Lookin’ good, buddy! For the “before” pic, go here…

(Source: punchdrunkgamer.com)

In a remarkable display of balls, Tommy Speer dominated Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver in last night’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter, despite an early cut that had full pints of blood squirting from his forehead. As Matt Serra shouted in his charming Lawn Guyland accent, “He’s bleedin’ like a pig, War!” Unfortunately for Team Serra, the fight would not be decided on blood loss alone.

So I was skimming this mostly boring BuddyTV interview with Michael Bisping, when I came to this part:

Do you know what song you’re going to be walking out to on UFC 78 yet?
I do, yeah. It’s Puff Daddy and Jimmy Paige [sic] “Come with Me” from the Godzilla soundtrack.

Right. Nice. Okay, Cool.
Every time I go running and that song comes on, I always have to speed up. So I thought I’d put that on to excite me for a little bit.

Why Xcess Fighting chose to hold their debut event at a gay nightclub is beyond me. At any rate, the super macho fight organization’s “Havoc in Hollywood” show goes down tonight — but if you were planning on heading out there to get a glimpse of Eric “Butterbean” Esch, don’t bother.

According to Canvas Chronicle, Tim Sylvia will face Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira at UFC 81 for the vacant heavyweight title. Feel free to harass the Chronicle’s editor Ric Gillespie (ric@canvaschronicle.com) until the bastard reveals his source.

Ultimate Ultimate Knockouts, a DVD collection of the all-time greatest K.O.’s in UFC history, hit stores today. Among the fighters featured are Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, Tito Ortiz, Andrei Arlovski, Matt Hughes and Matt Serra, but the most frightening knockout on the disc comes from David “Tank” Abbott’s jaw-dropping debut against John Matua at UFC 6. Looking at Matua — a 400-pound beast who, as Michael Buffer manages to say with a straight face, is “a practitioner of Kuialua, the brutal Hawaiian art of bone-breaking” — you’d think he’d be the favorite against the beer-bellied Abbott. But Abbott makes his presence known immediately, punching Matua so hard that he ends up in an Awakenings-style paralysis, and then mocking him for it.

These days, Tank Abbott is seen as a relic of simpler times, when strikers couldn’t be bothered with learning how to grapple. He’s lost seven of his last nine fights (including once to Frank Mir). But on that night…he was brilliant.

Today, RioHeroes will broadcast its super-lightweight championship tournament live on its website. The eight-man event will kick off at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT, and will follow Brazilian vale tudo rules — meaning there’s no gloves, no rounds, no time limits, and all techniques are legal except eye-gouging, hair pulling, biting, and groin strikes. Single-night tournaments are brutal enough with gloves, so this one should be utterly insane.

RioHeroes LIVE MMA Fights – Watch more free videos

In other online fighting news, Bodog Fight: The Vault premieres today on Bodog TV. Every Tuesday and Saturday, the website will broadcast never-before-seen matches from Bodog Fight-sponsored organizations like SportFight, StrikeForce, XFC, and other leagues where the fighters are so pussy that they have to wear hand protection.

UFC.com has reported that ex-WWE star Brock Lesnar’s first opponent in the UFC will be former heavyweight champion Frank Mir; the fight will go down on February 2 in Las Vegas. Mir is best known for his controversial June 2004 title match against Tim Sylvia, where referee Herb Dean stopped the fight 50 seconds into the first round after Sylvia’s forearm snapped in an armbar. Sylvia didn’t tap out, and refused to acknowledge that his arm was broken:



Mir was badly injured in a motorcycle accident three months after winning the heavyweight belt, and has been 2-2 since then. Still, he’s an ideal matchup for Lesnar; as much as fans want to see Lesnar challenged in his first fight, they also don’t want to see him steamrolled by a superstar at the top of his game. And Mir, who has scored six of his ten professional wins by submission, will certainly put Brock’s wrestling skills to the test. I’m not prepared to make a prediction at this point, so instead I’ll present my favorite paragraph from Tim Sylvia’s wikipedia page:

“Despite having been the UFC heavyweight champion and earning six-figures per fight, Tim Sylvia is always seeking new sources of revenue. While champion, he attempted to sell a Playstation 3 on eBay for well over retail price (although he did generously offer to autograph the box.) He also once, while still UFC heavyweight champion, raffled off the opportunity to go bear hunting with him in Ontario…tickets were $100 each, and ticket sales were limited to 100. This adds up to $10,000. There was nothing in the raffle to indicate that the money would go to any sort of charity, or to anyone other than Sylvia himself.”

