(These things have been passed around more than Arlovski’s ex-girlfriend.)

Although the UFC only had five weight classes at the time, four years ago today it had seven champions and only two still hold a strap.

BJ Penn (155), Matt Serra (170), Anderson Silva (185), Quinton Jackson (205) and Randy Couture (265) held titles in their respective weight divisions, while Georges St-Pierre (170) and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (265) were the anointed interim champions.

Fun Fact: Anderson Silva is the only champ who still holds the same belt he did then.

Georges St-Pierre might want to re-examine his choice of training partners for his upcoming UFC 137 bout with Carlos Condit on October 29. You would think he would be picking the brain of his friend and teammate Rory MacDonald, who was seven seconds away from upsetting the former WEC welterweight champ at UFC 115 before getting TKO’d by “The Natural Born Killer.” Instead, “Rush” is thinking outside the box and has brought in Dan Hardy, who hasn’t won a fight since 2009, to help him prepare for the only guy to have knocked “The Outlaw” out. Makes sense, right?

Matt Serra, and his bucket of rigatoni, make their way to the cage.

Earlier this week UFC fighter Krzysztof Soszynski made the bold statement that the vast majority of MMA fighters—somewhere between 85-96%–are getting some sort of illegal chemical boost in the training room. Yesterday a bigger, more easily-spelled name in the sport spoke out in support of those allegations. In an interview with MMA Weekly, Matt Serra weighed in on what he considers to be a serious problem in the fight game.

“It’s wrong man, it’s really wrong. Let me tell you something. I got to the title without doing anything. I didn’t use anything,” Serra commented. “Me and BJ Penn are in that small percentage that don’t do (expletive). There’s a lot of guys that are considered legends, and they’re doing the GH and doing this and that, and it’s obvious, it’s freaking obvious.”

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.

(“I’d rather lose the best fight of my life than win the worst.” Photo courtesy of Sherdog)

On August 14th, Chris Lytle will step into the Octagon for the 20th time in his career, when he squares off against Dan Hardy at the aptly-named UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will be Lytle’s first-ever headlining bout for the UFC — as well as an opportunity to re-claim the title of “Most Bonus-Worthy Fighter in UFC History.” (He currently shares the honor with Anderson Silva and Joe Lauzon.) We recently spoke to “Lights Out” about some of his most memorable UFC fights, his upcoming scrap against Hardy, his crowd-pleasing style, and the tough lessons he’s learned along the way. Enjoy…

CHRIS LYTLE vs. BEN EARWOOD — Lytle’s UFC debut
UFC 28, 11/17/00
Result: Defeat via unanimous decision

“I’d been fighting for less than two years at the time, but as soon as I started training, I got really involved in watching the UFC. I knew who all the key guys were and I knew it was the pinnacle of the sport, so it was my goal to be there. We only fought two five-minute rounds [at UFC 28], and they’d started having fighters wear gloves not too long before, so it was just way different. Earwood was more of a wrestler — he just tried to hold me down. I don’t think they stood us up once.

Back then I was training with Jason Godsey and a few other guys maybe two or three times a week. Every one of us had real jobs, full-time jobs, and this was something we did for fun. I definitely felt like we were good fighters — Jason was King of Pancrase, and beat a lot of good guys — but we didn’t train every day. And after that fight I kind of realized…I didn’t feel like Earwood was any better of a fighter than me, I just felt like he had a better gameplan than I did, he stuck with it, and he trained more than I did.

(Bruce Buffer and Wanderlei Silva)

One of our favorite online obsessions over the last month has been awesome people hanging out together, a tumblr photo blog devoted to celebrities mingling in unexpected combinations. (I mean, seriously: Dylan and Ali? Alice Cooper and Colonel Sanders? Epic.) Since there are aren’t any MMA fighters represented on the site, we decided to do some online crate-digging of our own and put together a CagePotato version of the “awesome people” photo-phenomenon. Enjoy these rare and classic MMA photos, which continue after the jump, and shoot us some links in the comments section if we’ve left out any of your favorites.

