(Video courtesy YouTube/UFC.com)

As much as I dig the production and polish of the UFC Primetime series, I still enjoy watching the traditional UFC Countdown shows because they offer more than just an inside glimpse into the camps and pre-fight lives of the two main event fighters. 

Tonight’s UFC 115 countdown features interviews and training footage featuring Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, Rich "Ace" Franklin, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic and Pat "HD" Barry.

 
(Mirko was known for being a lightweight when it came to partying. Two Ambiens and a Zima and he was dead to the world until 3pm the next day.)

Nokaut was on hand at Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic’s gym during one of the Croation fighter’s  recent training sessions ahead of his UFC 115 showdown with leg-kick punisher Pat Barry. Apparently the biggest change he has made to his regimen, which he believes will do the most to revive the PRIDE version of himself, is doing the brunt of his training earlier in the morning.

UFC fighter and former Cage Potato guest blogger Gerald Harris is the kind of guy who can appreciate a good joke. He’s also the kind of guy who can appreciate a joke even more when it is perpetrated against colleagues. That’s why while Pat Barry and “King Mo” Lawal were guests on MMA Scraps Radio recently, Harris pulled out his best ignorant redneck voice to play a little prank on the K-1 kickboxer turned MMA fighter by insisting that all this leg kicking nonsense is just not what real fighting is about.

The best moment is when Barry gets frustrated enough to float the idea of kicking this caller in the leg hard enough to make him think he got punched in the face. That’s when Harris, with perfect comedic timing, responds: “You must not be very educated because my leg and my face are very far apart.”

Gerald Harris, we don’t hand these out frivolously, but you, my friend, have earned yourself an official Cage Potato Attaboy.

(Proof that nobody looks cool when they’re about to sneeze. Photo courtesy of EdMulholland.com)

After his bloody win over Anthony Perosh at UFC 110, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic will still be getting a Duke Roufus-trained striker to stand and bang with at UFC 115, only new reports suggest that it won’t be Ben Rothwell, as previously expected.  MMA Scraps is reporting that Cro Cop and Pat Barry have been offered a chance to try and kick one another’s faces in when the UFC visits Vancouver.  Do we have to tell you that signing this fight is about as close as you can get to guaranteeing a highlight reel caliber knockout finish without actually paying one fighter to go in there and leave his chin wide open?  We didn’t think so.

But if Barry is getting Cro Cop, what of Rothwell?  The rumor is that he may now be getting Barry’s original opponent for UFC 115, Gilbert Yvel.  So basically, the stand-and-bang quotient just doubled.  Join us after the jump as we go ahead and get ourselves hyped for the awesomeness that awaits us.

(If this fight were in prison, we wouldn’t even have to think about who to bet our smokes on.)

Good news for all you members of the First Church of the Stand and Bang, heavyweight strikers Gilbert Yvel and Pat Barry are going to give you some of what you crave at UFC 115 this summer.  According to the Las Vegas Sun, both guys have agreed to a bout that hardly needs any gentlemen’s agreement about how it will go down.  Both fighters are known as much for their love of kicking and punching people as they are for their reluctance to engage in the ground game, so this should be a stand-up battle all the way, and probably one that won’t last very long.

Barry’s coming off a second-round TKO of Antoni Hardonk at UFC 104 in October, and Yvel got knocked out by Junior Dos Santos in his Octagon debut at UFC 108 earlier this month.  Yvel may have the experience advantage and a total willingness to fight dirty, but if he looks as sloppy against Barry as he did against Dos Santos he could be in for a rough night.  According to what he told the Sun, however, that was just first time jitters:

Okay, maybe some explanation is in order…

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle’s UFC 104 post-fight party set.)

If you were listening to a very special Tuesday edition of Ben vs. Ben this week, you heard Ben Goldstein suggest a heavyweight sight gag in the form of 5’11 Pat Barry taking on 6’11 Stefan Struve.  Both fighters were victorious at UFC 104, and they are the shortest and the tallest UFC heavyweights respectively.  It turns out that Barry actually thinks that’s a pretty good idea, and he’s asking for the UFC to set that one up.  In a chat with FightHype.com, Barry said he wants Struve next because “it would be a David and Goliath…I would like to fight him next and then work my way up to Kongo.”