Courtesy of ProElite.com. Holy crap, this fight is only five days away!

After I wrote that last post, I decided to search the web for some of those old Xyience commercials with the Iceman and Ace. I always liked the one where Rich Franklin is telling his science class about how awesome Xyience is, and the hot chick in the class is like “Mr. Franklin, do you use Xyience?” while eye-fucking the shit out of him, and he’s like “Every day,” and the implication is that if you use Xyience, you basically get to bang your students every day.

So I’m searching, and I come across the video below. From what I gather, Xyience held a video contest to find their next spokesmodel, and a handful of girls submitted sample commercials. I’m guessing that this girl didn’t win:

The problem with trying to be sexy is that if you miss the mark, you miss it so hard that you usually land on “hilarious.” I think the main problem here is that gogo-bar dance moves don’t really translate when you break ‘em out in the middle of the day behind a decrepit supermarket in Hoboken. Also, it Just Doesn’t End. We get it — you can rub your ass and hair against a filthy wall. If this is what Xyience does to people, I’m sticking with Red Bull and methamphetamines.

Hey, you remember how Chuck Liddell and Rich Franklin always used to appear in Xyience commericals, and now they don’t so much anymore? Well, as Adam Swift reports on Sherdog, the two UFC stars terminated their endorsement deals due to Xyience’s non-payment. Forrest Griffin, Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick and Cung Le were also short-changed by the nutritional supplement company, though all the fighters (including Liddell and Franklin) report that they’ve now been paid in full.

The Xyience website continues to feature fighters who have left the company, including Matt Hughes (who wasn’t happy with Xyience’s performance and now shills for Nutritox*) and Sean Sherk, who blames Xyience’s Xtreme Joint Formula for his positive test for the anabolic steroid 1-androstendione. Interestingly, no fighter has blamed their split with the company on the fact that the Cran Razz energy drink tastes like rotten piss.

Despite everything, Xyience has managed to sign a three-year extension on its exclusive partnership with the UFC. Says Dana White: “We look forward to our future endeavors together as both of our companies continue their explosive growth.” Anyway, read the article for all the details.

* Special to Matt Hughes: I’m not sure I’d trust a nutritional line with the suffix “tox” in its name. You know how Botox is short for “Botulinum toxin”? It’s basically a paralytic poison. Which works for wrinkles, apparently, but I’m not sure how a toxin would benefit your muscular/cardiovascular systems. Anyway, you’d better do some more homework on the stuff, because Matt Serra just signed a contract with Vitideath and he’s looking HUGE.

MMA wunderkind Chris Horodecki tacked another win onto his unbeaten record on Saturday with a split-decision over Bart Palaszewski at the IFL’s World Grand Prix. Horodecki came out strong in the first round, hammering Palaszewski with sharp combinations and briefly knocking him to the mat, but the second frame was all Palaszewski, who dominated his younger opponent with ground-and-pound and a guillotine choke attempt that Horodecki managed to slip out of. This was the decisive final round:

It was the second time the two lightweights faced off in the IFL, the second time that Horodecki walked away with a close decision, and the second time that Palaszewski wasn’t happy about the result. (“I have no idea what I could have done to win a decision against Chris,” he said. “He looks like he was in a car wreck and I look fine.”)

Set the DVRs, folks: On Thursday, November 20, UFC light-heavyweight Forrest Griffin will make his acting debut on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as a fighter who becomes a suspect in the death of a teenage girl. Playing the role of his fiancee is none other than Coco, the heavily ass-implanted real-life wife of SVU castmember Ice-T. A preview clip has made it online, and we’ve posted it below. If Griffin’s entire performance is as thrilling as that “I LOVE YOU BABY, WOOOOOO!” line, we’d say Randy Couture better watch his back…

By the way, is Coco wearing an Octagon-shaped necklace? Man, these writers don’t miss a single detail!