(Royce Gracie and Mirko Cro Cop)

(Matt Serra, Frankie Edgar, Jerry Springer, and Kimbo Slice. See also: Fighters and Random-Ass Celebrities)

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.

(Video courtesy YouTube/MattNYY2)

If TUF 6 graduate Matt Arroyo’s fighting career doesn’t pan out, he may have a future as an impersonator.

The 28-year-old who was dropped by Zuffa after back-to-back losses has been inactive as a fighter since his last Octagon appearance against Dan Cramer at UFC 94: St-Pierre vs. Penn 2 in January of 2009. He has competed in BJJ competitions since then, but it seems like he’s been spending the majority of his time away from the cage working on ‘is riddum.

More MMA notables’ doing some other impressive impersonations after the jump.

Sure, we tune in for the fights at the end of each episode, the trash-talk between the coaches, and Dana White occasionally showing up to kick somebody’s ass out of the house. But over 12 seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, it’s the peripheral characters that are responsible for the show’s best moments. Take this season, for example — would it be nearly as interesting if Coach GSP didn’t bring in a special guest every week to shake up his team? With that in mind, here’s our tribute to the under-appreciated minor players that have kept TUF on its toes for the last six years…

#9: Willa Ford

In an effort to inject some eye candy into their new reality show, the UFC cast model/singer/actress Willa Ford as the host of The Ultimate Fighter‘s first season. (Her main duty was to introduce those weird elimination challenges that marked the show’s early days.) Willa was gone by season two, leaving us with fond memories of a time when TUF‘s non-stop sweaty dudeness was occasionally broken up by a pretty face.

#8: Jean-Charles Skarbowsky

Dude flies in from Paris, shows up to the TUF gym drunk, and gives GSP’s entire team the worst beating of their lives. What’s not to like?

 
(Serra needs a better hypeman.)

Jason "J-Dog" Wright worked his ass off getting us dozens of photos from Saturday night’s UFC 119 event, and we’re hell bent on getting them all uploaded onto the site for you to marvel at.

Here’s the latest batch of Jason’t shots of the guys and girls at the show in Indianapolis, Indiana last weekend.

Enjoy!

Pics are after the jump.

After frantically skimming through the 473 (!) entries that came in for this week’s caption contest, we’re happy to announce a winner. So who will pick up the duffel bag stuffed full of gear from Tokyo Five? We can’t tell you that just yet. First, the honorable mentions:

("You want the winner of Koscheck-GSP?")

Here’s another story that illustrates why the Potato Nation is awesome.

Jason Wright (or J-Dog as he is known around these parts) contacted us about a month ago to see if we needed a photographer to cover UFC 119 for us. Since CagePotato had never been credentialed, we figured with the success of our UFC Fan Expo booth (which was due largely to the help of CP’ers ReX13 and Viva Hate) now is as good a time as any to apply.

(They don’t like smiling. Put that in your little notebook.)

Dana White confirmed with MMAFighting.com over the weekend that Brock Lesnar‘s expected title defense against Cain Velasquez will come at UFC 121, slated for October 23rd at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The meeting will come nearly four months after Lesnar’s comeback submission win over Shane Carwin at UFC 116, and eight months after Velasquez stormed through Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC 110.

Though betting odds for the fight opened with Lesnar as a minor favorite (-125 to Cain’s -105), Lesnar has already moved as high as -160, due to money flooding in on the champ. At this point, the only other matchup reported for UFC 121 is a lightweight scrap between Sam Stout and Paul Taylor. In other booking news…

Now this is more like it.  Dan Hardy and Georges St. Pierre alone might lend themselves too easily to pre-packaged storylines, but Matt Serra is a born freakin’ entertainer over here.  This clip is forty seconds long and still he manages to do/say more interesting things than either Hardy or GSP managed in the entirety of the first episode.  You gotta love the guy for that.  It’s almost enough to make me want to watch this one live instead of on my DVR tomorrow morning while eating leftover Chinese food and nursing a severe hangover.  Almost.

