(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.

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.

If you’re curious, this is how we look without a shirt. Just take our word for it. PicProps: FiveKnuckles

We had a bit of a “WTF?” moment as we perused the card for this weekend’s Strikeforce Challengers card, and not because we fell for “Fedor is on the card!!” again. No, we were a little confused to see that an intriguing welterweight matchup between world-tourist Jason High and KOTC-standout Quinn Mulhern was relegated to the preliminaries of a Challengers card, which is sort of like Cam Newton and A.J. Green playing catch in the parking lot outside a Kansas City Command game. (To our international readers: sorry, we hope you followed that.)

Well, someone obviously heard that we were confused. After middleweights Antwain Britt and Danillo Villefort both suffered injuries, their fight was scratched and High-Mulhern was promoted to the main card. We didn’t realize we had that much pull, but it’s good to know for future reference.

("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.

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.