(Let’s all have a moment of silence for the career of Trevor Prangley. / Props: King of the Cage via MiddleEasy)

Before Tank Abbott re-enters the UFC and takes the heavyweight strap back from these pussy-ass point-fighters, his latest comeback will begin with a tune-up fight against guyliner-clad palooka Ruben “Warpath” Villareal, who has lost eight of his last ten fights. The match will go down April 13th at King of the Cage: Fighting Legends, at Gold Country Casino in Oroville, California.

According to a KOTC press release published last week, Tank Abbott is “the world’s most famous cage fighter” (!!!), and his fight against Warpath will be for the King of the Cage Superfight title, whatever the hell that means. And of course, Abbott’s second-career as a novelist also gets a plug:

“[Abbott] recently took a few years off to write a 300,000 word trilogy about the origins of cage fighting entitled “Befor There Were Rules” with the first novel, “Bar Brawler”, now available for purchase as a paperback or digital download from Amazon.com.”

I think it’s really cool of KOTC to keep the misspelling of “Befor,” so as not to embarrass or confuse Tank. Anyway, there’s a little video profile on Tank after the jump hyping the 4/13 fight. Check it out if you want, but just keep in mind that his fascinating toupee is still in hiding.

Thanks to Manny Yarborough GOAT for digging up this classic fight from King of the Cage 4 back in June 2000, in which a young Duane Ludwig beats the absolute dogshit out of MMA pioneer Shad Smith, who entered the cage wearing the same pair of sneakers and white socks that he showed up to the arena in. No, this would not be Shad’s night. Ludwig’s Muay Thai was nasty even back then, and the referee was as shitty as most local refs were in those days — two factors that combined to produce an uncomfortably violent late-stoppage. Skip to the 2:25 mark for the beginning of the end.

After the jump: Shad’s 2004 King of the Cage bout against Krazy Horse Bennett, which is worth watching just for their pre-fight promo packages. A credit to humanity, both of these guys.

Continuing the trend of mind boggling losses to the MMA world, multiple reports have confirmed that veteran King of the Cage announcer and radio personality Christopher “Big Poppa” Schnake passed away Monday, just days after announcing for King of the Cage: Kingpin on Saturday night. The news was broken by Schnake’s close friend and business partner “Victory Jay”.

Reports say that “Big Poppa” pulled over at a rest stop on his drive home and passed away in his car. According to Jay, Schnake had mentioned that he needed to “get his diabetes under control” in a phone conversation shortly after collapsing mid show at “Kingpin”, but that his death was shocking nonetheless.

("King of the Cage? I thought you said ‘King of the Players Ball.’ My bad.")

When Ray Mercer didn’t show up for a scheduled appearance on MMA Live last week, everyone figured that the boxer-turned-mixed martial artist, who is in the thick of training for a scheduled King of the Cage fight this coming Friday night must have mixed up his schedule.

Now it seems, there may be more to the story.

King of the Cage east coast representative Keith Creed revealed to usacombatsports.com that Mercer has not been in contact with anyone from his management team or his family since last Tuesday morning when he left his North Carolina home to complete the last leg of his training camp for his September 17 bout with Ron Sparks at "King of the Cage – No Mercy," in Mashantucket, CT.

(Reached for comment, Peoples stood by his assertion that the MagnaFlow Exhaust Products corner is the most prestigious corner in the world. VidProps: YouTube/ZombieProphetMMA)

Man, is it really too much to ask that Cecil motherfucking Peoples just referees and/or judges one fight without doing or saying something ridiculous to make himself the center of attention? Apparently yes, it is. Witness this video, in which MMA’s favorite head-in-the-clouds official puts on a command performance of his own tenuous grasp of reality prior to Friday night’s King of the Cage heavyweight title match. Not only does Peoples mutter something into the microphone about the KOTC championship being “the most prestigious belt in the world” during his prefight instructions to Daniel Cormier and Tony Johnson Jr., but then he does some kind of weirdo karate chop bullshit to start the bout. I swear, this guy.

