From the Houston Chronicle, Jared Barnes talks with Tim Sylvia about the state of his career and the potential for WAMMA’s legitimacy. Sylvia is under the impression that he’ll be fighting on the second Affliction show in October, but won’t say who he might face. He also says that he’d eventually like a rematch with Fedor, presumably because it’s a great way to get paid without having to be in the ring very long. He also manages to talk a little smack about Ricco Rodriguez. Just proves that no matter how low you’re feeling, there’s always someone down there for you to kick.

(Rodriguez and Davis. Photo courtesy of the Las Vegas Sun.)

Sad news coming out of Las Vegas today: Apparently, former UFC heavyweight champ/Celebrity Rehab star Ricco Rodriguez competed in a pro boxing match last night at the Las Vegas Hilton, losing a slow-paced four-round decision to a gentleman named Chad Davis. Punishing the scales at 270 pounds, Rodriguez was heckled by boxing legend/rapist Mike Tyson, who was sitting ringside, and who had clearly paid to see blood:

“Are you going to throw some punches or what?” he asked in the first round.

Ricco’s opponent, Chad Davis, from Phoenix, taunted the former UFC champ at the end of the first with a little hip gyration maneuver.

“Come on,” Tyson implored. “Try to hurt each other.”

Rodriguez has one other boxing match under his belt — an October 2006 KO of Brandon Baker — while Davis came into the fight with an 0-1 record (thanks boxrec.com!). The match took place just two weeks after Rodriguez’s last MMA bout, a submission win over Chris Guillen at an Ultimate Combat Experience event.

Related: Mike Tyson’s Brunch-Out!!

We promise, no more Pit Fighting-related posts after this, but we wanted to officially drive the nail through the bowl-shaped coffin with these two videos.

First, the semi-final match between Ricco “#1″ Rodriguez and Travis Wiuff, notable for the classic line “I don’t like that jumping stuff.” The crowd shot at the 2:37 to 2:40 mark is priceless. (As is Ricco’s gut at the 4:45 mark.)

Also, here’s the dreadful Scott Ferrall announcing video that broke the Internet when we tried to post it from DojoTube yesterday. It’s up on YouTube now, and all is right with the world.

10. ROB EMERSON

Offenses: Was arrested in 2000 for his membership in the Lords of South County, a gang of Orange County rich kids who liked to assault innocent people for fun. Arrested again in 2006 after a dustup at a bar, and pled guilty to two counts of battery. His middling fight record doesn’t justify his UFC contract.
Notable quote: “I got bent over and took it up the ass on a lot of bullshit judges’ decisions. But fuck ‘em, their faces were fucked up worse than mine. That’s all I care about!”

9. BILL GOLDBERG

Offenses: His inexcusably awful work for EliteXC has brought MMA commentary to new, previously unimagined depths. Was reportedly abusive and obnoxious on the set of The Longest Yard.
Notable quote: “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t give a damn about traditional mixed martial arts.”

8. BOB MEYROWITZ

Offenses: Ran the UFC into the mud marketing it as the most outrageous bloodsport on Earth. Currently working to eliminate ground-fighting with the YAMMA pit. Has a history of losing investors’ money (see eyada.com).
Notable quote: “On the streets it’s against the law — in the pit it is the law.” (YAMMA tagline)

7. GILBERT YVEL

Offenses: One of the dirtiest fighters in MMA history. DQ’d once for eye gouging, once for biting, and once for knocking out a referee; laughed when he was arrested after the incident.
Notable quote: “The referee…not a good thing, but memorable.”

