It’s tough, but I’ve been doing this for ten years. In shape, out of shape, and back into shape again. Kinda like what Chris Leben said — it keeps me sharp. I fight again on February 20th and have two fights in March, one in May. I train best when it’s intense and there’s nothing more intense than training for a fight.

Speaking of fights, your last one ended after an inadvertent illegal knee to the head of your opponent. As a result, Ken Shamrock ruled the fight a No Contest. What really went down in the cage?
Honestly, three weeks ago Ken turned down a fight with me, so as soon as I saw that he was going to be the ref I had a bad feeling. He kept coming back to the locker room to give us his version of the rules like this was my first rodeo. As for Crisman, I beat the brakes off this fool. I KO’d the guy and walked away before Shamrock even got there, and two minutes later, he says I illegally kneed him and it’s a no contest. It’s cool. I don’t have a scratch on me, and [Gladiator Challenge promoter] Tedd Williams says I can rematch Crisman in May.

("When you put your focus on one thing, you tend not to focus on the journey. Once you get there, it’s not going to be as big of a deal as you thought it was going to be.")

This Saturday, Rich Franklin will step into the Octagon for the 18th time to face Forrest Griffin in the co-headlining feature of UFC 126. During his 12-year career, Ace has experienced everything from championship glory to bitter defeat, and now stands as one of the sport’s most revered statesmen. “I think that what people will remember me for is that I’m a tough competitor who’s put on entertaining fights for the fans all these years," Franklin tells CagePotato. "And I’m happy with that kind of legacy.”

Rich was generous enough to give us some phone-time recently, and instead of asking him about his gameplan for Forrest, we discussed Franklin’s career as a whole, from the moment he decided to pursue MMA as a full-time job, to the fight that changed his life, to every other notable moment that helped forge the fighter he is today. Let’s begin…

The Early Days, 1993-1999
Rich Franklin: “I started training in traditional martial arts in 1993, then I saw the first couple UFCs and started doing some jiu-jitsu. I was training at a Royce Gracie chapter here in Cincinnati, and the guy who was leading my class was a blue belt. By today’s standards, if the best you had in your area was a blue belt, you’d be way behind the times, but in 1994 it was a big deal to have that kind of a resource. So I was doing jiu-jitsu, working with kickboxing coaches, and of course I’d been watching the UFC, learning off instructional tapes and all those kinds of things.

I started fighting at these little local amateur shows out in Richmond, Indiana, and clearly at that point in time, I was just light-years ahead of the competition that was showing up at the event. The promoter told me, ‘These are amateur events, I don’t really have anybody for you to fight.’ But there was a gentleman there who said, ‘You know what, I run a pro show, and I’ll pay you to fight." And he offered me 200 bucks. I was like, ‘Wow, I can make money fighting? This is great. I’m gonna make 200 bucks." I was bankin’.

RICH FRANKLIN (5-0) vs. AARON BRINK (7-4) — Franklin’s first regional title fight
IFC: Warriors Challenge 11, 1/13/01
Result: No contest due to accidental injury, after Brink’s leg slipped through the cage.

As we recently learned, the next season of The Ultimate Fighter will be coached by a grumpy mountain man who probably won’t spend any more time on set than he absolutely needs to, and a Brazilian dynamo whose grasp on the English language is limited to simple phrases like "I believe too much in my boxing" and "tub you are a cold — so we’re not expecting a verbal rivalry on par with Tito/Ken or Rampage/Rashad. Still, it’s TUF, so somebody’s gonna get told at some point. Can this season’s insults possibly stack up to some of our past favorites?

#5: "You’re like an expert swimmer who’s never been in a pool."

Matt Serra’s epic dress-down of Marc Laimon was his star-making moment — and a firm bitch-smack to every sideline-hater who talks tough without any intention of actually backing up his words. A year later, Serra was coaching that damn show.

#4: "Bro, you’re a male nurse."

Like a Katy Perry song, it’s annoying as hell, and yet you can’t get it out of your head. "Bro, you’re a male nurse" — I say that to all my friends now, no matter what their professions actually are. And it aggravates them too.

