“Whoooooaaaa…says here this thing is a ‘Rousimar Palhares’. We’re already legally dead.”

Yesterday, while you were making terrible Star Wars jokes and/or mourning the death of MCA, lawmakers in “The Green Mountain State” were busy passing a bill to regulate the sport of mixed martial arts. Vermont is now the 46th state in the United States to regulate our sport.

My initial reaction to this news was probably the same as yours: “That’s nice.” Our second reactions were probably also pretty similiar: Damn, New York. You let the state known for its organic-granola crunching, Birkenstock wearing hippies regulate MMA before you did. Get your shit together. For real this time.

Granted, everything I know about Vermont I’ve learned from pints of Ben & Jerry’s. So let’s read the press release that the UFC issued:

“Vermont’s legislation of the sport of MMA is further evidence of the continued growth and success of our sport in this country,” said UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta. “We are pleased that fans in Vermont will now have the opportunity to watch a live UFC event in their own backyard, and look forward to making that happen.”

(Nope. Not even gonna go there. / Photo via Zimbio.)

After all the unexpected drama on Tuesday, I was really hoping we could put “caption-gate” behind us. Oh, if only. Following up their first report on the UFC’s demand for retraction, USA Today did a second piece with UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta which further explains why the promotion was so furious with this website. Here are some choice quotes from Fertitta:

“These fighters are already paranoid enough. Dana had to talk to Rashad on the phone for 30 minutes to calm him down, to tell him, ‘Are you crazy? There’s no way I would ever bet on a fight or bet against you.’…You’ve got to understand, Rashad’s entire team — his entire camp — was in his ear telling him they read this online and that Dana bet half a million dollars against him.”

“[CagePotato] flatout lied. They just made up a story and lied. Somebody who doesn’t know what our policies are and what we do, they could look at it in a very negative light…These guys go out and do this reckless reporting — it’s not even reporting — make these reckless statements and they end up causing us fallout and having to deal with issues. Why should we even have to deal with this stuff? They made this up and lied and put it online.”

“It didn’t read like a joke at all. If you look at the article, when you first read that, it sounds like that they were in a room with Dana, talking to him, and he says, ‘Oh,’ and he kind of made a mistake and said something, and said ‘Don’t print that.’…if I read an article like that, I would seriously believe that that actually happened and that went down.”

(I may not know how to buy a house, but if you give me fifteen minutes I WILL make a four percolator bong out of this.) 

Man, the UFC marketing department intern in charge of Lorenzo Fertitta’s Twitter account must be working overtime these past few days. Aside from announcing the Mir/Velasquez, Griffin/Ortiz, and Overeem/JDS fights last night, “Lorenzo” recently held a Twitter Q & A session to set the record straight on this whole Nick Diaz/Puff the Magic Dragon thing. And even if Diaz is planning to retire, his contract with the UFC will remain. You know, just in case he gets the sudden desire to fight B.J. Penn, Karo Parisyan, or Joe Riggs again in some small promotion somewhere.

When asked about Diaz’s Zuffa future, Fertitta was quick to respond, “[I] really like the kid [he] just needs to get it together. I’m a sap for real fighters.” We know, Lorenzo.

We don’t want you to argue about whether or not marijuana should be considered a banned substance, or illegal for that matter, because we already have. Needless to say, if anyone out there actually thinks weed enhances anything but zombie mode on Call of Duty and the enjoyment of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, then they are clearly unfamiliar with the term “enhance.” What we are interested in is what kind of punishment you think Diaz should receive for violating a rule, as silly as it may be. Three months? Six months? A year? Well, barring a successful appeal, which, come on, it’s looking like it will be a year or more before we see Diaz in the octagon, if at all.

Perhaps even more hilarious than the predicament Diaz has put himself in was how the MMA community responded to his failed drug test. Check out some of the best tweets, compiled by MMAFighting.com, 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.

(There can only be one Baldfather around here.) 

Proving the belief that if you want to make an omelet, you gotta break a couple million eggs, Lorenzo Fertitta gave full disclosure as to exactly what the UFC’s monumental debut on Fox would be costing Zuffa in a recent interview with Sports Business Journal:

When we were on Spike TV, that was a launching pad. We look at Fox as a bigger and better platform that could elevate the brand. We’re flat out going to lose money on this fight. But that’s the investment we’re making. Those are the steps we’ve got to take to make Cain and Junior pay-per-view stars and lift up the whole thing. Maybe we think a little funny here, but that’s well worth forgoing $16 million. Take that out over the next 10 years and we get a healthy return.

Hot Damn!