Well, we all knew this day would come. YAMMA 1 goes down tonight at the Trump Taj Mahal Arena in Atlantic City, New Jersey, starting at 9 p.m. The live pay-per-view card kicks off at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT, and the final-final-final lineup is as follows:

Masters Superfights (two five-minute rounds)
Oleg Taktarov vs. Mark Kerr
Patrick Smith vs. Eric “Butterbean” Esch

Heavyweight Tournament (one five-minute round in quarter- and semi-final matches; championship fight is three five-minute rounds)
Ricco Rodriguez vs. George Bush
Travis Wiuff vs. Marcelo Pereira
Chris Tuscherer vs. Tony Sylvester
Sherman Pendergarst vs. Alexey Oleinik

Alternate Bouts
Antwain Britt vs. Bryan Vetell
Lamont Lister vs. Oleg Savitsky

Standby Alternate
Ron Waterman

Weigh-ins were held yesterday, and Butterbean tipped the scales — and I mean literally, like the thing fell over — at a shocking 416 pounds, meaning he’ll have a 176-pound advantage on Patrick “Because I Got High” Smith. Ricco Rodriguez weighed in at 267.2 on his first attempt, but was able to make the 265-pound limit an hour later. So for those of you who were hoping Double-R would be in better shape than during his paunchy performance against Antonio Silva at “Street Certified” in February, not so much.

We haven’t previously reported on the alternate-bout fighters, so here goes: Bryan Vetell is a 3-3 IFL vet who had the honor of being defeated by both Ben Rothwell and Roy Nelson; Lamont Lister is also 3-3, and has fought in Cage Fury and Palace Fighting Championships; Antwain Britt has a 3-0 record in local promotions; and Oleg Savitsky, the night’s lightest competitor at 199 pounds, has a 1-1 record with his loss coming at the hands of Tim Boetsch. Our money’s on Savitsky to win it all.

We’re guessing that the show pulls in 2,500 PPV buys, but we really have no idea what to expect. Sooooo…anybody plan on attending? Anybody buying the pay-per-view? Has anybody ever seen The Producers, where Bialystock and Bloom come up with the scheme to raise more money than they need for a guaranteed Broadway flop that will close after the first night? Could this have been Bob Meyrowitz’s plan all along?

Here’s a preview clip from tonight’s episode of Inside MMA, in which Ricco Rodriguez discusses his participation in YAMMA’s debut event (April 11th, Atlantic City). We’ve already established that the fight surface is a big bowl, but even Ricco still doesn’t know what the enclosure is going to be like, and doesn’t expect to find out until he gets there. For the record, if it turns out to be Plexiglass, Bas Rutten came up with that idea first. Also, horse-jockey Gary Stevens throws in his two cents, God knows why. (Props to TheMMAPost for the video.)

Bonus: Marcus Aurelio’s armbar of Ryan Roberts on Wednesday was damn nasty…

…and Manny Gamburyan is kind of a dick.

(Props: BloodyElbow)

(Ricco is about to get his YAMMA on)

YAMMA Pit Fighting just won’t give up. They’ve added former UFC champ and Celebrity Rehab star Ricco Rodriguez to their eight-man tournament, and they’ve also announced that Mark Kerr will take on Oleg Taktarov in a “Masters Superfight”. Exactly what Kerr and Taktarov are masters of is still unclear, though indications are that “Masters” is a kinder synonym for “old”.

But wait, it gets better. Details are emerging regarding the mysterious new surface upon which the fights will take place. The good news is, it’s every bit as ridiculous as we’d hoped:

The YPF surface, known as “The Yamma,” is an evolution of the traditional fighting structure and is designed to keep the fighting more explosive and continuous. In today’s MMA matches, fighters rush their opponents in the quest for a takedown, and the fight often ends up on the ground and pushed up against the fence. The action often stalls there, and must be stopped and moved back into the center of the ring. The Yamma’s design is specifically aimed at stopping this break in the action. The Yamma is a circular pit, shaped almost like a bowl, with a circular flat bottom that rises up around the edge. In this ring, if a fighter is pushed backwards towards the fence, he moves up the lip, gaining both a height and leverage advantage over his opponent. From this position, the fighter on the lip can use gravity and leverage to reverse his opponent, and take the fight back into the center without a break in the action.

If this is all a clever ruse by YAMMA founder Bob Meyrowitz to put on an event that is so strange and obviously ill-fated that people are too distracted to notice while he skips town with the fighters’ purses, then I think we can declare it a success. If the goal is anything else, then no.

Ignoring, for the moment, that “The YAMMA” sounds suspiciously like the surface in Chuck Norris’ World Combat League, I also have to doubt that it will work the way Meyrowitz thinks it will. The fact that he refers to fights that go to the ground and end up against the cage as ‘stalling’ is troubling in itself. That makes me think that he is not a man with a real appreciation of MMA.