Clearly this is a man who knows how to pick his style match-ups.  Struve obviously has some submissions, but he’s no takedown the artist.  The weakest part of Barry’s arsenal right now is undoubtedly his ground game.  The more fights he can get with guys willing to stand and trade with him, the more time he has to shore up his takedown defense.  In fact, there’s probably no one more critical of Barry’s ground skills than himself right now.  In a bit of self-deprecation that borders on self-loathing, Barry described his takedown defense as “very suspicious” and said that one thing he’s shown in his three UFC fights thus far is that he’s “very suspect on the ground.”

Not that we’d disagree with that assessment, but damn.  How about a little optimism, Pat?  You don’t hear Bob Sapp running around and talking about how he has the cardio of an eighty-year-old emphysema patient.

(Cain Velasquez works hard for his money, so you better treat him right.  Seriously, you better.  Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine’s UFC 104 gallery.)

The official reported salary figures for UFC 104 are in, and as usual they don’t necessarily reflect a final accounting of what each fighter took home, but they provide us with a good idea.  The event itself pulled 14,892 fans into the Staples Center (though one look at Dana White’s video blogs tells us that they weren’t all paying customers) for a net gate of $1,762,549.  As for how that was distributed among the fighters they came to see, well, check it out:

Lyoto Machida: $200,000 (no win bonus)
Mauricio "Shogun" Rua: $155,000
Cain Velasquez: $70,000 (includes $35,000 win bonus)
Ben Rothwell: $50,000
Gleison Tibau: $38,000 (includes $19,000 win bonus)
Josh Neer: $14,000
Joe Stevenson: $94,000 (includes $47,000 win bonus)
Spencer Fisher: $26,000
Anthony Johnson: $30,0000 (includes $15,000 win bonus)
Yoshiyuki Yoshida: $12,000
Ryan Bader: $30,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus)
Eric Schafer: $13,000
Pat Barry: $14,000 (includes $7,000 win bonus)
Antoni Hardonk: $16,000
Chael Sonnen: $54,000 (includes $27,000 win bonus)
Yushin Okami: $18,000
Jorge Rivera: $36,000 (includes $18,000 win bonus)
Rob Kimmons: $9,000
Kyle Kingsbury: $16,000 (includes $8,000 win bonus)
Razak Al-Hassan: $3,000
Stefan Struve: $14,000 (includes $7,000 win bonus)
Chase Gormley: $10,000

Some thoughts and addendums…
 

(Dana White discusses the impending Machida/Rua rematch, and UFC 104′s other fighters weigh-in on last night’s controversial decision. Also, Steve Mazzagatti shouldn’t be allowed to even *watch* MMA. Props to MMA Fanhouse.) 

- Don’t ask us how two of the three judges who presided over last night’s main event gave the first three rounds to the champion. Just take comfort in the fact that there will be an immediate rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua. Dana White announced the news at yesterday’s post-fight press conference, saying "They won’t make the same mistakes next time. Each one will try to win decisively." For the record, DW thought Shogun won the fight.

- Anthony Johnson was basically fined $10,000 per pound for missing weight. After tipping the scales at 176 on Friday, Rumble scored a ferocious TKO victory over Yoshiyuki Yoshida in just 39 seconds. But because he came in heavy, he was ineligible for UFC 104′s $60,000 Knockout of the Night bonus, which instead went to Pat Barry. (Barry picked up a second $60,000 award for Fight of the Night; his opponent Antoni Hardonk got a check for the same amount, while beanpole submission artist Stefan Struve was awarded the Submission of the Night bonus for his triangle choke of Chase Gormley.) Johnson was already giving up 20% of his purse. When asked about the botched weight-cut, AJ had this to say:

Could UFC 103‘s altruistic experiment of airing some of the undercard bouts on basic cable before the main card be a recurring tradition? According to a press release distributed by Spike TV this afternoon, the UFC will be doing another live prelim show on Spike directly before the UFC 104 pay-per-view on October 24th. Guaranteed for the one-hour commercial-free broadcast will be…

Ryan Bader (9-0, 2-0 UFC) vs. Eric Schafer (11-3-2, 3-2-0 UFC): TUF 8 winner Ryan Bader, who most recently won a unanimous decision over Carmelo Marrero at Condit vs. Kampmann, will try to take another step up the light-heavyweight ladder against tough ground specialist Eric Schafer, who’s coming off back-to-back first-round stoppages of Houston Alexander and Antonio Mendes. Seems like a perfect next step in Bader’s development, as well as an opportunity for Schafer to prove that he’s a legitimate contender.