Thankfully Peoples — who ends his comments to the fighters by saying “Let’s dance!” — doesn’t do anything to screw up the actual fight. You have to consider that a cut above his average appearance as an MMA judge/ref. Seriously though, what’s it gonna take before state athletic commissions start looking at Sensei Cecil and thinking, “Do we really want this jackass representing us in any way?”

Could we have released our Hottest Women in MMA list a month too early? HDNet announced today that former WWE Diva and Playboy cover-girl Maria Kanellis — who appears on Celebrity Apprentice this season and has an album coming out next month called Sevin Sins — has joined the HDNet Fights broadcasting team. Could MMA News get even hotter? She will make her debut as a backstage interviewer at King of the Cage: Legacy on March 26th in Reno, which will be aired live on HDNet at 10 p.m. ET. Keep in mind that the last KOTC show on HDNet was commentated by Michael Schiavello and Jason "Mayhem" Miller; the addition of Maria could push the awesomeness to dangerous levels. Enjoy the pics…

Maria Kanellis (born February 25, 1982) is best known from her time with the WWE, where she appeared as a wrestler and backstage interviewer. Maria first came to the attention of the WWE during the 2004 Raw Diva Search contest; though she only placed fifth, she made such an impression that she was offered a job anyway, and was employed by the organization until February 2010. Maria Kanellis posed for the cover of Playboy‘s April 2008 issue, and was a contestant on the third season of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2010. Her album Seven Sins was released on April 13, 2010.

Check out some other sexy women from the world of MMA…
Arianny Celeste
Rachelle Leah
Kenda Perez

(The beginning of the boxers-in-MMA epidemic. Thanks again, Tim. / Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

After he humiliated Tim Sylvia last June, we were worried that former boxing champ Ray Mercer would ride off into the sunset for good, having proved himself a master at two different combat sports. But you have to give the dude credit — he hasn’t given up on MMA competition, and he won’t be fighting scrubs just to collect a paycheck. MMAFighting.com passes along the news that Mercer will be appearing at a King of the Cage event on April 16th in Detroit, against Ron "The Monster" Sparks, a 6’5", 300-pound bruiser with a 5-0 record. Granted, Sparks’s first four opponents were making their pro debuts, and his last one has a losing record. Still, considering that Mercer is just 1-0 himself (not including his exhibition bout against Kimbo Slice in 2007), it’s a matchup that makes sense. Will Mercer continue to find success as a mixed martial artist? How long will it take until he’s ready for a UFC heavyweight title shot against James Toney? KOTC’s 4/16 show will be headlined by Jeremy Horn vs. Jake Rosholt, and will be broadcast live on HDNet.

Speaking of boxers crossing over into MMA, Shine Fights has signed undefeated NABO cruiserweight champion B.J. Flores (24-0-1, 15 KOs) to a non-exclusive fight contract. Shine Fights previously drew attention with their signing of former junior middleweight boxing champion Ricardo Mayorga — who will face Din Thomas on May 15th — but their new acquisition is even more notable because Flores is a current boxing champion who’s basically in his prime. Flores’s debut-date and first opponent have not yet been named.

(We were originally going to run a photo of Colt Toombs at the top of this post, but then we found this photo of his father, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, chilling with the guys from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We hope you respect our decision.)

Attention MMA FightPicker players: We’ve had to make two changes to this week’s pools. First off, Adam Gabel has dropped out of his King of the Cage Canadian lightweight title fight against Charlie Zak due to concerns about making the 155-pound weight limit. Replacing him will be 6-1 MFC vet Gavin Neil. Sadly, Colt Toombs has also been pulled from his Sportfight 27 match against Roy Bradshaw for unspecified reasons. Bradshaw has a replacement opponent now, but screw it, we’ll just get rid of that question entirely. Please revisit your FightPicker pools and make any appropriate changes. Special props to CP reader "kellyman" for giving us the heads-up about this stuff…

Sure, regional events like King of the Cage and Rage in the Cage don’t have the same big-name caché as UFC and Strikeforce shows, but let’s be serious — it’s still dudes beating each other up. If you don’t find that entertaining, feel free to spend your weekend catching up on old episodes of Private Practice, you sick freak.