If you like fights that never go to the ground or end up against the cage, Mr. Meyrowitz, you should really check out boxing. I think you’ll love it.

But beyond that, haven’t we reached a point where we can effectively declare that the possible “surfaces” for MMA competition are settled? You can have a cage, preferably with eight sides and an even, flat floor, or you can have a ring. Meyrowitz says The YAMMA is “about the evolution of a sport”, but if the intent is to limit groundfighting, how can that be considered evolution? Does anyone out there believe that what’s holding MMA back is the lack of a big, sloped bowl for guys to fight in?

Apparently, yes, someone does. That someone is Bob Meyrowitz, and he seems pretty confident that your mind will be blown when you see Butterbean and Gary Goodridge square off inside The YAMMA. My question is, does it really count as “evolution” if the newly-evolved organism dies almost immediately?

We’re short on details right now, but this video was posted to YouTube yesterday with the description “A trailer for up coming Bio pic for Ricco Rodriguez.” Could this be Ricco’s version of The Smashing Machine? Or maybe it’s a promo for an upcoming VH1 spinoff of Celebrity Rehab — just like Flavor of Love begat I Love New York?

(Maurice Smith becomes the latest YAMMA victim.)

Seriously. It’s now officially fucked up. Let’s count the fighters that Bob Meyrowitz’s YAMMA 1 event has lost to date:

– Headliner Don Frye
– Gary Goodridge
– Frye’s replacement, Patrick Smith
– Rex Richards
– Two undisclosed members of the heavyweight tournament

The fight card on YAMMA’s site has still not been updated, but we’ll try and keep score for ya’. It was reported earlier that Ricco Rodriguez had been tapped to fill in as one of the replacements in the eight-man tourney, but we’re still not sure where that one stands. Rex Richards was replaced by Kevin Jordan. Don Frye had pulled out for whatever reason — probably because he realized how terrible the card is — and Patrick Smith took over. Then Pat Smith had been dropped due to arrest scheduling and 90-year-old Maurice Smith had been submitted as his replacement.

Now 5 Ounces is reporting that Maurice Smith has pulled out due to sickness related to old age (okay, I added that last part). But it gets better. Nick Lembo, attorney for the New Jersey Athletic Control Board, confirmed that Smith was dropping out, but then said the other Smith had been resubmitted. Pat Smith’s charges had been taken down a notch to misdemeanors so he would be able to compete. In case you’re lost by now, Patty would be fighting Oleg Taktarov at the show.

Gary Goodridge has yet to be replaced, but rest assured that the replacement will be well into his forties, if not fifties. Skip Hall should keep his phone on.

YAMMA 1 is scheduled for April 11th at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and we’ll wait until the 10th to publish the fight card, because it just might change. More importantly, those that care about Bob Meyrowitz should put him on round-the-clock suicide watch. This is just too much for one man to absorb.

(Rodriguez/Monson 2 is slated for 5/17 in Newcastle.)

A horde of UFC vets will invade Newcastle, England, on May 17th, as the Combat Fighting Championships organization is hosting its first U.K. show at the Metro Radio Arena. The main event is a heavyweight brawl between former UFC heavyweight champ and Celebrity Rehab alum Ricco Rodriguez and Jeff “The Snowman” Monson; the two fighters previously met at UFC 35 (1/11/02), where Rodriguez scored a TKO victory in the third round. The co-headining bout will feature middleweights David “The Crow” Loiseau (who was 4-3 in the UFC) and Terry Martin, who was recently rumored to have been released from his UFC contract after his decision loss to Marvin Eastman at UFC 81 brought his Octagon record to 2-4; at the very least, this confirms that he’ll be working up his record in other clubs for a while. Featured on the rest of the impressively stacked card are Melvin Guillard (who will be facing Cage Rage featherweight Jean “White Bear” Silva), Brad Imes, Melvin Manhoef, Xavier Foupa-Pokam, and a bout between Travis Wiuff (who will be fighting in YAMMA’s heavyweight GP next month) and Cyrille Diabate.

