Props: Zombie Cage Fighter

By CagePotato Contributer Jake “KillBurnDestroy” Richards

Let’s be real, no matter how trendy, no matter how played out, we all still fantasize about the zombie apocalypse on a daily basis. While there will always be the NRA member who has a weapons cache in their basement, some won’t be so fortunate. This one goes out to them.

HONORABLE MENTION- Running Away

(Props: Spike TV via Fightlinker)

It’s been over a week since news broke of Alistair Overeem failing his random pre-fight drug test, and the Reem has been quiet as a mouse ever since. Now would be a good time for him to start making the media rounds with an explanation, or an apology, or at least an acknowledgment that he failed the test and potentially wrecked a massive UFC heavyweight title fight. So what does this big son-of-a-bitch do? He goes on Spike TV’s MMA Uncenscored Live on Thursday, on the condition that he won’t discuss the drug-test situation in any way, and instead gives a straight interview about his matchup with Junior Dos Santos, which again, probably won’t happen.

Luckily, the hosts didn’t swallow the bullshit. “Either P90X really, really works, or the man was putting something in his body,” said host Craig Carton, looking at side-to-side photos of Overeem from 2005 and 2012. Nate Quarry agreed, saying “You’ve got to be very naive to take a look at those pictures and think he’s not using performance enhancing ‘supplements.’ Let’s just say he can put on 40 to 50 pounds of pure muscle in about four to five years — when 20 pounds of that is directly on your head, that’s an issue.”

(Video courtesy of Sapo/IronForgesIron)

Nick Diaz has been out of the public eye since his close UFC 143 loss to Carlos Condit and subsequent announcement by the Nevada State Athletic Commission that he had tested positive for marijuana metabolites, so when we heard he was going to break his silence on SPIKE’s new MMA Uncensored show last night, we tuned in to hear what he had to say.

Unfortunately we were disappointed since he did not address the positive test or retirement and really didn’t say much about the Condit fight except that he thinks the judges in the sport choose their favorites to win and that he still feels he won the fight.

“Well, I never said anything about pursuing boxing. I [haven't] really said much about anything about what I’m gonna be doing in the future. I’ve had what feels like a week or so to think about any of this, but I haven’t really put much thought into it, ” he explained. “It just feels good to get some workouts in and just try to act normal, I guess.”

(Let’s see you try and ban these babies.)

Much has been said about the recent Zuffa ban on firearm, knife, and ammo sponsors from all UFC events since it was announced just a few days ago. Many believe that the ban is a result of the UFC’s desire to smooth out some edges in light of a major network deal, which makes sense, although a FOX representative has come out saying that the rule only applies to UFC broadcasts on their network.

And while it is a fair assessment that the UFC would want to avoid as much controversy as possible, many of us cynics are looking at the sponsor ban as the first loose thread that will eventually unwind the metaphorical Zuffa sweater. Simply put, when a network begins to control the content of the sport it is broadcasting, it’s only a matter of time before fights are being set up and determined by evil corporate executives with dollar signs and ratings numbers in their eyes. You know, like Rollerball predicted all those years ago.

Luckily, we have former UFC middleweight title contender Nate Quarry here to weigh in on the issue, and as he is no longer under a Zuffa contract, it’s nice to get a perspective on the issue from a fighter who isn’t living in fear of DW’s wrath. Before you all go off the handle, that was a joke, Potato Nation. Anyway, Quarry had some interesting things to say in regards to the ban, stating the following on The UG:

(When The Walking Dead didn’t call him back, Quarry knew he was bound for the UFC once again.) 

Nate Quarry has always been a charismatic guy; not only was he the first fighter ever to ink a sponsorship with a basketball shoe company, but anyone who’s ever seen his epic clowning of Kalib Starnes and post-fight speech thereafter knows the man has character in spades. More aware of this than anyone is Quarry himself, who recently began angling for a UFC commentating job on the popular mixed martial arts forum The UG:

I want to be an on-air personality for the UFC. There I said it … My qualifications? Well, I’ve been a fighter for the past 14 years. I’ve trained with some of the legends of the sport and even cornered them for some of the greatest fights in UFC history. I was there when the UFC went from 5 shows a year to being in every home in America. And, I know my ish. Plus, I’ve been a public speaker since I was 7 years old, standing up in Church and giving Bible readings. Last year I spoke at a TEDx conference where it was me, a mike and 300 business people for 18 minutes. And now I travel around the country speaking on behalf of my XLIF back surgery that game me my life back. Not to mention I hosted my own tv show on Comcast called American Cage Fighter. It was only broadcast in Nor Cal but was really well received and replayed every day of the week. Do I have your support?

Simply put, yes Mr. Quarry.

(Call it a hunch, but something tells us that Kalib isn’t going to be the fan favorite in this one.)

