(Where’s your stand-up now, playboy?)

According to Antonio Rogerio "Minotoro" Nogueira’s boxing coach, Luis Carlos Dórea in an interview with TATAME today, his charge will likely be back in action in September against Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.

“It’s set that he’ll be back in September, and rumors point that his opponent might be Quinton Jackson. It’d be a great fight for Rogério, he’s a former UFC champion and a victory over him will move us pretty close to the title. The UFC only has top athletes and Quinton Jackson is really dangerous. It’d be a great fight, but the UFC didn’t confirmed anything yet”, Dórea said.

(They were so much in love. VidProps: YouTube.)

With just a few hours left before they actually climb into the cage, there is not much more to say about the UFC 114 bout between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans that hasn’t already been written and rewritten by MMA scribes, or said by the fighters themselves. Said, and then repeated … then repeated again while standing uncomfortably close to each other. Indeed, after wasting so much of our time with their ridiculous (and repetitive) trash talk during the past few months, these two dudes better fucking bring it tonight.

Instead of adding to the mountainous pile of  terrible clichés already being used to describe this fight – i.e. “it’s time to let their fists do the talking!” as the radio ad airing in my town declares — as a final look at this odd coupling,  I offer just a few numbers that characterize each man’s career up to this point.

They say numbers don’t lie, after all …

(After a dramatic victory, the Jets returned to the locker room to find nothing but energy drinks and DVD’s of “The Secret.”)

If you watched the New York Jets beat the New England Patriots in overtime last night, you may have thought to yourself, ‘Damn, the Jets look good, almost as though they’ve been motivated by watching an MMA bout.’ You have no idea how right you were.

The NY Daily News reports that Jets coach Eric Mangini was looking to send a motivational message to his team the night before the game, and he turned to some UFC footage to do it:

ULTIMATE MOTIVATION: On Wedneday night at the team hotel, Mangini showed a tape of the 2007 Ultimate Fighting light-heavyweight title bout between Quinton (Rampage) Jackson and defending champ Chuck Liddell. The upstart Jackson stunned Liddell with a first-round TKO.

Mangini’s message to the team: Young and hungry defeats the established champ.

“A lot of his motivational stuff ends up coming true,” LB David Bowens said.

Will I point out that Jackson was not so much of an upstart, but rather an established fighter who had already beaten Liddell in their previous meeting? I will not. Because that would be nitpicking. Just like it would be nitpicking to point out that the Daily News misspelled Wednesday. So instead I’ll just say, Good work, Mangini. That motivational meeting must have been not only effective, but also brief.

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson did not suffer serious injury in his bout with Forrest Griffin at UFC 86, as was initially feared. Instead of waiting until January to get back in action, the former champ was cleared by a doctor to get back in the gym next week, trainer Juanito Ibarra said:

“After the fight, he had a knot the size of a cantaloupe on his shin,” Jackson’s trainer, Juanito Ibarra, told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I’ve never seen anything like it in all the years I’ve been in the fight game. It was ugly. The next day it went down. Today, there’s no bump at all. The doctor said he’s fine. It’s a deep bone bruise now. He’s totally fine. There’s no damage. All we’re waiting for now is the rematch.”

[...]

“Forrest said after the fight he didn’t want to do it again, but he had to, remember? He said that because he felt in his heart he didn’t win that fight. Let the kids heal, and let’s get it on.”

This is good news for the UFC, whose options just got better with so many possible light heavyweight matches at their disposal.

As for Ibarra, he insists he is not going back on his vow to retire if Jackson lost:

(Photo courtesy of Sherdog)

Juanito Ibarro is mad. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s trainer told Sherdog that his fighter “was robbed” on Saturday night. He even plans to protest the decision — one of those great and entirely symbolic acts on par with kicking dirt on the umpire’s shoes or voting for a third party presidential candidate.

At the heart of Ibarra’s complaints, it seems, are two points: 1) the first round should have belonged to Jackson on every judge’s scorecard, perhaps even as a 10-8 round, since the most significant action of the round was a knockdown from his right uppercut, and 2) you have to beat the champion.

On the first point, Ibarra has something of a case. Calling it 10-8 for Jackson is a stretch, but knocking Griffin down in a round that saw no other major action should be enough to win the opening frame. On the second point, well, this is where it begins to get tricky.

The conventional wisdom in the fight game says that you can’t win the title with a close decision. You have to go out and really take it away from the champion, either by finishing him or absolutely dominating him. Griffin didn’t do that. Whether you think the decision was the right one or not, the fight was certainly very close. But should the title change hands via razor-thin decision?

(Can I get a USA chant?)

With Independence Day upon us and UFC 86 just one day away, what better way to celebrate both occasions than by arguing over every insignificant detail of the weekend to come. That’s what we do best, after all, which may mean only that we do everything else exceptionally poorly.