It’s unclear how the CFC — which had previously only hosted shows in Orlando, Florida, and without any significant stars — has managed to generate enough juice to book a card in a British arena with so many recognizable MMA names, but this may be the first direct example of the UFC’s international expansion efforts leading the way for other American promotions to hold non-domestic events; the Metro Radio Arena previously hosted UFC 80. If you’ll be on the other side of the pond you can watch the action on Sky Sports or buy tickets here.

(“Make this quick, fellas, I got a softball game in like two hours.”)

What it do, nephews? Kimbo, Tank, Ricco, Bigfoot, and the rest of the gang are about to do battle at Miami’s Bank United Center. Watch the action on Showtime starting at 10 p.m. if you can, and/or follow our round-by-round results and commentary after the jump. Click the “more” link and refresh the page every few minutes, and let’s have some good clean fights out there. WAR FERGUSON!

(Look out Kimbo, he’s got an air-shotgun!)

Brass tacks — EliteXC: “Street Certified” goes down tomorrow night at Miami’s Bank United Center; Showtime will broadcast the main card starting at 10 p.m., and we’ll be doing a liveblog, so swing by for live round-by-round results. And now, our predictions:

Tank vs. Kimbo (heavyweights): We all know how this is going to end. A month ago, we offered a “fantastic” prize to the CagePotato reader who could call the result the closest. Well, the prediction lines will be open until the end of the day, so throw a guess on the comments section of that page for your chance to win (what else) a signed copy of Iceman: My Fighting Life by Chuck Liddell. We’re sticking with our prediction of Kimbo winning by TKO (punches) in 59 seconds. MMABettingBlog says that since the betting odds on this match are so heavily stacked in Kimbo’s favor — he’s a -450 favorite, meaning you’d have to bet $450 on him to get $100 back if he wins — Tank is actually the smart money bet. Especially if you think losing money is smart.

Antonio Silva vs. Ricco Rodriguez (heavyweights): Speaking of sports betting, this fight reminds me of my personal rule — never bet against the streak. And as we discussed yesterday, Bigfoot Silva’s got a crazy one going: 10 fights, all of them lasting less than four minutes. Outside of the Ben Rothwell spit-debacle decision loss, Ricco “Suave” has been looking great lately, with six stoppage wins in his last seven fights. We just don’t think he’ll be able to deal with Silva’s size and power — Bigfoot by first-round GnP TKO. By the way, Rodriguez said this at yesterday’s press conference: “Win or lose, six months from now Antonio and I will be fighting again, probably for a title. We are the two best fighters in this organization right now. Tank and Kimbo are just tomato cans. We are the two real fighters.” We have a feeling Ricco might live to regret that quote…

(Heavyweight champion of the industry.)

Whether you need to take your fight career to the next level, or you’re stuck in a Thai prison for a “misunderstanding” with a local bar-girl, Ken Pavia is your man. The New York-bred, Huntington Beach-based MMA agent drives the careers of Karo Parisyan, Rob McCullough, Chris Lytle, James Thompson, Renato Sobral, Phil Baroni, and a few dozen others, and his work doesn’t stop at just arranging fights and locking down sponsorship deals. After realizing we knew next-to-nothing about what an MMA agent actually does, we decided to drop “The Pav” a line and get the lowdown on how he got his start and how he keeps on top of the competition. Also, coffee enemas.

THE EARLY DAYS

You were a sports agent for 12 years after graduating from the Miami School of Law. Did you focus on any sport in particular?
I primarily represented baseball and hockey players, though I did have a couple basketball players and a football player. I had my own firm from about ’91 through ’03 or so.

And you’ve said you retired because you got bored. Was there more to it than that?
I don’t know if it was so much boredom — I was a boutique firm competing against larger, much better capitalized corporate firms, and capitalization was ultimately a stumbling block in my ability to maintain higher-profile guys. I’d recruit a football player coming out of college, and it’d be about six to nine months before he saw any money, and he’d want a couple-hundred-thousand dollar advance. After a while I needed a break from recruiting and the daily grind.