Now, though it may seem like pocket change to Zuffa, Dana White has stated that he is incredibly nervous leading into the event, mainly due to this whole “Brazilian Jiu Jitsu” thing, which he feels some of the more casual fans out there may have a hard time dealing with:

(“I’ve always wanted your autograph.” Alistair Overeem signs his new UFC contract in Lorenzo Fertitta’s office. Props: bawzzzz)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail feedback@cagepotato.com for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…

- Alistair Overeem Was Offered Immediate Title Shot Before Accepting Brock Lesnar Fight (MMA Fighting)

- UFC 135: Matt Hughes vs Josh Koscheck official for Sept. 24 in Denver (MMA Mania)

- Top 10 Worked Shoot-Fights in Japanese Pro Wrestling (TheFightNerd)

- MMA Comedy Gold: Interviewer ‘Skippy’ (AKA Ed Bassmaster) Discusses UFC 133 Experience, Shouts Out CagePotato (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- American Top Team Offering a Year of All-Expenses-Paid Training for Middleweights and Above (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto Meets Octagon Newbie Darren Uyenoyama at UFC on FOX 1 (5thRound)

- WWE Network coming in 2012 (MMA Payout)

- Dan Henderson Wants Jones vs. Rampage Winner, Says Rashad Evans Can Wait (LowKick)

- Your Cubicle Desperately Needs a Foot-Tall ‘MMA Alien’ Collectible (MiddleEasy)

- Lorenzo Fertitta on UFC Fighter Salaries: “All These Keyboard Warriors Have no Idea What They’re Talking About” (FightOpinion)

- Book Review: Stitch Duran’s ‘From the Fields to the Garden’ (MMA Convert)

- Ariel Helwani’s Official MMA Rankings (NBC Sports MMA)

(Apparently, you don’t f*ck with a union spurned.)

Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — the group that is battling Station Casinos to unionize its hotel and casino workers — launched a new salvo against the casino’s owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who also own a majority stake in the UFC and Strikeforce yesterday by firing off a letter of complaint to Federal Trade Commission Director Richard Feinstein in which they request that the FTC launch an investigation against Zuffa for what they deem as “a violation of anti-trust laws.”

According to the complaint, sent to CagePotato.com today by the union, Zuffa’s practices of buying out the competition like they did with PRIDE, the WEC, WFA and Strikeforce, their institution of champion’s clauses, automatic contract renewal clauses and guaranteed first negotiation periods in fighters’ contracts, their control of fighter image and likeness rights in perpetuity and their refusal to co-promote all put artificial restraints on athlete movement, depress pay and stifle competition.

Panic reigns supreme at UFC headquarters in the aftermath of Anderson Silva’s destruction of the strongest middleweight in the world. Dana White has been asking the same question for hours: NOW who do we put in front of Silva?

In a late-night spitballing session, Dana puts his question to his closest friends and confidants, hoping to devise a title defense that would actually be competitive. But while brainstorming can lead to bizarre, innovative ideas, Dana is unprepared for what sleep deprivation and caipirinhas have done to Joe Silva…

Ok, this is totally fake and i made it all up. There, you’ve been warned.

Come on in past the jump (if you dare), and check out the return of Keyboard Warriors. Props to Brandon Stroud over at WithLeather for coming up with a fun concept, but he doesn’t help write any of the jokes — blame those on me.

[RX]

(Jake Salyer of Tulsa, Oklahoma, manages to pull off a double-armbar submission in his MMA debut. The Diet Butcher would be proud. Props: GorillaTacticsMMA via ‘Okwiseguy’)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail feedback@cagepotato.com for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…

- Lorenzo Fertitta: I Would Love to Do Anderson Silva vs. Dan Henderson at UFC on FOX (MMA Mania)

- Cain Velasquez Talks UFC 139 Title Fight, Jon Jones, Alistair Overeem, and Being a Father (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- Going Streaking: Anderson Silva’s Record UFC Run on the Line at UFC 134 (NBC Sports MMA)

- Phil Baroni: Nobody Dry Humps the New York Bad Ass and Gets Away With It! (Exclusive Interview) (LowKick)

- ‘MiddleEasy/Whoa! TV Gym Expeditions’ Visits Birmingham, England (MiddleEasy)

- Felice Herrig on This Weekend’s Cancelled Fight and State of Women’s MMA (TheFightNerd)

- Royce Gracie Wants One More UFC Fight, but Ready to Move on Without It (MMA Fighting)

- “Strikeforce HW GP Semifinals” Official Trailer (5thRound)