Don’t forget to check out our UFC 86 Liveblog tomorrow night where you can get in on the heated bickering — and in real time!

Who’s next in line for a shot at the UFC light heavyweight title after Jackson-Griffin?

Fowlkes: As always in the UFC, who’s next depends on who wins. If Jackson wins, which is the more likely outcome, then the UFC is faced with two distinct possibilities, both of them involving rematches.

Chuck Liddell probably only needs to beat Rashad Evans to be back at the top of the list. That’s not necessarily because a win over “Sugar” Rashad is so impressive, but because the UFC knows they could get big money for Jackson-Liddell III.

The same is true regarding Wanderlei Silva. He needs at least one more win and even then it would be just barely credible to put him in a title fight with “Rampage”, but barely credible is more than enough for the UFC.

If Griffin wins, however, all bets are off. Anyone with anything resembling a winning streak is a candidate, except maybe Lyoto Machida. An immediate rematch with Jackson wouldn’t be out of the question, nor would a Griffin-Liddell scenario. Either way, Liddell should be the odds-on favorite to get the next shot, provided he doesn’t get lay-and-prayed to death by Evans.

Goldstein: Dude? Silva destroyed Rampage twice in PRIDE, which makes him a whole lot more than “barely credible,” no matter what he’s accomplished in the UFC so far. Sure, Wandy would probably need another win just to keep up appearances, but Jackson vs. Silva is the match that needs to happen for Rampage’s title reign to have true legitimacy. And if the UFC felt like playing up their history, they could surely convince the casual Chuck-hugging fans that Silva deserves it more.

(Make your choice, but choose wisely.)

It’s that time again. For betting odds this week we turn to BetUs.com to get the lines for UFC 86. While the undercard might not have the most thrilling match-ups that we’ve ever seen on a pay-per-view event, you can always depend on online wagering to make everything more interesting/nerve-racking.

But before we get to that, let’s start with the main event. If you need some help figuring out how the odds work, or you just generally want to read an interesting primer on MMA betting, check out Damon Durante’s insightful “MMA Betting for ‘Tards”. Don’t worry, simply reading it doesn’t necessarily make you a ‘tard. Reading it and still not understanding how odds work? Yeah, then you’re a ‘tard. Try not to choke on your own tongue.

Quinton Jackson (-260) vs. Forrest Griffin (+200)

This is about what we expected. Griffin deserves to be the underdog, though with his resiliency and his skills it’s not implausible to think he could pull this out. For those of you who like a little semi-insider info before you make a wager, Steve Cofield is reporting that Griffin is tightly wound in his dealings with the media of late. That may be a sign that the pressure of a title fight is getting to him, or it might just mean that he’s sick of answering the same questions from reporters.

If you believe in Griffin’s ability to outlast or out-grapple “Rampage”, those 2-1 odds aren’t bad for small action. The odds on “Rampage” really make it too much of a risk to be worth it, especially if you believe that he may be spreading himself thin living the life of a superstar these days, what Ariel Helwani refers to as “The Lennox Lewis Effect“. Could Griffin be his Hasim Rahman?

Patrick Cote (+110) vs. Ricardo Almeida (-140)

The only reason Almeida isn’t more of a favorite here is because he was out of action for so long and people still aren’t sure what to make of him. He’s got a better ground game than Cote, who has shown a weakness with submissions in the past, though the Canadian is a vastly improved fighter these days. Cote really has to fight mistake free to win, and while that’s not out of the question, it’s also not something you want to bet on with the odds on him so close to even. Smart money’s on Almeida, and the line isn’t bad at all.

(‘Actually Marvin Eastman, your breath is delightful. I am at a loss.’)

Pro MMA conducted an interview with Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s father recently, and it really helps put some of his personality traits into perspective. Most notably, Jackson’s penchant for making jokes about how bad other people’s breath smells:

You know Quinton is always telling bad breath jokes. Well I was the first to start it with him. We were in McDonald’s one day, Quinton was deciding on what to order. He said, “I don’t know what I want.” I replied “You know what you need to order?” he said, “What?” I said, ” You need to order a great big Tic Tac.” It was funny. Everybody was laughing. From then on, we would always joke on each other’s breath.

Just think, if his dad had told a knock-knock joke at that crucial moment in Jackson’s development, things might have turned out very differently. And by differently I mean, you know, totally lame.

Is it sad that this is what passes for interesting news in the lead up to this title fight? Kind of.

But in other UFC news, Thiago Alves is said to be facing Diego Sanchez at UFC 89 in England, according to MMA Weekly. If it seems a little odd for Alves to go from dismantling Matt Hughes to facing someone who is probably lower on the welterweight totem pole, well, that’s because it is. Still should make for an interesting fight. Who knows, Alves might even make weight this time. Maybe.