(Props: jgreff2)

As you may recall, UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock scored a rare victory over Jonathan Ivey last month at a USA MMA event in Lousiana. If you’d like to see the full 15-minute battle, the video is currently in our "Fight of the Week" section over on the right. (Scroll down a bit. Yeah, there it is.) The above highlights package from Inside MMA saves you a lot of time by rounding up the important moments, like when Ivey knocks Shammy down, and later when he slaps his own titties and shouts at Ken to bring it on, like an enraged, diabetic Nick Diaz.

But the best moment comes right before the end of the fight when Ivey does a pair of somersaults for no apparent reason; we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was rolling for a kneebar, then dodged out of the way when he couldn’t catch it. Kenny Rice describes it both as a "Rerun impression" and "the dreidel defense." Oy vey, Ivey!

Bonus, after the jump: Jonathan Ivey gets beat up by "very internet savvy" UFC heavyweight Sean McCorkle, at an LFC event in May.

(Damn, Anthony, if you can’t get psyched around this crowd, we don’t know what to tell you.)

One day, mankind will realize that fighting is a counter-productive act, leading to only misery and division. Until then…

— Returning from his painful loss to Mirko Cro Cop in June, UFC heavyweight Pat Barry will step back into the Octagon against Joey "The Mexicutioner" Beltran at UFC Fight for the Troops 2. Beltran is also looking to get back to the W column, having dropped a decision to Matt Mitrione at UFC 119.

— Former WEC bantamweight champ Miguel Torres continues his path back to contendership against Antonio Banuelos at UFC 126 in February. Torres recently snapped a two-fight losing skid by choking at Charlie Valencia at WEC 51. Banuelos outpointed Chad George at the same event, and has won four of his last five.

(Ivey scoffs at your ironic tattoos, hipster.) 

By CagePotato contributor Seth "Lysol" Falvo

Let’s pretend you were in Lafayette, Louisiana last night. Let’s also pretend that you were not at a bar that was showing UFC 120. Odds are that you, like me, were at City Bar at some point. Odds also are that you knew that Ken Shamrock was in town to fight Johnathan Ivey, a 29-42 fighter who has lost to everyone he’s fought that you’ve actually heard of. Fortunately, having a friend who works at the Cajun Dome means not having to sit through it to know how it ends. Unfortunately, writing an article about the fight means actually watching it on Youtube.

Let’s start by pointing out the obvious: Ken Shamrock, as evident by his leg kick submission to Pedro Rizzo in his last outing, is doing just enough to get paid anymore. And I can’t say I blame him. Fighting to pay court fees for your old boss is slightly more motivating than “Because my ex-wife’s boyfriend needs money for an engagement ring” and slightly less motivating than “Because the Cajuns aren’t in town this weekend”. Furthermore, Shamrock weighed in at only 209 pounds for his fight against Ivey. Draw your own conclusions.

(Never surrender, except to leg kicks. VidProps: YouTube/ZP840)

If you can imagine a fight card populated by has-beens and no-accounts, filmed by the blind and narrated by the guys from “Flight of the Conchords” (except without the genuinely funny parts), then you have a pretty good idea what it was like to watch Impact FC’s first-ever pay-per-view on Saturday night. “The Uprising” was filled with plenty of the awkward pauses, even more awkward announcing, terrible camera work and retro graphics that we’ve come to expect from fledgling MMA promotions. As for the actual fighting? It played out about like you might have predicted, too.

Indeed when, just a few moments into the broadcast, nattily attired but totally incompetent ring announcer James White forgot his lines midway through his introductory remarks and had to stop cold to confess he’d drawn a blank, you knew it was going to be a long night. Despite how many times we were informed by the play-by-play team that the action in the cage was “thunderous” or “amazing” the show – filmed around noon local time in Sydney, Australia in a partially filled arena — felt so flat that the fighters themselves would’ve been hard-pressed to break the monotony. Luckily for them, it didn’t seem like they were trying too hard.

(Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Paulo Filho’s next tattoo)?

When the upstart Impact Fighting Championships organization announced it would be putting on a series of events in Australia anchored by a cast of controversial WEC, PRIDE and UFC castaways like Karo Parisyan, Ricco Rodriguez, Paulo Filho, Ken Shamrock, Paul Daley and Jesse Taylor, Ben and I figuratively high-fived each other in anticipation of the sheer amount of material for the site the event would undoubtedly produce.??

The fact that the first show basically went off without a hitch would have lost us both money if we trusted our predictions enough to bet that there would be problems with the show.??

A 46-year-old admitted steroid user. A hot-headed sucker-puncher. A veteran film actor. A crazy person. Not one, but two TUF 7 burnouts. Yep, this Sunday’s Impact FC show in Sydney is going to be all kinds of stupid. Even if you’re not buying the pay-per-view, please head over to fightpicker.cagepotato.com and see how accurately you can predict the results. Although with a card this volatile, you may as well try to predict how many fights War Machine will get into while incarcerated.

This week’s MMA FightPicker pool question list is after the jump. If you have any other ideas for FP questions related to the Impact show, please let us know in the comments section. Who knows, we may toss your question in as a bonus on Friday..

(Props: youtube.com/impactfcmma)

It wasn’t until we saw the opening of this bizarre promo — with Ken Shamrock mock-selling his match against Pedro Rizzo at next Sunday’s Impact event — that it finally hit us. Jesus Christ, this dude is headlining another show? If you don’t count fights in which he tested positive for steroids, against opponents who died shortly afterwards due to poor health, you have to go back all the way to June 2004 to find Shamrock’s last victory. After that, he suffered five consecutive first-round TKO losses; to say he phoned in those performances would be an insult to phones. And Ken does sound a little punchy these days, to be honest. He seems to think Pedro Rizzo is 6’4" or 6’5" (even though Rizzo is generally listed at 6’1"), so, you know, he’s "got a lot of heighth to deal with."

At the end, Ken gets a little too honest: "Right now, where we are at this stage of the game, where we started so early, that we kind of play it from here depending on how I feel, if we’re gonna go hard or if we’re just gonna kinda go through some of the motions." Huh? That’s not the sort of thing I’d include in a promo clip, guys. As for Rizzo, the three-time UFC heavyweight title contender has scored wins over Jeff Monson and Gary Goodridge since being laid flat by Gilbert Yvel in June 2009. I’ll go out on a limb and say he takes this one by first-round TKO…

(Ken Shamrock on steroids? Stop the presses!)

The revelation of a UFC Hall of Famer’s past steroid use promised by HDNet’s “Inside MMA” became pretty anticlimactic on Friday when the fighter in question turned out to be Ken Shamrock. While Shamrock’s taped interview during a segment of the show called “Fighting Words with Mike Straka” marked his first public admission of cheating, the MMA pioneer has long been rumored to dabble in the juice and tested positive for banned substances following his most recent victory –  a submission win over the now-deceased Ross Clifton in Feb. of 2009  — so the news came as a surprise to exactly no one.

More interesting than the actual confession were Shamrock’s contentions that steroids are so easy to get it’s “like going to the grocery store,” and that fans should shoulder at least some of the responsibility for athletes turning to performance enhancers.

(Protect yourself at all times. Seriously, Daniel, *all* times.)

Australian upstart fight promotion Impact FC recently confirmed that UFC refugee Paul Daley will be competing at their July 18th show in Sydney — not on 7/3 as originally reported — against Chute Boxe product Daniel Acacio (21-9). According to impactfc.au.com, the Sydney fight card currently looks like this:

Ken Shamrock vs. Pedro Rizzo
Paul Daley vs. Daniel Acacio
Murilo Bustamante vs. Jesse Taylor
Jeff Monson vs. Ricco Rodriguez
Joaquim "Mamute" Ferreira vs. Sokoudjou
Paulo Filho vs. Denis Kang

Two thoughts come to mind upon seeing this lineup: 1) Damn, that’s a lot of star power for a brand-new league. And 2) My God, this is like the MMA equivalent of the Legion of Doom. Let’s run it down…

("Objection, your honor! There’s no way Mr. Jackson can do justice to the character of B.A. Baracus!")