…from CagePotato’s #1-ranked Ring Girl, Arianny Celeste of the UFC.

Note: This greeting was not authorized by Arianny. Most likely, she doesn’t care about you or the quality of your weekend. You could spend the next two days hand-washing your sweaters and alphabetizing your dishes, for all she cares.

Yahoo! Sports has reported that Sean “Muscle Shark” Sherk — who tested positive for an anabolic steroid in July after his title defense against Hermes Franca at UFC 73 — will remain the UFC’s lightweight champion. Dana White had originally planned to strip Sherk of his title, but changed his mind due to his frustration with the California Athletic Commission. Sherk has denied taking steroids, and appealed his one-year suspension, but had his hearing postponed until November 13 when members of the CAC realized they had not received a 17-page brief that Sherk’s attorney had submitted on his behalf. “The way this whole thing has been handled has been a mess,” White said.

UFC lightweights BJ Penn and Joe Stevenson will fight for an interim title at UFC 80, with the winner potentially facing Sherk after the case is settled. We at CagePotato wish Sean the best in his fight against the California Bureau of Whatever; just because a guy looks like he’s on every steroid under the sun, doesn’t necessarily mean he is. Let’s give the man a fair shake, people.

I never thought there was much technique involved in the soccer kick, but in this clip, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua demonstrates the formerly-legal attack that served him well in his PRIDE career, with his older brother Murilo as his training dummy.

Speaking of Chute Boxe alums, Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons faces Jake “The Juggernaut” Ellenberger in the main event of tomorrow’s Extreme Fighting Challenge 5: Revolution, and the Chute Boxe USA website has some killer videos of Wanderlei Silva fighting in bare-knuckle vale tudo matches.

Though the featured weight division hasn’t been announced yet, the fighter application for the seventh season of TUF is now online. Be warned that one of the questions in the application is “Have you used any form of steroids in the past year? (PLEASE BE HONEST ALL APPLICANTS WILL BE TESTED!)”

Applications are due November 26, so get hustlin’ on your highlight reel…

The International Fight League’s World Grand Prix goes down tomorrow in Hoffman Estates, IL, showcasing the top four fighters from their lightweight, welterweight, middleweight and heavyweight divisions, as well as a championship bout between the two best light heavies, Vladdy Matyushenko and Alex Schoenauer. MyNetworkTV will broadcast the first hour of the card live beginning at 8 p.m. CST.

The two fights that are guaranteed to go down in that hour are the light heavyweight match, and a lightweight meeting between undefeated 20-year-old Chris Horodecki of the L.A. Anacondas and Bart Palaszewski of Pat Miletich’s Quad City Silverbacks. Horodecki and Palaszewski fought earlier this year at an IFL event, with Horodecki eking out a split decision despite being dominated by the Silverback in the first round:

Weigh-ins are today at, of all places, B-Dubs. CagePotato strongly recommends the cheeseburger dippers, pulled pork sandwich and Blazin’ sauce.

Sorry. Slow news day…

Since Bas Rutten is the former coach of the IFL’s L.A. Anacondas team, Kimbo Slice’s trainer, and a personal hero of CagePotato, you’ll be seeing a lot of him on this site, and it would behoove you to get acquainted with his work. A good place to start is this video of Rutten taking on Frank Shamrock in a 1996 Pancrase match. For those of you who grew up on the UFC, the Pancrase rules might throw you off — wikipedia has a decent overview here.

The fight was so theatrical that some have accused it of being a work. Check out Rutten and Shamrock toppling out of the ring at 5:00-5:06; Shamrock’s backward somersault at 7:14-7:18; the exchange at 9:02-9:18 that I won’t even try to explain; and Bas’s celebratory “Rutten Jump” beginning at 11:50, after the fight was stopped due to a cut near Shamrock’s eye.