- Josh Neer Headed Back to the UFC Against Keith Wisniewski in October (Five Ounces of Pain)

- “(UFC) Is the Only Sports Property That Is Pure and Works Literally Around the Entire World.” (FightOpinion)

- UFC Hopes to Be in Pre-Production on Australian Version of The Ultimate Fighter by the End of the Year (MMA Convert)

- FOX Deal May Be Just What New York Needs (MMA Payout)

(UFC on FOX video promo via ZombieProphet)

Some fresh details coming in about the UFC’s latest game-changing deal and their November 12th debut on FOX. As first reported by the Las Vegas Sun, the broadcast will be a one-hour live special, kicking off at 6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET., and will feature just two fights along with a full preliminary card. The event is expected to take place at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

Because of the time-slot, booking the event on the same night as Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez 3 won’t be an issue for home viewers. “We’ll be out of there before Pacquiao even walks to the ring,” Lorenzo Fertitta said. “This is going to be a perfect night for any fight fan. Get together with your friends, watch two big fights in the UFC and then change the channel to ride into the Pacquiao pay-per-view.”

As for the UFC on Fox fight card itself, only one prelim match has been announced so far…

(Video courtesy of YouTube/UFC)

Since he’s on his way to Wisconsin for the lead-up media appearances for Sunday night’s UFC Live on Versus 5: Hardy vs. Lytle event, Dana White’s first video blog for the show is more of a recap of UFC 133, which is just as well.

It’s interesting to see Dana’s non reaction to Vitor Belfort’s win over Yoshihiro Akiyama. He can clearly be heard telling Lorenzo Fertitta that the finishing blows by “The Phenom” were to the back of “Sexyama’s” head. Neither UFC executive showed little emotion when Belfort came over to their side of the Octagon to let them know he’s back and White later said in an interview that the former UFC light heavyweight champion would have to chew on his loss to Anderson Silva for a while before he gets another title shot.

A couple of weeks before UFC 133 in Philadelphia, Dana White made an appearance on Philly’s Preston and Steve show on WMMR to promote the show. Preston and Steve, being the wacky morning radio show duo they are, invited local comic and YouTube star Ed Bassmaster down to meet the Baldfather as one of his many alter-egos. Dana obviously had no idea who this guy was, as he completely bought that Skippy was just your average TUF fan in khakis and comically thick glasses.

So what happens when you ask Dana why he frequently seems upset and angry?

Well, Dana was so amused that he decided to have Ed wander the locker rooms and hallways at the event, doing interviews and trying to put some moves on Chandella. Of course, what he really wanted to do was get Skippy in the same room with Lorenzo Fertitta and sit back and watch the big guy squirm.

(Hell in the ring, silent on elevators.)

Any time two heavyweights with a history of testing positive get into a bi-lingual war of words, you can book us for a ringside seat. Such was the case this week when Josh Barnett and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva launched into the now nearly obligatory online fighter beef session. Silva got the ball rolling during an interview with Sherdog, wherein (apparently apropos of nothing) he lashed out at Barnett for – among other things – ignoring Brazilian fighters on elevators. So … that was weird.

If we had to guess, we’d say Bigfoot is feeling a little lonely and cranky after being kind of overlooked in all the hype, speculation and gratuitous match-up fantasizing that’s gone on since the UFC-Strikeforce merger. After all, Bigfoot became the latest dude to slay the unslayable Fedor Emelianenko back in February. You’d think that was worth something, right? And then pictures of Barnett exchanging bro-grabs with Dana White show up on the Internet? Why, that’d be enough to set any giant’s blood to a boilin’. His attacks, along with Barnett’s response are after the jump.

(“This is a fantastic day for the UFC in general, and for Tito Ortiz specifically.”)

In a significant step forward for the care of its athletes, the UFC announced today that it will begin providing out-of-competition accident coverage for its roster of fighters, effective June 1st. While the UFC has always provided insurance policies to cover injuries sustained during fights, fighters were generally on their own for injuries suffered during training. The UFC’s new policy — underwritten by Houston Casualty Insurance Company — will cover those kinds of injuries, as well as non-training incidents such as automobile accidents. Zuffa will pay 100 percent of the premiums.

As Lorenzo Fertitta told Yahoo! Sports: “We looked at this as a necessity for the sport and something that needed to happen. We have talked about this for a long time and we have always had the same position when asked how fighters could have insurance outside of the fights. Like we said, it’s tough enough to get insurance just as a business, in and of itself, with how expensive it is…

(“Minimum wage, child labor laws, eight-hour work day – that stuff’s for pussies.”)

For a couple of years now word has been percolating that the real reason MMA can’t seem to successfully find its way through the New York State Assembly might have less to do with the sport itself than with Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta’s purported anti-union business practices back home in Nevada. The Spark Notes version is this: The Fertittas’ Station Casinos group is reportedly the largest non-union company in Las Vegas and has a longstanding beef with a powerful nationwide hotel and restaurant workers’ union called Unite Here, which claims Vegas’ Culinary Union Local 226 as its largest chapter. That relationship turned even more icy in 2000, when the brothers allegedly fired 850 of 1,000 union employees working at a casino they’d just acquired. Ever since then the union has done everything it can to put political pressure on the Fertittas’ various business ventures, including bringing its considerable lobbying clout to bear in opposition to the UFC operating in New York.

Anybody who’s ever seen a Martin Scorsese movie knows you can’t piss off one of the country’s biggest labor unions and expect to do business in the Empire State, right? That’d be like publishing nude photos of one of the UFC’s ring girls on your website and expecting to still get press credentials. Just wrong-headed and crazy. Anyway, UFC Prez Dana White has long stayed mum about the Fertitta’s feud with big labor, but this week White mustered his usual political savvy and velvet-glove oratory skills to break down MMA’s New York legalization efforts thusly …

(“What, that bright light? It shines down on us from heaven. Come see how it feels, Scott. Nice, right?”)

Despite everybody’s continued claims that things have never been better inside Strikeforce, we know the UFC has already taken over the company’s relations with the media and begun poaching its biggest stars. Now, it seems UFC executives are also neck deep in Strikeforce’s business, reportedly working (at least for the time being) to make sure the smaller fight promotion’s top remaining draws are happy. That’s the word out of Toronto on Thursday, where multiple reports say Dana White will meet with Strikeforce welterweight champ Nick Diaz after UFC 129 and that co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta is already seeing to the task of making the proposed superfight between Fedor Emelianenko and Dan Henderson become a reality.

First and foremost, White seems understandably concerned with Diaz’s apparent designs on bolting MMA for boxing. As quickly as plans to have the Stockton bad boy fight Fernando Vargas fell apart a couple weeks back, new reports surfaced saying former super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy might be interested. Perhaps most interestingly, White said this week Diaz’s contract actually does allow for such foolishness – which is another good example of why UFC people need to be up in SF’s business – but he’s obviously not crazy about the idea.

Although calling the announcement  "a monumental one" may have been a bit of an overstatement, the UFC announced today at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro today that it would be returning to Brazil for the first time since Zuffa bought the organization in 2000 and only the second time ever August 27, 2011.

UFC president Dana White made the announcement of the yet-to-be named event in Rio city hall alongside Zuffa CEO Lorenzo Fertitta,  mayor Eduardo Paes and Brazilian UFC luminaries Royce Gracie, Anderson Silva, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, Vitor Belfort and Jose Aldo.

Although he would not commit to naming names of Brazilian fighters who will likely appear on the card because the event is more than eight months away and injuries may change the planned card several times between now and then, White intimated that all of the currently contracted fighters at the presser and guys like Demian Maia, Junior Dos Santos and Wanderlei Silva are all being considered for the card.

("Actually, I think I’ll pass on the UFC. I was offered a movie role that could make me the next Jean Claude Van Damme.")

If you haven’t heard about the PRIDE: Secret Files book published by the Japanese MMA and wrestling magazine,  Kamipro, you really need to look that shit up, son.

In a nutshell, the book reveals "30 sealed plans" that never came to fruition for the FEG-era owned organization, which, had they happened could have changed MMA as we know it.

Think of it like "The Butterfly Effect" except instead of Ashton Kutcher, the lead in the movie is Nobuyuki Sakakibara

The book was released in December in Japanese and has since been translated into English by an independent source who is hawking his version online for a nominal donation.

Some of the subjects of the tome include:

• The true ambitions of Lorenzo Fertitta when he bought PRIDE

• DREAM was born from the PRIDE LW GP that was supposed to happen in 2008

• PRIDE 1 was supposed to feature Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Renzo Gracie

• The other side of why Royce Gracie vs Mark Kerr never happened

• A planned PRIDE reality show that fell through

• Evander Holyfield was in talks to fight for the promotion

• "PRIDE Bushido" was  originally named “PRIDE Survival”

• PRIDE’s Lightweight division was born from a life or death crisis of PRIDE Bushido

• Mike Tyson was in talks to face Cro Cop, Fedor, and Big Nog

• GSP and Kimbo were close to being signed by PRIDE

• A PRIDE revival that was secretly being planned