Some people are either just too proud, too embarrassed or too pigheaded to ever admit when they’re wrong.

Although we’re not sure which category Kalib Starnes belongs in, we figured that three years after his career-changing marathon running performance against Nate Quarry at UFC 83, the Surrey, British Columbia-born fighter would finally be able to admit that he should have fought differently that night.

Apparently we were wrong, except we can admit it.

Starnes spoke with Neil Davidson from the Canadian Press ahead of his Ringside middleweight bout with Patrick Cote this weekend at the same arena he was booed out of April 19, 2008 and the former American Top Team fighter said that he wouldn’t change anything about the fight with Quarry even if he could in spite of a deluge of hate mail and threats he has received as a result of his baffling performance.

“I’ve learned a lot from that experience. I think I’ve grown a lot personally and as an athlete. I feel very good. If I could go back and change it, I don’t think I would, you know. I think it’s something that in the end will make me a better, stronger person.”

(It was truly a great night for gashes. Image courtesy of MMA Mania.)

The UFC doled out $30,000 best-of-night bonuses to four fighters at last night’s "Diaz vs. Guillard" event. The extra bread was awarded to…

Fight of the Night: Nate Quarry and Tim Credeur for their three-round slugfest, which Quarry took by unanimous decision. I would have given it to Carlos Condit and Jake Ellenberger, whose fight was much more technical and varied, but hey, the crowd loves a good brawl, and Quarry/Credeur was a great one.

Submission of the Night: Nate Diaz, who was responsible for one of the night’s three guillotine-choke submissions. Amazingly, this is the fifth-straight fight in which Diaz has won an end-of-night bonus. Previously, he received Fight of the Night bonuses for his wars against Joe Stevenson, Clay Guida, and Josh Neer, and a Submission of the Night bonus against Kurt Pellegrino.

Knockout of the Night: Jeremy Stephens by default, since there were no other KOs/TKOs on the card. Stephens didn’t actually knock Justin Buchholz out, but he was whaling on him pretty good until the fight was stopped in the first round due to the hatchet-wound shown above.

UFC Fight Night 19 drew 7,500 spectators for a reported live gate of $650,000.

(Nate Quarry [left] shows off the move that made him famous. Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle.com.)
 
The UFC returns to Montreal on April 18th for UFC 97, headlined by the shrug-worthy title fight between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites, and the somewhat more compelling light-heavyweight battle between fading legends Chuck Liddell and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. Here’s some of the supporting bouts that we’ll be seeing on the card…

— Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry (MW): MacDonald is coming off a first-round submission-via-strikes loss to Wilson Gouveia at last month’s TUF 8 finale, and hasn’t been able to put together two wins in a row since 2006. Quarry became Demian Maia‘s latest strangulation victim when he succumbed to a rear-naked choke at UFC 91 in November. The win-or-get-fired threat level on this one has been raised to Orange.

— Luis Cane vs. Steve Cantwell (LHW): Though Cane was originally rumored to face Keith Jardine in his next fight, the Dean of Mean was booked to headline UFC 96 (March 7th, Columbus) instead. Cane will instead be taking on reigning WEC light-heavyweight champ Steve Cantwell, who famously snapped Razak Al-Hassan’s arm at last month’s "UFC Fight for the Troops," then gloated about it afterwards. Cane is coming off of impressive TKO victories over Jason Lambert and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, while Cantwell is on a four-fight win streak, dating back to his time in the WEC.

(I’m going to guess…Moses the golfer?)

- Michael Wilbon is Kimbo Slice for Halloween. (MMA Fanhouse)

- Back on internet radio, along with Ariel Helwani and Steve Cofield. (MMA Rated)

- And 1 sponsors Nate Quarry. (NBC Sports)

- Anthony Johnson talks eye-pokes, rematch, and Steve Mazzagatti. (FightHype)

- A cartoon eulogy for Jared Shaw. (Fightlinker)

- Vinny Magalhaes tries to talk his way out of being Big Nog’s enemy. (MMA Weekly)

- Nick Diaz files notice to get free of EliteXC. (Gracie Fighter)

- Best lines from the worst movie. (Holy Taco)

- Out of control stock traders. (Wall Street Fighter)

- 16 bad guys we’d rather see win. (Screen Junkies)

- Long-haired kid gets serious ass-kicking. (Nothing Toxic)

(It’s funny the way a moment can haunt a man. Really funny.)

After the last time we saw Kalib Starnes in the Octagon, running in circles even as Nate Quarry mocked him, I naturally assumed that was it for him. The UFC dropped him almost immediately, as expected, and in my imagination he changed his name and went off to work at a public library somewhere, living in a studio apartment above a pawn shop and eating his microwaved dinners alone each night. Occasionally someone might come into the library and recognize him, asking, ‘Hey, aren’t you that long distance runner guy from the UFC?’ Then Starnes would shake his head and tell them they have him confused for someone else before disappearing to cry in the reference section.