On last night’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter, Matt Hughes put his team through a brutal workout to punish them for Dan Barrera’s loss, resulting in a rib injury for Jared “J-Rock” Rollins, who Team Hughes had picked to fight George Sotiropoulos. In other words, Hughes is still a freakin’ moron. Jared was cleared to compete, but looked very tentative against George, threw some of the the laziest kicks in series history, didn’t try to take the fight to the ground, and was subsequently KTFO in the first round. 6-1, Team Serra. Also in the episode, the members of Hughes’s team became fully aware of how awful their coach is, and George’s teammates got angry with him for never waking them up in the morning. By default, the last preliminary fight will be Tommy Speer vs. Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver.

And now, the episode’s best quotes:

Matt Hughes: “Boy, do I want to unleash my fury on you.”

Dan Barrera: “I believe I got that Spartan heart. God gave me a Spartan spirit, and I’m just gonna keep on truckin’.”

Dana White’s coaching advice to Matt Hughes: “Fuckin’ just bitch-slap these motherfuckers, man. Let ‘em know what’s up. Don’t let them fuck your week up. Bust ‘em now. You know what the answer is. Beat the living shit out of them. Fuckin’ get ‘em.”

Matt Serra, on racial sensitivity: “[Jared]‘s like, ‘Am ah doin’ it right, Mistah Hughes?’ One of those guys. He’s Hughes’s boy.”

EliteXC held a conference call yesterday to discuss their upcoming “Renegade” event, with live events president Gary Shaw and fighters Kimbo Slice, KJ Noons and Jake Shields in attendance. (The audio is here; dig that funky hold music.)

Obviously, the call belonged to Kimbo. Give this guy a few years and he’ll be operating on Tyson-esque levels of verbal entertainment/insanity. Some of his highlights:

[On training with Bas Rutten]: “Every aspect of my training has improved. My whole life has improved. I don’t even smoke any more. I haven’t had sex in four months. I haven’t had a cocktail in five, six months. So I’m pretty pure and backed up, and I’m ready to fight. My focus is on point. I’m accurate. I know how to use my power. My wind is outstanding. I’m ready for anything coming my way. My groundwork is superb. I’m an all?around fighter. I’m no longer one?dimensional. I’m not going to stand there and bang. Working with Bas, that’s like, man, he’s like the Jimmy Johnson, the John Madden of [MMA].”

Mike “The Rhino” Bourke, the 8-11-1 patsy that was scheduled to be obliterated by Kimbo Slice at the 11/10 EliteXC Renegade event in Corpus Christi, TX, has dropped off the card. Five Ounces reported today that Bourke broke his clavicle during a training session on Sunday, and was forced to pull out of the match. EliteXC has now confirmed that Kimbo’s new opponent at the event will be Bo “Redrum” Cantrell, an equally can-like 10-10-0 fighter who became a part of history on Saturday as the second consecutive guy that Brad Imes submitted by gogoplata.

Man, Elite is really hedging their bets on this one. Are they so insecure about Kimbo’s ability that they won’t put him up against a fighter with a winning record? MMA fans want to see Kimbo in an exciting fight, where he’s challenged, and they’re not going to get it this time. I couldn’t find any decent videos of Mike Bourke or Bo Cantrell in action, so here’s a Kimbo Slice highlight reel that you’ve probably already watched a dozen times. Wonderful.

(Still, that part at 0:41-0:44 where Kimbo lets the dude haul off and hit him in the face will never get old…)

MMA veteran and TUF 4 alum Din Thomas was arrested yesterday for allegedly running un-sanctioned MMA bouts at his gym in St. Lucie West, Florida. (You can see the police report here.) An undercover police officer at the scene observed “a large caged octagon ring with two men inside fighting. There was a third male in the octagon acting as a referee. Around the octagon there were several people (approx. 150 men, women and minors) sitting and standing on make shift stands and chairs facing the octagon cheering while watching the two men fight. Both fighters wore gloves but did not have any protective headgear on. At the front door to the location there was a table with a small sign stating ‘$10.00 per person.’ Also located on the table was a roll of raffle tickets*.”

This sounds like a common shakedown to me. MMA fights in the state of Florida are regulated by the Florida Boxing Commission, an organization that is no doubt frustrated over the fact that no one gives a shit about boxing anymore. Thomas can’t hold an amateur MMA exhibition in his own gym without getting an OK from these jokers? Recockulous. It’s MMA persecution, and we should all be pissed about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make an iron-on “Free Din Thomas” t-shirt.

