Props: Youtube.com/corissafurr

Heading into tonight’s UFC 139, you may have noticed that we did not post a usual Gambling Addiction Enabler to help you spend that pesky “extra money” that’s been clogging up your wallet. We just kind of assumed you planned on spending so much money on that Thanksgiving feast you were planning for your family and friends that you wouldn’t have the funds left over to gamble. But then we remembered who we were dealing with, and genuinely felt sorry. Our fault.

But where we have failed you, Spike TV’s Corissa Furr has come through. Okay, so it’s not exactly gambling advice, per se. But if you wanted to put money on her picks and form a parlay, you could make enough money to upgrade that impressive feast you’ve got planned. Call you’re bookie and lock it in while you still have time.

(Video courtesy YouTube/lookoutawhale)

If lookoutawhale doesn’t do video editing for a living, he has to be one of the best weekend warriors out there making MMA-themed comedy classics. His Knee to Crotch Party, GSP is Not Impressed at Awards and the History of the Nipple Tweak videos are must sees.

In honor of K-1′s surprise announcement that Todd Duffee will be taking on K-1 OWGP winner and Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem, Whale put together this sweet little Sega Genesis Mortal Combat throwback that should help make it a bit easier for you to trudge through hump day.

One of things we didn’t see in Dana White’s most recent video blog from the lovely Casablanca hotel and casino in Mesquite, Nevada was him sitting down for a conversation with Raw Vegas‘ Dave Farra.  Not that we blame DW for cutting that portion out.  I mean, talking to Dave isn’t going to be the highlight of anyone’s night, trust me.  But it is interesting to hear how White characterizes his negotiations with Dan Henderson, and just how different that characterization is from the way Hendo sees things.  According to White, they couldn’t come to terms with Henderson because he "was looking for an obscene amount of money."  Now there’s an interesting use of the past tense.  Chances are that if you asked Henderson, he’d tell you that he continues to want that same amount of money in the present.

Sucker Punch Knock Out – Watch more Funny Videos

After following everything MMA for the last few years we’ve seen some pretty egregious sucker punch knockouts.  These violations of stated rules, good sportsmanship, and the social contract itself seem to pop up every now and then, and sometimes you can’t help but wonder how some of these people have stayed out of prison long enough to become MMA fighters.  But this one…it’s unbelievable.  We don’t know who these guys are, but by the look of it they appear to be fighting for some kind of belt in a cage that’s only slightly larger than a phone booth.  After a nose-to-nose staredown, the fighter with the Chuck-hawk gets the bright idea to blow his opponent a kiss.  What he didn’t know was that he was blowing that kiss to a complete sociopath.

So what makes this worse than sucker punches of the past, like Heath Herring’s swipe at Yoshihiro Nakao?  We’re glad you asked…

MMA Fighter Suffers Terrible Broken Leg – Watch more Funny Videos

Ah, the leg kick leg break.  It’s the most sickening injury in all of MMA, and yet it has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called brutality of the sport.  It’s just bad luck, really, though when it happens it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re going to feel a little sick from watching it.  Even the fighter in this video who doesn’t suffer a broken leg seems like he’s going to need therapy to get over this.  So why are we showing it to you if we’re so bothered by it?  Mostly because we feel that if we keep something horrible to ourselves, there’s no one to commiserate with.  Enjoy your nightmares.

Now on to some fun stuff…

(Props: Druskee27 on the UG)

So it’s late in the fight and you haven’t been able to break your opponent down mentally?  No problem, dog.  Just bust a backflip to start the third round, making sure to stick the landing perfectly, and he’ll instantly lose his will to fight.  Then you go on the attack and wait for the referee to get bored enough to stop the fight.  Looks like someone may have finally discovered the secret to beating Fedor.  Better start drilling those flips, Josh Barnett.

Of course, if you can’t pull it off during the fight, it’s bizarrely more impressive to do it after you’ve been choked out.  See what we mean after the jump.

(Round 1. Rounds 2 & 3 are after the jump.)

Maybe you missed it, but Sanchez/Guida and Lytle/Burns weren’t the only good fights on TV this weekend.  At Friday night’s Strikeforce Challengers event Jorge Gurgel and Connor Heun slugged it out for three rounds in a bout that seemed mediocre on paper but wound up being the highlight of the Showtime broadcast.  

If you pay attention early on, two things become very apparent: 1) Pat Miletich is the best fighter-turned-color man/technical analyst that there is, and 2) Gurgel is still committed to being the ground guy who chooses to stand and bang in an effort to entertain fans and “please promoters,” as Stephen Quadros puts it.  That’s at least in part of what got him bounced from the UFC (okay, really it was losing fights, but that was a symptom and not the disease) and yet here it results in him having the fight of the night.  It makes me wonder, is Gurgel, for better or worse, a fighter crafted by the sensibilities of fans and promoters?  And if so, is that necessarily a bad thing?