Where were we? Oh right, the fights this weekend. Set your DVRs, folks, because this Friday’s King of the Cage card — which is providing us with the first seven questions in our current FightPicker pools — will be broadcast on HDNet, starting at 10 p.m. ET. The show promises three title fights (at heavyweight, bantamweight, and flyweight), plus appearances by UFC vets Rich Clementi, Travis Wiuff, and Mike Kyle. Watch it live and you can be the first person to gloat when your picks come in. As for the BAMMA and RITC events, you’ll just have to trust us when we tell you the results later. Not to sound like a broken record, but please join FightPicker if you haven’t already, and if you’re one of the 1,660 people who have started FP accounts but haven’t entered any pools yet, it’s this kind of indecision and lack of follow-through that’s taking our once-proud country straight to hell.

Very important note: Even though KOTC has been advertising a featured matchup between submission artists Rich Clementi and Anthony Lapsley, "No Love" has announced that he’ll actually be fighting Quinn Mulhern instead. If you’re playing the game this week, please re-visit your pools and edit accordingly.

(Props: ‘SmashedAceHole’ on the UG. Fight starts at the 3:03 mark.)

Before he was the UFC’s #1 welterweight contender and a Fight! magazine cover-boy, Thiago Alves was just a young scrapper whose last name was consistently butchered by announcers and commentators. Alvs’s Alvarez’s Pitbull’s eighth pro MMA match took place at a King of the Cage event in Cleveland back in February 2005, where he faced then-undefeated Jeff Cox, who entered the cage sporting maroon Aokipants and a hairstyle that might be described as a "nohawk." After missing a head kick, Alves grabbed a Thai clinch and found Cox’s snooze-button with a knee to the chin. He then fired punches into Cox’s grill until Herb Dean dove on to stop the abuse. Alves caught the attention of the UFC with the 15-second KO win, and would make his Octagon debut eight months later. All Cox got was the shame of waking up in Cleveland wearing red tights.

#3: Joey Villasenor vs. Hank Weiss @ King of the Cage: New Mexico (8/28/04), 5 seconds

We don’t know if Joey Villasenor had been studying tape on Hank Weiss, but Good Lord did Smokin’ Joe have his number. As soon as Weiss makes the grave mistake of dropping his hands while setting up his first attack, Villasenor is right there with the left hook (perfectly directed at Weiss’s knockout button) and the follow-up right straight (which missed, likely saving his life). And just like that, another beautiful one-punch KO was bestowed on the world. Weiss has lost 10 of his last 12 fights, but only one of those losses has been by knockout, so maybe he’s learned his lesson about keeping the mitts up and the chin down.

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO…

(Oh yeah, Cyborg will definitely fall for that one.)

Reporting on the possibility of a match (someday, somewhere) between Gina Carano and Cris Cyborg, Sherdog’s Loretta Hunt shared this bit of informed speculation:

As of today, I’ve ascertained enough information to confidently say that an eleventh hour effort is afoot to resurrect Pro Elite. I’m told this new regime includes a mix of a new investor(s) and some of Pro Elite’s old guard, and they have submitted a bid to CBS to take over the promising contract left dormant after the Los Angeles promotion closed its doors in late October. Carano and Santos’ contracts — not to mention those of Elite champions Robbie Lawler and Jake Shields among others — could be legally bound to this reincarnated unit.

As long as the "old guard" in question doesn’t include Jeremy Lappen or anybody named Shaw, this could turn out to be good news. Say what you want about EliteXC’s former scumminess, but the sport needs a high-profile venue outside of the UFC, particularly one with network television coverage. The question is, can anybody run it correctly? MMA Junkie adds to the story, suggesting that ProElite’s assets could be purchased within the next few weeks by a familiar name:

(You didn’t buy that plane ticket for Japan yet, did you?)