Turns out I’m totally wrong. Starnes is still a pro fighter and he’s even got a fight coming up, against the very respectable “Kolohe” Hose in Hawaii’s Destiny organization. It seems like no matter what he does, though, Starnes will always be remembered for the performance that got him dismissed from the UFC. As he told Sherdog recently, there are still plenty of people who haven’t forgotten:

“People like to be on the side that’s winning, said Starnes. “They’re supportive when you’re winning and critical when you’re losing. I still get some sweet hate mails pretty regularly. There are some gyms with guys who begged me to come in there and train and do seminars before that fight and who wouldn’t return my calls or talk to me afterwards.”

That’s just plain sad. Starnes is right about one thing: people do like to be on the side that’s winning. But even he has got to know that the backlash wasn’t about winning or losing, it was about how he chose to lose and the justification he offered for it afterwards. In case you forgot, he broke his foot early on against Quarry and then opted to avoid fighting for the rest of the bout, explaining that he wasn’t getting paid enough to risk a knockout or more severe injury.

(Kimbo who?)

The UFC isn’t going to let EliteXC put an event on network TV without screwing with them a little bit. Just as they aired UFC 84 for free on Spike while the second CBS “Saturday Night Fights” card was taking place on July 26th — effectively stealing away a lot of EliteXC’s young male viewers — the UFC will be airing “UFC 86: Jackson vs. Griffin” on October 4th, opposite “EliteXC: Heat.” (They’ll also be showing “UFC 87: St-Pierre vs. Fitch” the following Saturday, on the night that Affliction was originally supposed to hold their “Day of Reckoning” card.) The UFC has previously tried to take the wind out of their competition’s sails by airing an “Ultimate Iceman” special on Spike during the first CBS “Saturday Night Fights” card in May, and scheduling an Anderson Silva-headlined Ultimate Fight Night during Affliction’s “Banned” card in July.

With Showtime lurking as a potential buyer for Pro Elite, a little less is riding on “Heat”‘s performance — lackluster ratings wouldn’t necessarily mean extinction if they have someone to bail them out. But the UFC could further devalue the EliteXC brand if they can prove that just as many people would tune in to see a UFC re-run as a new fight card from EliteXC. And if “Heat” is a bomb, maybe Showtime will think twice about the purchase.

In other UFC news…

(James Irvin: Fighting his way off of the C-list.)

“He’s lost his last two fights now, against Franklin and Anderson Silva, so the UFC’s decision makes sense. No fighter can guarantee winning a fight but you can go into a bout in shape. If you can’t go the distance then you’re not preparing well enough and you’re not taking your job seriously. We work for the UFC and it’s our job to get off our a**es and train and be in shape. That’s what we get paid for and if we don’t do that then we’re not doing our job. That’s the way I look at it.”
— Michael Bisping on the recent sacking of Travis Lutter.

“I just decided to make light of the situation and be like, hey man, this is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing a running man. That just came to me out of nowhere. When there were ten seconds left I just said to myself, all right, I’m calling the technique the ‘rock-hammer.’ I don’t know if that name will stick or not.”
— Nate Quarry on the instant-classic ending of his fight with Kalib Starnes.

“I’m just so happy that he would even take the fight against me. I consider him an ‘A’ level fighter, and I consider myself a ‘C’ level fighter, maybe a ‘B’ level because I just beat Houston trying to claw my way up to the top. So for him to take a step down and fight me, I’m greatly appreciative of the guy, who is someone I look up to as one of those top tier fighters.”
— James Irvin on his UFC 85 opponent, Rashad Evans.

“Mentally I think BJ has some quit in him. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in the past. If you push him, he’ll quit.”
— Sean Sherk on his UFC 84 grudge match with BJ Penn.

“Now that the K1 thing is out of the way it’s all good baby: all MMA and MMA only. These guys (DREAM) want me to fight Aleksander (Emelianeko) in about three weeks time on May 11th! I was like no way because it’s too short a time with no training. I don’t want to risk fighting like that. But if they compensate me enough for taking that risk then it’s all good and I’ll fight. DREAM’s plan was to see how Fedor (Emelianeko) goes and when and if he wins the DREAM title, and then I will fight him…First time I fought him, my wrestling wasn’t great — actually it was pretty shit but I did alright with him. This time I will be ready.”
— Mark Hunt, who may eventually be battling the Emelianenko brothers in DREAM. Hunt was submitted by Fedor via armbar at PRIDE Shockwave on New Year’s Eve 2006.

The end of the Quarry/Starnes fiasco at UFC 83. Props to reader “Noah.”