Not to be outdone by the Cris “Cyborg” Santos chokeout video that made the internet rounds last week, Gina Carano has answered back by choking out the dude from the “Sports Science” shows, who acts like a complete pussy about the whole thing.  Look man, going to sleep for a few seconds and waking up nestled upon Gina’s bosom is really not a bad day at the office.  In fact, if you gave us two hours we could probably find someone willing to pay for that privilege, and they’d probably be only marginally creepier than you.  And can we also try not to act so surprised that Carano can break a dummy’s ribs with her punches?  She’s a professional fighter.  That’s how a girl eat.

After the jump, Fight Magazine interviews Diego Sanchez after his victory over Clay Guida and they experience first-hand his disarmingly sincere intensity.  That guy’s one of a kind.

So here’s a little taste of how Affliction is hyping their third (but totally not final) event.  Basically, it’s W-A-M-M-A champ Fedor Emelianenko against Josh Barnett, and yeah, some other dudes will be fighting on the “stacked” undercard.  So stacked, in fact, they can’t even get into it on this brief ad.  Just take their word for it, okay?

After the jump, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic talks about his motivation for coming back to the UFC (proving jerks like us wrong), and Mostapha Al-Turk employs some logically consequential thinking to come to the conclusion that since all men who go to the bathroom are beatable, and Cro Cop is a man who goes to the bathroom, therefore Cro Cop is beatable.  Yeah, son!  Now that’s how you hype a fight!!!!

(Props: MMA Payout)

Despite his decision victory over Dan Miller at UFC 98, Chael Sonnen must be a little worried about getting dropped from the UFC again because he decided to dedicate a little video time to kissing as much of Dana White’s ass as he can possibly get his lips on inside of four and a half minutes.  Seriously, does Sonnen think a video asserting his almost cult-like loyalty to the UFC is going to save his ass if he loses a couple fights?  Because it won’t, dude.  Dana will still drop you like a bad Pinkberry if it seems convenient.

It’s one thing to thank your employer for the paycheck, but Sonnen stops just short of declaring himself an indentured servant to the UFC.  The fact that they’ve already fired him once and will almost certainly do it again at some point in the future?  Doesn’t even matter to Sonnen, because that cell phone in his pocket and soda in his fridge wouldn’t even be there if not for the genius of Dana White.  If only the UFC prez would hurry up and write that book on business that Chael can’t wait to read.  Maybe somebody should tell him that Warren Buffett kind of already has written a book on business.  On second thought, nah, let’s leave him with his illusions.

Shawn Tompkins talks training, future stars – Watch more Funny Videos

I stopped in to Xtreme Couture while I was in Las Vegas last week and in addition to hearing Jan Nortje get yelled at I also got to sit down for a talk with renowned trainer Shawn Tompkins, which I captured in all its low quality glory on my Flip Mino camera.  Here’s a few minutes from our conversation where we discussed Wanderlei Silva and Brazilian time, why Mark Coleman’s always broke, and who Tompkins has really been impressed by in the gym lately.  The answer to that last question might surprise you.  I know it shocked the hell out of me.

Sean Sherk’s last two fights against B.J. Penn and Tyson Griffin respectively have seen him trying to reinvent himself as more of a boxer than the one-dimensional wrestler we’ve come to know and tolerate.  But will he really stick with that approach against Frankie Edgar who, as you can see, has some decent hands of his own?  Current Vegas odds have Sherk as slightly better than a 2-1 favorite, which makes sense if you think about the way he’s outwrestled opponents like Hermes Franca and Kenny Florian, and then compare it to the way Edgar was flat out dominated on the mat by Gray Maynard.  

But if Sherk gets caught up trying to please the fans and placate the people who say he can’t finish fights and isn’t entertaining to watch, he’s rolling the dice.  So which Sherk will we see on Saturday — the boxer or the wrestler?  And will it matter?

Here’s how you know your MMA rap video is off to a really bad start: you inform us that you are “here with the crew,” and when you glance over your left shoulder to indicate said crew there’s Spencer Pratt from MTV’s pseudo-reality show/vehicle for vapid rich kids, “The Hills.”  Great idea there, Kevin Casey.  Honestly, no matter what comes after that, and no matter how many highlights you show from the fight with “Minowaman” that you lost via TKO, your video is already screwed.  I’m not saying that maybe DMX didn’t have a dorky white friend at some point in his history, but when it came time to make a video of a bunch of dudes looking hard and mugging for the camera he was smart enough to give that friend a job behind the scenes.