Just in case this short clip isn’t enough entertainment to make the afternoon pass more swiftly, follow me after the jump for some totally gratuitous old school Wanderlei Silva ass-kicking action.  There’s no real reason for it.  Except that it’s awesome.

(Frank’s the guy in the background who is being assured by Josh Rosenthal that everything is going to be all right.  Well, not everything, but you get the point. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

We left one name out of yesterday’s recap of the post-UFC 109 contract-cutting bloodbath, and it is perhaps the least surprising one of all.  Frank Trigg, who suffered his second KO loss in as many fights after being brought back to the UFC in 2009, was also invited to seek other opportunities/paychecks this week.  One has to think that Trigg saw the firing coming after his poor showing against Matt Serra last Saturday.  Not only did he get knocked out, but this fight had loser-leaves-town written all over it from the start.  Why Trigg would dare show up for a fight of that importance with hair is beyond us.

Unlike Mark Coleman, Trigg says he’s not sure yet whether he’ll try to land a gig fighting outside the UFC.  He has some on-camera experience and can probably land a job of some sort in broadcasting, or maybe he’s had enough of working for other people and will resurrect the Triggonomics brand as MMA’s next clothing giant.  Changing the name so it no longer "sounds like a lemonade stand" might be a good first step.    

In this talk with Fox News’s "Fight Game" it’s difficult to tell whether Phil Baroni is drunk or just on the downward slope of a career spent getting punched in the head.  It’s like that time you did a terrible karaoke rendition of "Little Red Corvette" before throwing up all over your girlfriend’s shoes.  There’s only one acceptable explanation, and it’s ‘I was drunk.’  Let’s hope the seven-dollar beers at the Mandalay Bay were to blame for how this interview turned out, and not ten years worth of abuse in the cage.   

The catalyst for this particular discussion is the UFC 109 victory by fellow New Yorker Matt Serra over one of Baroni’s Xtreme Couture training partners, Frank Trigg.  Apparently, gym loyalties are nothing compared to regional ones.  Plus, Serra goes into the Starbucks where Baroni’s mom works and gives her good tips, while all Trigg has ever done is make an awkward pass at her at Baroni’s wedding.  Yet another situation where ‘I was drunk’ is the only explanation that will suffice.   

After the jump, Eddie Bravo discusses his path to jiu-jitsu, and subtly overstates his own importance.

(Serra’s recent training with striking coach Brad Ferro is already paying dividends. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

The UFC handed out $1,184,000 in disclosed salaries and bonuses for Saturday night’s show, with Randy Couture and Matt Serra‘s $200,000+ checks leading the pack. Check out the numbers below, and keep in mind that the figures don’t include additional income from sponsorships, undisclosed locker room bonuses, and cuts of the pay-per-view (Couture), or deductions for taxes, insurance, licensing fees, and monthly Life Alert payments (Coleman).

Randy Couture: $250,000 (no win bonus)
def. Mark Coleman: $60,000

Chael Sonnen: $124,000 (includes $32,000 win bonus, $60,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
def. Nate Marquardt: $105,000 (includes $60,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Paulo Thiago: $90,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus, $60,000 Submission of the Night bonus)
def. Mike Swick: $43,000

(Chael Sonnen explains that it’s the Ultimate *Fighting* Championship, not the Ultimate Mitt-Hitting, High-Altitude Training, Flipping a Tire Around, Screaming the Word "Yes" Championship. Props: MMA Fighting)

Following an expectation-exceeding night of action at UFC 109, the UFC handed out $60,000 pay-bumps to the following competitors:

Fight of the Night: Chael Sonnen and Nate Marquardt, for their bloody 15-minute grind, in which Sonnen survived a nasty choke attempt in the third round to secure the decision victory and earn a middleweight title shot.