*There was no word on who won the raffle.

Last night, ESPN’s sports magazine show E60 did a segment on Pat Miletich and his legendary gym in Bettendorf, Iowa. (Watch it here.) Miletich fighters Brad Imes, Tim Sylvia, Rory Markham and Ben Rothwell all get some screen time, but the most interesting part of the piece was the disclosure of the gym’s membership fees — $75 per month, plus 10% of a fighter’s future winnings if they continue to train with Miletich.

This is amazing to me. Miletich is able to offer arguably the best MMA training in the world for only $2.50/day because he’s so confident his students will not only become successful fighters, but also won’t desert him when the large paychecks start rolling in. Tim Sylvia just had to give Pat $20,000 from his drubbing of Brandon Vera at UFC 77, all for the privilege of being able to push around truck tires and drag weight sleds next to fresh-off-the-bus upstarts in the middle of nowhere. That’s loyalty.

For more of Miletich and his gym, check out this 60 Minutes segment from December of last year:

From last night’s episode…

Wow. Just look at that thing. My goodness.

As for Randy himself, I gotta be honest and say this was one of those “don’t resign from your day job”-type situations. As an actor, he enunciates every word in a very unnatural sort of way (no pun intended). Plus, he’s got those horribly disfigured ears. I just don’t see “leading man” in his future. Though I would love to see a romantic comedy starring him and Sandra Bullock…

Iditotic? Yes. But you gotta love those crude-yet-somehow-dead-on caricatures of Kimbo and Fedor.

[Kimbo Slice vs. Mark Hunt]

[Fedor Emelianenko vs. Gabriel Gonzaga]

Come on, that’s absolutely charming!

[Refresh page every few minutes to read the latest verbal brutality from Dana and the gang (and my own take on it). Enjoy.]

Though some MMA fans are ragging on the UFC 78 lineup for having a weak main event*, UFC 79 looks like it’ll make up for that starless night like a motherfucker. How stacked is this card (aka “Nemesis”)? Well, we already knew about the Serra vs. Hughes grudge match**, and the historic light heavyweight meeting between Chuck Liddell and PRIDE legend Wanderlei Silva. But yesterday, Bubba the Love Sponge (I know, bear with me) reported that Dan Henderson may be fighting in December — and at middleweight (a wise move after his loss to Quinton Jackson in his UFC debut). What this means is: 1) Nemesis has the potential to be one of the greatest UFC cards of all time, and 2) With PRIDE now absorbed into the UFC, it’s all becoming one big Circle of Life (no, I will not link to that Elton John/Lion King video). Let’s run down the timeline…

12/9/00: Wanderlei Silva beats Dan Henderson (unan. dec., PRIDE 12)

11/9/03: Quinton Jackson beats Chuck Liddell (corner stoppage TKO, PRIDE Final Conflict middleweight semi-finals)

11/9/03: Wanderlei Silva beats Quinton Jackson (strikes TKO, PRIDE Final Conflict middleweight finals)

10/31/04: Wanderlei Silva beats Quinton Jackson for the second time (KO by knee, PRIDE 28)

2/24/07: Dan Henderson beats Wanderlei Silva to win the PRIDE middleweight title (KO by punch, PRIDE 33)

5/26/07: Quinton Jackson beats Chuck Liddell for the second time to win UFC light heavyweight title (strikes TKO, UFC 71)

9/8/07: Quinton Jackson beats Dan Henderson to retain UFC light heavyweight title (unan. dec., UFC 75)

So from these fights, it could be inferred that Silva > Jackson > Henderson > Liddell. What we really need to see, therefore, is a re-rematch between Silva and Jackson, to determine if Rampage really deserves his UFC belt. Hopefully Dana White can make that happen if Wanderlei can give “Mr. Rock Star Lifestyle” his third-straight loss.

* For the record, I’m psyched for Bisping/Evans, and all you Count-haters can suck my eggs.
** I see this one going the same way as Ortiz/Shamrock after TUF 3, with the frustrated hothead coach so frustrated and hotheaded that he can’t fight properly in the Octogon — Serra for shocking upset #2.