Antoni Hardonk (8-5, 4-3 UFC) vs. Pat Barry (4-1, 1-1 UFC): It might be win-or-go-home time for these two leg-kick specialists, who will both be trying to bounce back from losses. Hardonk most recently suffered a second-round TKO against Cheick Kongo at UFC 97, while Barry was quickly choked out by Tim Hague at UFC 98. It’s too bad that Barry didn’t take the Hague loss as a sign that he should drop to light-heavy, because Hardonk’s reach advantage is going to be frightening.

Other preliminary bouts could air during the broadcast, if time allows. UFC 104′s compelete lineup is after the jump.

(Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

According to Ryan Bader’s Twitter page, the TUF 8 light-heavyweight winner will return to action at UFC 104 (October 24th, Los Angeles) against "Eric Shaufer." (We’re assuming that means Eric Schafer, the UFC vet who’s coming off back-to-back first-round stoppages of Houston Alexander and Antonio Mendes.) If the announcement is accurate, it would be a surprisingly quick comeback for Bader, who wrecked his knee during his three-round domination of Carmelo Marrero in April; early predictions said he’d be out of action for up to a year. UFC 104 will be headlined by the light-heavyweight title fight between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua, and may also feature the heavyweight contenders match between Shane Carwin and Cain Velasquez.

Unlike recent UFC events that have featured a horde of fresh talent, there’s only going to be one unfamiliar face at UFC 98 later this month: King of the Cage heavyweight champion Tim "The Thrashing Machine" Hague, who will be appearing on the "Evans vs. Machida" undercard against leg-kick-artist Pat Barry. A native of Edmonton, Hague has built up a 9-1 record, with seven wins by stoppage within the first two rounds, and notable victories over Ruben "Warpath" Villareal and Sherman Pendergarst. He most recently competed at a Raw Combat event last October, where he avenged his sole career loss to Miodrag Petkovic. He’s also strong as hell. But judging from the above highlight reel — which actually shows Hague getting his ass kicked for the first 48 seconds — could he be too unseasoned to make an impression in the UFC?

(Mustapha Al-Turk vs. Mark Kerr, Cage Rage 20, 2/10/07)

There are so many marquee names on the UFC’s year-end card (December 27th, Las Vegas) that the three heavyweights who will be stepping into the Octagon for the first time could get lost in the shuffle. So let’s take a quick look at the dudes who will be fighting for a slice of recognition during their UFC debuts at #92…

MUSTAPHA AL-TURK (HW)
Experience: 6-3 record, with all wins by first-round stoppage due to strikes. Last seven fights were in the now-defunct Cage Rage, where he won their British heavyweight title. Most recently defeated James McSweeney via TKO at Cage Rage 27 in July.
Will be facing: Cheick Kongo (12-4-1, 5-2 UFC)
Lowdown: Al-Turk was originally supposed to be fed to Cain Velasquez, but a knee-injury forced Velasquez to pull out of the bout. A member of the London Shootfighters camp, Al-Turk won the ADCC European Trials in 2005, but lost his first-round match at the World Championships to Gabriel Gonzaga. His solid takedowns and ground-and-pound could create serious problems for Kongo, a standup fighter without a strong ground game.

MIKE WESSEL (HW)
Experience: 8-1 record in various midwestern/southern regional leagues (15-1 including amateur fights). Most recently submitted Aaron Winterlee at a Subzero Fighting event in August.
Will be facing: Antoni Hardonk (7-4, 3-2 UFC)
Lowdown: A late replacement for Mark Burch, who had to pull out of his fight against Hardonk due to undisclosed reasons, Wessel trains with TUF 8 footnote Roli Delgado at Westside Kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Little Rock, Arkansas. He’s a former strength and conditioning coach for the University of Arkansas; his website also says he’s a former pro football player. We’ll see if that’s enough to stand up to Hardonk’s notoriously brutal leg-kicks.