Knockout of the Night: Matt Serra, for beating down Frank Trigg and proving that his hands are always dangerous, even if they’re on the end of very short arms.

Submission of the Night: Paulo Thiago, for putting Mike Swick to sleep with a D’Arce choke after knocking him to the mat in the second round of their fight. Thiago: 2, AKA: 1.

In other news…

(Couture vs. Coleman hype video by Genghis Con. Respect your elders, son.)

ATTENTION, POTATO NATION: It’s Friday afternoon, which means there’s still time to join MMA FightPicker and submit your predictions for tomorrow night’s UFC 109 card. For the thousands of players who have already signed up, we thank you, and we want you to know that we’ll be battling alongside you. In fact, BF and BG have both joined "Palooka Pool 30 #173" in an effort to determine a house champion. (Ed. note: The loser of this challenge will have to get a tattoo on his ass that says "Ben owns this. Not me, the other Ben.") So please join a FightPicker pool if you haven’t already, then take a look at how we’re answering the questions this week…

1. Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman at UFC 109: Who will win?
BF: Randy Couture. If Couture can only beat one type of fighter on the UFC roster, it’s the type that Coleman happens to be: old, a little bit slow, and too dependent on his wrestling ability.
BG: Randy Couture. Couture is the master of the gameplan. Coleman drives around Vegas for two days with his low-fuel light on because he’s always late to practice, and runs out of gas on the 215 even though he "put that little extra in there" to begin with. Difference in mental preparation, is what I’m saying.

2. Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman: Who will score the first takedown?
BF: Randy Couture. This is a little tougher to call, because sometimes the first takedown is determined in part by who’s gunning for takedowns right out of the gate, which should be Coleman. I still think Couture can stifle him until he’s ready to work for something out of the clinch, maybe early in the second round.
BG: Randy Couture. Ditto to all that. You might see these two guys try to prove a point by slugging for a couple rounds, but the Natural will eventually put Coleman on his back from the clinch.

3. Nate Marquardt vs. Chael Sonnen: Who will win?
BF: Nate Marquardt. Chael Sonnen says he doesn’t know what tools he has to beat Marquardt with. It might be the most sensible thing he’s said in weeks.
BG: Nate Marquardt. Okay, agreeing with you is starting to get very boring. I’d better start making some ridiculous picks to liven things up around here…

(Props: SinisterGi.com)

Remember when Toby Imada pulled off that awesome inverted triangle choke in the Bellator tournament last year?  Of course you do.  Your brain isn’t so clogged with Snickers bars and "Golden Girls" reruns that you could go and forget a thing like that.  It was by far the best submission of the year.  Now that we’ve moved on to a new year and Imada no longer has to worry about all you jokers biting his style, he’s going to go ahead and show you how it’s done.  Forget about Blanche and Sophia and the gang for just a few minutes and pay attention.

After the jump, check out round two of Matt Serra‘s video blog, and listen as Don Frye shares a very special memory from the Pride days, just for the hell of it.

(Looking good, Matty! Photo courtesy of Tokyo Five.)

Long Island’s Matt Serra may love to crack jokes, but he wants you to know that it’s not all he’s doing as his fight with Frank Trigg at UFC 109 grows closer. In our exclusive interview, Serra gives us his thoughts on his opponent, his career in the UFC, and why he spends so much time in the barbership.

This fight comes at a time when you and Frank Trigg are both coming off losses and both in your mid-thirties. Where do you think this is going to leave you if you win or if you lose?

I don’t really know, and I don’t care. That’s up to whoever does those rankings or whatever. Technically, I’m coming off two losses. Do I feel like that? No, because I don’t even feel I lost my last fight. They offered me Frank Trigg, and I don’t look at as my chance to move up or anything like that. I see this as an entertaining fight and an exciting fight, on paper, and a good match-up. That’s basically how I look at it. I had the belt, and if my career leads back there then great. If it doesn’t, I’m looking for exciting fights.

