“Don’t call it a comeback! No seriously, don’t – I plan on pulling out of my next fight.”

Not to be outdone by One FC, last night’s hilariously named Best of the Best event in Belem, Brazil saw Murilo Rua and Paulo Filho come out of retirement for a pointless, irrelevant rematch. On paper, it’s pretty sad and kind of scary to see Murilo Rua, who looked completely washed up in his retirement fight against Tom Watson at last year’s BAMMA 6, step in the cage for one final fight. But his opponent is Paulo Filho, so it’ll be a small miracle if the troubled Rohypnol loving Brazilian even shows up, yet alone shows up in shape and ready to fight, right? Things can’t get too ugly for Ninja, can they?

Dude…you have no idea. Rua manages to do dick before getting tagged repeatedly by Filho’s sloppy haymakers, which were eerily reminiscent of this. The fight is mercifully stopped just forty eight seconds in, yet the internet is still crying early stoppage. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m okay with letting this one end while Ninja can still brush his teeth without assistance.

Props to Zombie Prophet for the video.

(A face made for pay-per-view. PicProps: Middle Easy.com)

As if you needed any reminder. For whatever reason – probably psychologically rooted in our inability to look away from the scene of a car crash – the MMA media has covered the shit out of Impact FC’s rapid fire debuts in Australia during the last couple of weeks. Last Friday’s show – in which Josh Barnett crushed some can named Geronimo Something-or-other — was just a subtle aperitif before tonight’s main course, which is available on pay-per-view for all to see, beginning at 10 p.m. EST/7 p.m. PST.

Look, we’re not going to beat around the bush here. Impact FC needs you to buy this card. For evidence, look no further than the promotion’s refusal this week to buy Bob Sapp a plane ticket from Bulgaria to Sydney because it allegedly couldn’t afford it. If true, that’s not the mark of a cash-rich business, people.

(What bonus?)

Benji Radach led off the CBS portion of Elite XC: Heat with an exciting second-round knockout of “Ninja” Rua, but says he was never informed by Elite XC officials before the bout that there was even the possibility of a ‘knockout of the night’ bonus, as Seth Petruzelli says he received for felling Kimbo Slice.

“No, not at all,” Radach said, when asked whether Elite XC officials ever mentioned knockout, submission, or fight of the night bonuses, before or after the event. “I wish there was a bonus because I think my fight was really exciting, maybe fight of the night or knockout of the night. But nope, I never heard anything.”

This contradicts Petruzelli’s claim that Elite XC mentioned the post-fight bonuses before the event, which caused him to stand and strike with Kimbo in the hopes of notching the knockout of the night.

That clarification came after Petruzelli seemed to suggest, during a radio interview with Monsters in the Morning, that he’d been paid extra by Elite XC to keep the fight with Kimbo standing. Petruzelli then said the extra money was simply for a knockout bonus, and was for the same amount as the submission of the night and fight of the night bonuses.

There’s been as of yet no word from Elite XC on which fighters received these other bonuses, just as there has been little mention of these bonuses in past Elite XC events.

Update: Elite XC’s Jeremy Lappen tells Josh Gross that some fighter contracts have KO bonuses built into them and some don’t. Submission bonuses, however, are a myth in Elite XC:

“We’re just trying to create exciting fights,” Lappen said, doing some spinning of his own. “Fast-paced energy fights. It’s just something we’ve always done.”

EliteXC, it seems, does not view submissions, widely thought of as the most technical aspect of MMA, as an overly important portion of an exciting fight.

“We don’t give submission bonuses,” Lappen said. But Petruzelli “knew a knockout bonus was possible before the fight.”

Elite XC’s Jared Shaw takes a little shot at yours truly in this MMA Rated interview, calling me Ben “UFC” Fowlkes, which I suppose is an implication that I’m pro-UFC and anti-Elite XC, although I like to think that my record as an equal opportunity critic speaks for itself. If an organization does dumb things, it’s my job to point it out. If one organization does more dumb things than others, they’re going to receive more criticism. That’s just how it works. If it makes me a hater, I can live with that. But since when do we all have to like everything?

$kala says he just wants some love for his fighters, not himself. Fair enough, Jared. You do have some good fighters in your organization. Guys like Jake Shields, Robbie Lawler, Wilson Reis, Nick Diaz, and “Ninja” Rua, just to name a few. These are all fighters that I enjoy watching. But your fighters aren’t what you’ve been criticized for, and I think you know it.

Let’s take the event you’ve got this Saturday, for example. On the undercard you’ve got a few interesting scraps between guys like Paul Daley and Jake Shields, Benji Radach and “Ninja” Rua, and a sweet little co-promotional joint between Affliction fighters Andrei Arlovski and Roy Nelson (nice work scoring that, by the way, whether you had anything to do with it or not).

But your main event features a 3-0 fighter in Kimbo Slice, who has yet to face an opponent coming off a win, taking on a forty-four-year-old legend of the sport who hasn’t won a fight or even made it out of the first round in over four years. And that’s your main event.