Five Ounces of Pain reports that Pro Elite could be very close to a sale of the company that might potentially revive MMA on CBS and Showtime, while at the same time putting the kibosh on the free agency plans of EliteXC fighters.  Apparently it’s down to three potential buyers, one of which is being led by King of the Cage promoter Terry Trebilcock (guess that Booyaa Fightwear ban makes a little more sense now, eh?), though the identities of the other suitors are still a mystery.  

The most likely buyer at this point is described only as “a company with over a billion dollars in annual gross revenue that also is a recognizable name.”

Just shooting in the dark here, but I’m going to say it’s Starbucks.  I heard they want to release a new specialty drink, the Kimboccino Latte.  It costs half a million dollars, but man does it ever go down easy. (Zing!)

Pro Elite is reportedly hoping to make the sale before Christmas, and if they do there’s a strong possibility that a new owner could round everyone up and successfully resurrect the relationship with CBS to get events on network TV again in 2009.  What does that mean for a fighter like Jake Shields, who seemed all but certain that he was bound for the UFC? 

It means that just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.

Well, one more of these and it’s a full-blown epidemic. At King of the Cage “Opposing Force” on May 15th — just one day before Shaun Parker and Tyler Bryan exchanged simultaneous knockout punches at LFC 25 — Anthony Lapsley and Aaron Wetherspoon’s match also ended with both guys getting their lights turned out. Near the beginning of the second round, Lapsley cranked Wetherspoon with a perfect right straight, but clashed heads with his opponent on the way in. As they both hit the mat, referee Herb “I’m Getting Too Old for This Shit” Dean patiently waited for somebody to get up. Despite the fact that the dazed Lapsley immediately started making the “no mas” hand signal, the fight was ruled a no-contest.

Mac Danzig was already a fully-formed competitor by the time he stepped into the ring at King of the Cage: Shock and Awe (10/1/05). Riding a six-fight win streak (which would eventually become a 12-fight win streak), the future KOTC lightweight champ uses his flawless technique to take apart opponent Frank Kirmse. When it’s over, he climbs to his feet and shrugs, seemingly without a scratch or even a drop of sweat on his forehead — a sign of things to come for the castmembers of The Ultimate Fighter 6.

I just came across this pre-TUF Peta2.com interview with Mac Danzig, where the former King of the Cage lightweight champ discusses his career and his conversion to veganism. Some highlights:

What made you go vegan? How long has it been?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had a profound respect and interest in nature and animals. I remember being 13 and seeing a truck on the interstate filled with pigs all headed to the slaughterhouse. One of them made eye contact with me for a while. It was one of the saddest moments I can remember. There was so much intelligence and spirit in him, and here he was, being sent to an awful death…I experimented with a vegan diet for about a year, but once I started training full-time for fighting, I believed what certain people said and started eating chicken again because I thought that I had to have some kind of animal protein in order to be a successful athlete…about 2 years ago, I read a Mike Mahler article on an animal rights Web site where he explained his vegan diet for training in detail, and I said, “That’s it—I can do it too,” and I started 100 percent vegan again for life and I’ve never looked back. I feel great.

Has being vegan helped your training and helped you maintain your weight class?
Absolutely. When I decided to go vegan, I was able to make the 155-pound weight class much easier, and I haven’t lost an ounce of muscle. I’m leaner than I used to be, and I have much more energy than I used to.

What are your favorite vegan foods generally, and what do you eat when you’re training?
When I’m not in training, I eat Soy Delicious ice cream and vegan chocolate chip cookies like they’re going out of style. There’s also some awesome vegan restaurants out here in L.A., like Native Foods, that have great vegan pizza. When I’m in training, I eat a lot of brown rice, tofu, oatmeal, and of course lots of vegetables and fruit.

I already knew that tofu makes babies gay…but could it also be responsible for Mac’s famous mood swings and sociopathic lack of sympathy? In the absence of any kind of data, I’m gonna go with “probably.” Plus, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good cheeseburger…