After the jump, Matt Hughes heads to Minnesota to try some of that wacky caveman training Sean Sherk is always talking about.

(Props: Card on the UG)

The good thing about hiring a former WWE wrestler like Brock Lesnar to do a commercial is that he has absolutely no problem completely marking out for your product.  Watching this video of Lesnar pumping iron, stalking through the woods with a rifle, and perhaps murdering a training partner who looks suspiciously like the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy’s Chris Tuchscherer, one can’t help but imagine the interplay between Lesnar and the director of this Fusion Ammo commercial.  

‘Okay Brock, that was good.  Let’s try it again and this time, after you cold-clock the guy, look at the camera and really make us feel the ‘Yeeeeaaaah!’ at the end.  I’m telling you, man, it’s all about that ‘Yeah.’  That’s what’s going to sell this goddamn ammo.’

After the jump, Anderson Silva offers the sincerest form of flattery to some of his contemporaries.

In B.J. Penn’s latest video blog he answers some fan mail and discusses his ongoing case against Georges St. Pierre that the Nevada State Athletic Commission has basically decided to hear, but do absolutely nothing in response to.  Penn seems to be blaming the NSAC’s Keith Kizer, saying he “can’t be trusted” and insisting that he has “no interest in fighting in Nevada or Las Vegas ever again.”

Just to clarify, that’s the UFC’s home base that he’s talking about – the city where the majority of their events are held.  And here the UFC lightweight champ says he doesn’t want to fight there ever again because the commission is made up of a bunch of shady ne’er-do-wells.  This could be a problem.

Everybody wants to video blog these days.  From Dana White to the hipster grifter, people all over the world have awakened to the power of pointing a camera at their own face while they do/say things.  But dammit, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.  What you see B.J. Penn doing up there is the wrong way.  Why?  Because he’s just standing in front of the camera with the ocean as his background, talking for a minute and a half.  Again we hear about Marv Marinovich’s revolutionary training methods, and again we see none of it. 

Here’s the question you have to ask yourself when you video blog: am I doing anything here that could not be done in a really long voicemail message?  If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink your approach.  If the answer is yes, but only because you go on for way too long, then you are Mark Pavelich.  You’ll see what I mean after the jump.

(Check out the high kick from Tom at the end.  It sure freaked the cameraman out and shut his whole operation down. Props: MMA Videos.)

Yeah, that’s Tom Atencio in the camo trunks getting his scrap on against David Martinez back in 2005.  You have to like the intensity and aggression from t-shirt guy.  He is not afraid to come right after you, guns a-blazin’.  He went on the win this fight via decision and it cemented his place as the rare fight promoter who actually has the grapefruits to get in and fight.  But apparently the positive attention that’s been coming his way since he agreed to his second MMA fight has only emboldened him to get more proactive about painting Dana White as a total punk.  First he suggested that maybe Dana should try being an actual tough guy, rather than just talking like one.  And now he’s stopping just short of issuing a full-on challenge. 

JZ Cavalcante talks fight preparation, competing in Japan – Watch more Funny Videos

After spending a few days at American Top Team in Florida last week, I came away with a real appreciation for how hard Gesias “JZ” Cavalcante works in the gym.  From a grueling session with his strength and conditioning coach to his intense sparring matches with WEC champ Mike Brown and others from the ATT stable, JZ is putting in serious work to get ready for Tatsuya Kawajiri at Dream.9 later this month.  In this video he talks about the important psychological benefits of his training, whether he’d get in the ring with Fedor Emelianenko like Shinya Aoki did, and one of the stranger things that’s happened to him while fighting in Japan.

(And to think this all started with a colorful gi, some little shorts, and a dream.)

It looks like Combat Sambo tournaments might actually lead to career advancement opportunities, after all.  Blagoi Ivanov has signed a three-fight deal with Sengoku and will reportedly face former Pride fighter Kazuyuki Fujita in his first fight at Sengoku 9 in August.  Ivanov is the guy who made minor waves (more like ripples by the time they reached the U.S.) when he beat Fedor Emelianenko on points in the World Combat Sambo Championships last November.  Fujita’s claim to fame is that he once hit Fedor so hard it briefly stunned him.  Neither of these accomplishments is enough to make this a truly interesting fight, although Sengoku has got to take what they can get when it comes to heavyweights. 

Internet video savant Lookoutawhale has done it again.  Here we get a chance to see what it might have looked like if the production teams from both Pride and the UFC had gotten drunk together and engaged in an orgy of fight hype.  The result is a beautiful and slightly comical love child.  It really makes you grateful for the wonders of technology and the things it can be used for when people have too much time and not enough of a social life.  The special appearance by Bruce Lee at the end is what takes this from mere tomfoolery and carries it into the realm of genius.  Bravo, Mr. Whale.