(What, no odds on whether Gina will make weight?)

If betting odds are any indication of how competitive MMA bouts will turn out to be, expect a lot of one-sided blowouts on Elite XC’s CBS offering this Saturday night. Not that it’s any surprise, really. In fact, with five fights crammed into a two-hour time slot CBS is going to need some quick beatdowns if they don’t want to run way over and have to cut into precious local news time. In any event, Best Fight Odds supplies the most gambler-friendly betting lines for ‘Elite XC: Heat,’ and they break down like this:

Kimbo Slice (-325) vs. Ken Shamrock (+329)
Jake Shields (-550) vs. Paul Daley (+524)
Gina Carano (-550) vs. Kelly Kobald (+525)
Ninja Rua (-196) vs. Benji Radach (+210)
Andrei Arlovski (-428) vs. Roy Nelson (+385)

Some thoughts…

After battling a series of bizarre and career-threatening injuries, Benji Radach ran up an impressive winning streak in the IFL. He beat mostly mid-level fighters like Ryan McGivern and Gerald Harris, but he did it convincingly and in exciting fashion. Then he got TKO’d by Matt Horwich in his last fight. Apparently that was enough for the UFC to decide to pass on him when it came time to bid on IFL free agents after the company’s collapse. In an interview with Sam Caplan, Radach can’t seem to make sense of why MMA’s biggest organization wouldn’t want to sign a guy who’s coming of a loss and has a history of injuries:

“The UFC actually never pursued anything. I actually gave them the option at first (to negotiate) by letting them know I was interested in fighting for the UFC again. But they said I needed to win a fight before I could be a part of the UFC. That really was kind of retarded from my point of view. If there’s a good fighter out there, then you want to grab that good fighter. It doesn’t make a difference if he goes out there and beats a nobody and then gets a win and comes back in. It’s just really stupid. Why is it important that I go out and smash somebody just to get a win rather than fight a top guy in your organization?”

On one hand, Radach has a point. He could go to one of the smaller shows and knock out a guy no one has ever heard of, and it wouldn’t prove anything (aside from perhaps silencing lingering doubts as to his durability). On the other hand, if you want to fight for the UFC, why not go ahead and do that?

- ESPN Radio’s Ball Park Frank talks with Randy Couture about a number of topics in this video (props to Steve Cofield), but perhaps most interesting is Couture’s assessment of Kimbo Slice‘s upcoming match with Ken Shamrock. As Couture astutely points out (around the 2:55 mark), a quick KO of Shamrock does more to affirm his over-the-hill status than it does to prove Kimbo’s worth as an MMA fighter. At the same time, if Kimbo goes back and forth with Shamrock will that only serve to prove that he’s not the fighter “Buzz” Berry is? Best case scenario for Kimbo is he looks good, Shamrock looks good, Kimbo wins via late KO. That’s also the least plausible scenario.

- Travis Lutter tells MMA Rated there is absolutely no truth to rumors he might be headed back to the UFC. Though it was originally reported that he might face Joe Doerksen in the Octagon, Lutter says neither he nor UFC matchmaker Joe Silva knew where the rumor came from, which means it’s back to the small time for Lutter. He did have a prediction for the Anderson Silva-Patrick Cote bout, though: “Cote is going to get murdered.” Come on, Travis, don’t sugar coat it.

- CBS executives say they will show five fights from ‘Elite XC: Heat’ on Saturday, even if it will probably cause them to run over the allotted two-hour space. Some fans wondered whether CBS had cut “Ninja” Rua-Benji Radach from the broadcast when the bout wasn’t mentioned in recent promos, but Executive VP Kelly Kahl says the fight is still on and will lead off the CBS portion of the card. That means Elite XC will have to keep its general dicking around to a minimum and still hope for a couple quick finishes to keep from going over. It’s something you’ll want to keep in mind if you’re planning on DVR-ing this sucker.

(‘Come get some, little Couture.’)

- Gina Carano says she sparred with Randy Couture’s son to prepare for Kelly Kobald. (AOL Fanhouse)

- “Ninja” Rua wants a title shot next. (Fighthype)

- Goldstein chats with the Fightlinker boys on BetUs Radio (BetUs.com)

- Fowlkes talks with Steve Cofield and Ariel Helwani. (MMA Rated)

- WEC drops 185 and 205 pound weight classes. (MMA Weekly)

- Jason Day has successful surgery. (MMA News)

- Assessing the “MMA Lifestyle Apparel” as an opportunity field. (MMA Payout)

- Randy Couture talks Brock Lesnar bout. (MMA Scraps)

- SFW porn somehow better than NSFW porn. In a way. (Holy Taco)

- Bailout Protests: suits vs. hippies. (Wall Street Fighter)

- Presidential debate drinking game. (Screen Junkies)

- Most amazing football catch ever. (Nothing Toxic)