Since you are coming off two losses, even though, as you said, the fight with Matt Hughes could have gone either way, do you worry about your job security if you lose this fight?

(Photo courtesy of round5mma.com.)

Colorful Long Island resident Matt "The Terror" Serra — who has competed at a blistering pace of one fight per year since 2005 — may have already booked his 2010 UFC appearance. According to MMA Fanhouse, Serra has verbally agreed to a bout in Las Vegas on February 6th. Though Serra wouldn’t confirm who his opponent will be, Fanhouse says Frank Trigg is a strong possibility. Which makes sense, since they’re both in their mid-30s and coming off losses and not really factors in the division anymore. The loser of that fight would probably be retired by Joe Rogan in the post-fight interview, while the winner would pretty much have to take a rematch with Matt Hughes, considering that Hughes doesn’t have any better ideas.

(Props: Round5MMA.com)

Images of Round 5‘s fourth series of MMA figurines have been released, and my God, would you check out the moose knuckle on Mauricio Rua. You gotta respect the attention to detail, but this might be the work of a vindictive figurine artist/Chuck Liddell fan who got pissed off after UFC 97 and thought, okay hot shot, now I’m going to make you look like a woman. Meanwhile, Gina Carano is wearing long, loose-fitting shorts. So I guess they didn’t use my concept art after all…

(Photo courtesy of SI.com)

There’s nothing like a title changing hands, a hatchet being buried, and an upset or two to give the arbitrary numerical rankings system of the Potato Index something to talk about.  Let’s see who’s up and who’s down after UFC 98.

Lyoto Machida +316
He came into this fight as the favorite to win a boring decision.  Less than ten minutes later people were talking about The Machida Era as if it were the Ming Dynasty and lamenting the fate of whatever poor bastard had to face him next.  He proved you can be an elusive, complicated martial artist and still kick serious ass.  Dawning of a new age in MMA, or just a beautiful anomaly?

Rashad Evans -127
Becomes another 205-pound champ to lose his first title defense, and barely lands a punch in the process.  Keeping your back against the cage and trying to counter those whirlwind attacks can probably be ruled out as the strategy to beat Machida, but Evans had to try something.  Back to the middle of the pack.

(Just after this photo was taken, Rashad respectfully grabbed his nuts and blew Lyoto a kiss. Props to Combat Lifestyle.)

It got Koscheck. It got Okami. It got Alexander and Irvin and Wilson. But by God, the UFC 98 curse will not rob us of seeing Sean Sherk and Frankie Edgar fight to an inevitable decision, or Dan Miller submit Chael Sonnen in the first round, or Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida counter-counter-punch for the light-heavyweight title — unless the arena collapses within the next few minutes, which is always a possibility. Live round-by-round updates from tonight’s pay-per-view broadcast are after the jump; refresh the page regularly to see all the latest. Let’s get ready to EVAAAAAAAAAAADE!!!

(‘I come only to drink my own urine and win decisions. And I am all out of urine for at least the next hour.’)

It’s….time!  Here we go again, arguing over UFC 98′s most compelling, pre-packaged storylines and making oblique reference to awesome internet videos we’ve wasted our time watching lately.  Just so you know what you’re in for.  And so it begins…

When Mike Tyson spoke of impetuous style and impregnable defense, he might as well have been describing Lyoto Machida. How can Rashad Evans beat him on Saturday?

BG: According to Jackson camp trainer Mike Winklejohn, Evans’s gameplan will involve countering Machida’s counters. But come on — do you really think Machida hasn’t been working on countering counters to his counters? (Don’t read that sentence while standing between two mirrors or your head will explode.) To be honest, we don’t know what works against Machida. We know what results in utter failure, and that’s trying to strike with him; if Evans is seriously planning on beating Machida in a point-karate match, he’s fucked.