By CagePotato contributor Jim Genia

Last week, legendary promoter/murderer Don King filed a legal injunction against the Shine Fights organization to put the kibosh on their “Worlds Collide: Mayorga vs. Thomas” main event, a bout that would’ve seen pugilist Ricardo Mayorga — whom King manages in the realm of boxing — take on UFC vet Din Thomas in the pro boxer’s MMA debut. Though the event’s subsequent collapse can’t completely be blamed on King, his legal cock-blocking of the headlining attraction certainly didn’t help.

Of course, this isn’t the first time a handful of legal documents and a judge have affected the MMA world, and though the history of the sport is a relatively short one, it’s a history rife with broken contracts, copyright infringements and countless other court-based fisticuffs. Who’s filed a lawsuit against whom? How many fighters know too well the insides of a courtroom? What happens when you sell the UFC a lemon? The answers to these questions and more can be found when examining the top ten lawsuits in MMA history.

10) Zuffa v. The Ghost of Pride: There’s an old Greek saying that goes, “Buying from the Yakuza is like passing out at Mike Whitehead‘s house — one way or another you’re going to get screwed.” Zuffa learned this the hard way when they purchased the Pride Fighting Championship from Dream Stage Entertainment, for they soon discovered that the whole thing had been held together by organized crime money and Scotch Tape (and not even real Scotch Tape, but that cheap knockoff stuff you buy at the dollar store). Consequently, in February 2008, Zuffa filed suit against DSE alleging that they were sold a clunker. DSE in turn countersued, complaining that Zuffa went back on its promise to keep Pride alive.

(Note to Semtex: If your opponent looks like this guy, don’t fight him. He’s a ringer.)

Paul Daley has been officially let go from his UFC contract for his sucker punch of Josh Koscheck following their UFC 113 clash Saturday night in Montreal, but the British fighter won’t be unemployed long. CagePotato.com has learned that he will be fighting on the July 3 Impact Fighting Championships show at Trusts Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.

Daley’s management confirmed the news originally reported today by MMA Weekly that "Semtex" received his pink slip this morning and clarified that he will be fighting for the IFC at the upstart promotion’s July 3 event.

(Coleman and Shamrock had to be restrained by their respective corners after being informed prior to their bout that prune juice had been added to the banned substances list)

I’m not sure if it’s because of the weather, the beaches or their commission’s lax drug testing policies, but Australian MMA is attracting quite a few fighters these days.

MMANews is reporting that Ken Shamrock and Mark Coleman will face each other under the Strikeforce Aussie-based Impact Fighting Championships banner July 10. The promotion’s inaugural event will also feature a main card bout between Josh Barnett and Geronimo "Mondragon" Dos Santos.

(Dammit Ken, this is why we begged you to get a real attorney. No matter what he says, watching every episode of ‘Judge Judy’ does not qualify Big John to give legal advice.)

If we’ve learned anything at all from receiving UFC press releases over the last few years, it’s that the world’s top MMA organization is not the most gracious of winners. Whether they beat you in a ratings battle or a game of hangman, they’re probably going to gloat about it in a press release. The latest opportunity for internet chest-thumping comes in the form of a legal victory over UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock, who lost his lawsuit in a Nevada court today and now gets to have his nose rubbed in it by Zuffa’s PR staff. Because apparently laboring on far past his prime wasn’t enough of an indignity.

You may recall that Shamrock sued the UFC when they refused to give him another fight following his post-beatdown retirement after a third loss to Tito Ortiz. Shamrock thought he should be able to unretire and have the UFC honor the old contract, while the UFC thought he should go get his face smashed elsewhere. Turns out Judge Susan H. Johnson agreed with the UFC, which means Shamrock won’t be getting a fat payday after all this legal wrangling. Instead, just to make his life even worse, he may be getting a bill: