MMA results

(How's taste this career-shattering loss? Photo by Esther Lin for Showtime Sports.)

What a weekend of fights, and amazingly, all without the benefit of the initials “UFC.”  Instead we had Strikeforce and the WEC (okay, a Zuffa property, but still) teaming up to blow our minds without charging us fifty bucks for a pay-per-view.  Now we begin the difficult task of using the Potato Index’s completely arbitrary numerical rankings system to see who’s up and who’s down after the eventful weekend.

Mike Brown +209
He beat Faber fair and square, no flukes needed, and he also proved he can last through five tough rounds.  Instead of making broken hand-related excuses for Faber, let’s finally all give Brown the unqualified props he clearly deserves.

Urijah Faber -37
We can play the ‘what if?’ game with his broken hand all we want, but that’s the fight game.  That he still fought well and fought hard afterwards, even in a losing effort, deserves to be mentioned.  But he’s not the world’s best featherweight as long as Brownie is around, and that deserves mentioning too.

("Guys, you can get some of those cupcakes *after* we take this face-off picture, okay? Guys?" Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Hello, and welcome to a special "From Press Row" edition of the CagePotato liveblog. That's right -- I'm typing to you from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis tonight, not from my usual spot on my couch in Brooklyn. The good part? I'm about 25 feet from the cage and wedged between some of the brightest minds in MMA journalism. The bad part? Slamming beers, eating wings, and loudly showing bias towards my favorite fighters is frowned upon here, apparently. But we're gonna try to have a good time anyway. Live round-by-round results are after the jump, starting at 9 p.m. CT. Hit that "read more" link and refresh the page every few minutes to get all the latest. Time to do work, son.

(Say something about Castro again. Hector wishes you would.)

Regulatory difficulties in Quebec forced Bellator to get all old-school UFC and move Bellator IX to the glitz and glamour of Monroe, Louisiana, but they did what any good promotion would do: grabbed some crawfish and rolled with the punches.  Last night's event narrowed down their finalists for the upcoming middleweight tournament, and they had a bunch of other fights just for fun.  Here’s how it went down:

Middleweight semi-final tournament fights:
Jared Hess def. Yosmany Cabezas via TKO at 4:26, round 3
Hector Lombard def. Damien Stelly via TKO (strikes) at 2:56, round 1

Non-tournament fights:
Nick Ring def. Isidro "Chilo" Gonzalez via submission (guillotine) at 0:39, round 1
Shad Lierley def. Nate Murdock via unanimous decision
Alex Andrade def. Christian Fulgram via TKO at 2:01, round 1
Shawn Jordan def. Jayme McKinney via submission at 0:30, round 2
Chan Leonhardt def. Dan Keenan via KO at 3:03, round 1
Chas Skelly def. Mike Braswell via split decision, round 3

(You know, Jason, it would be nice if your junk transitioned to a renewable energy source. Photo courtesy of DreamOfficial.com)

The return of Kid Yamamoto. Light-heavyweights fighting super-heavyweights. Desperate baseball players possibly dying in the ring. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to see some crazy shit. DREAM.9 kicks off in a few minutes, and if you're reading this live, God bless you. Round-by-round updates from the HDNet broadcast are after the jump; refresh the page every few minutes to get all the latest. If there's a long stretch of time where there's no updates, it just means that I've fallen asleep. Let's all hope that doesn't happen.
 

(It was at that moment that Jose realized his life had become unmanageable. Photo courtesy of DreamOfficial.com)

DREAM.9 — which goes down tomorrow in Yokohama, and will be broadcast live on HDNet starting at 5 a.m. ET / 2 a.m. PT — is simply too epic for us not to liveblog. If you'll be awake for some reason, swing by and find out how quickly/pathetically Jose Canseco gets his ass kicked by Hong Man Choi — as well as what happens with the rest of the Super Hulk Tournament opening round, the featherweight grand prix quarterfinals, and the Mayhem/Jacare middleweight title fight. If you'll be sleeping like a normal person, just come over when you wake up and get caught up on all the insanity.

Weigh-in results are after the jump, courtesy of MMA Weekly.