Because of his elusiveness and competent takedown defense, Lyoto Machida hasn’t spent much time on his back during his career. But don’t forget, Evans is a fearsome wrestler. And as much as I hate watching this strategy in action, a boring lay-n-pray decision is Rashad’s best shot at keeping his belt. He just needs to borrow Clay Guida’s “Energizer Blanket” approach — shoot and get stuffed, shoot and get stuffed, shoot and score the takedown, lay on top until Machida escapes or the ref orders a stand-up, repeat as necessary, and win an unsatisfying decision without inflicting any real damage. Yes, it would be ugly, and the fans would be livid. I’d much rather see Machida ghost-ride Evans’s ass with punches and foot-sweeps until Sugar has a nervous breakdown on the stool between the fourth and fifth rounds. But hell, you asked for an answer and I gave you one.

BF: Impregnable defense, I’ll give that much to Machida.  But ‘impetuous’ in this sense means marked by an impatient, impulsive force or violence.  Does that sound like Machida to you?  He’s more like impregnable defense and indifferent style.  Whether he finishes you or not is of little consequence to him.  The guy can wait all night for a victory, and he has.  But on to the question at hand.  

(Look at it this way, at least there won’t be a big traffic jam trying to get out of here.)

What you see here is Jose Canseco’s attempt at a press conference to discuss the L.A. Dodgers’ Manny Ramirez and his recent suspension for popping positive on a MLB-mandated drug test.  Judging by the number of chairs they put out, it did not get the kind of attendance they hoped for.  But hey, that just means more finger sandwiches for Jose to take home with him.  So why did Canseco, a retired baseball player, call a press conference to talk about a current baseball player’s drug use?  Because he’s a goddamned media whore.  And why are we telling you about it?  Because a) his participation in the upcoming Dream “Super Hulk” tournament has reminded us that he’ll do anything for money and attention, and b) it’s hilarious. 

And that “Super Hulk” tournament, it’s airing live on HDNet.  Thank God for small miracles, am I right?

In other, actual MMA news…

(Props: CageWriter)

Now that UFC 98 is only ten days away, it’s time to bring out the hard-hitting questions, like if Matt Hughes and Matt Serra were neighbors, and they were just regular guys and not fighters, would they get along, and who would win at bowling? That Pulitzer-worthy line of questioning came from ESPN: The Magazine‘s usually-capable Ryan Hockensmith (who maybe forgot that Serra already beat Hughes at bowling during a TUF 6 coaches’ challenge) at a press conference held yesterday, and while the Terror tried to see the humor in it — even suggesting a reality show based on the two Matts as neighbors, which I would totally watch — Hughes can’t be bothered. "Who cares who would win in bowling?" he says. "To be honest, whoever’s gonna win in bowling is whoever is luckier that day." Hockensmith had prepared a follow-up question about go-kart racing, but wisely kept it to himself.

More choice quotes from the press conference are after the jump, courtesy of MMA Mania…

(Props: BloodyElbow)

At least DREAM knows that their "Super Hulk Tournament" is a cartoonish freak show. Judging from the comic-book-style promotional clip shown above, they’re taking it about as seriously as we are. I don’t speak Japanese, but I was able to gather the following from context clues:

— Minowaman is a big fan of Kinnikuman, and vice versa.
— Hong Man Choi was relatively normal-sized as a child, but started to look like a Korean Rocky Dennis by the time he was a teenager.
— Jose Canseco is a filthy Communist.
— Jan Nortje is an ex-convict. If I had to guess, I’d say tax evasion.
— Like many Africans, Sokoudjou has the ability to speak to giraffes. His KO of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira at PRIDE 33 was so beautiful it made Harrison Ford cry. (Ford is referred to here as "Indy Jones.")

After the jump: In the latest installment of Matt Serra‘s UFC 98 video blog, Matty does a media day in New York on two hours of sleep; as usual, Ray Longo is dragged along for comic relief. Also, Sean Sherk‘s workout at API is so intense we threw up just watching it.