So what did you plan on doing with the rest of your life?
Well, I took a couple years off and sat on the couch, watched sports, ate bon-bons, and went through a divorce. I was semi-retired and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Eventually I opened up an auto auction and I met Ricco Rodriguez, who dragged me into the MMA game.

Was Ricco your first client?
He was. A mutual friend introduced us, and Ricco sat me down and said “We need mainstream agents to cross over and help the fighters get the kind of compensation that the owners are getting.” I had been a fan of the sport — I think I’d seen pretty much every UFC event — but Ricco’s the one who convinced me to get in from a business standpoint.

How did you go about finding and attracting clients in those early days?
Having the former UFC heavyweight champion was sort of a high-profile thing, and being in Huntington Beach — which was a hotbed for MMA talent at the time — I was able to find a couple of local guys with Ricco’s help. I’d take Ricco to fights, he’d meet the up-and-coming talent, and they’d pretty much come to me. I was blessed that the talent was seeking us out as opposed to the grind I had in other sports.

(Victor Valenzuela and Krazy Horse.)

Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett — the unhinged lightweight journeyman who is scheduled to fight at EliteXC’s “Street Certified” event on February 16 — was arrested yesterday for domestic assault. His arraignment is scheduled for today, and he has already been replaced on a King of the Cage card that will happen this Thursday; Bennett was booked to fight Victor Valenzuela, who will now be facing Matt Ver Halen. Bennett was supposed to fight Valenzuela at an EliteXC/Strikeforce event in June of last year, but that fight was also canceled after Bennett was arrested on charges of assault and false imprisonment. His status for next month’s “Street Certified” card has not yet been determined.

Bennett has actually been arrested many, many times before on drug and assault charges. But no matter how times cuffs are slapped on the Horse, his happily-go-lucky spirit is never broken. For proof, check out this compilation of all his smilin’ mugshots (skip past the first 0:28), and watch ’til the end for his special message to the kids:

The good news for EliteXC is that they’ve found an opponent for heavyweight rising star Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva on the “Street Certified” card. Silva — who EliteXC live events prez Gary Shaw has claimed “could knock out any heavyweight in the UFC” — will face former UFC champ Ricco Rodriguez; both men have previously fought as super-heavyweights. Speaking of drugs, Rodriguez makes his first appearance on VH1′s Celebrity Rehab this Thursday at 10 p.m. ET.

We already dished out our thoughts on the World Cagefighting Organization’s event set to enter the cage tonight in San Diego. According to Sherdog, the WCO’s weigh-in took over five hours yesterday – and when all was said and done, two fights were dropped from the fight card. Luckily for people who relish watching things like Britney Spears’ many public meltdowns, or smile at the trainwreck that is Danny Boneduce, there are still some great circus acts left on the card. eBay vet and addict Ricco Rodriguez will still battle Mike Kyle, who is fighting for the first time since his attempted murder of Brian Olsen after their fight was already decided, is 9-5-1 to Ricco “not-so-sauve” Rodriguez’s 27-7. Kyle was suspended by the CSAC after his incident, even though they did not sanction the fight.

Renato “Babalu” Sobral, the occasional prisoner and disgraced ex-UFC fighter, will face Vernon White in the main event. Obviously, someone hates Vernon White and wants to see him killed in the bout. Why else would the journeyman and his 25-32-2 record be thrown into the pit with the blood-thirsty Babs? Another ex-UFC fighter, David “The Crow” Loiseau, will face Leopoldo Serao, which will be both fighters first fight since last May.

Well, we might as well follow this story to the bitter end.

Last week, we discussed Ricco Rodriguez’s auction of his championship belt, and his possibly-related problems with substance abuse. The eBay auction was scheduled to close tonight at 11 p.m. ET; checking in with the auction page this morning, we got the following message:

This Listing Is Unavailable
This listing (140194796581) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.
If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it canceled.

Did Rodriguez get cold feet about selling his most prized possession, or was he just frustrated by the lack of bids? We’ll do our best to get to the bottom of this mystery. In the meantime, enjoy this clip of Bas Rutten knocking Rodriguez out to punish him for hurting Mark Kerr’s feelings.

One thing we weren’t aware of when we were posting that story about ex-UFC champ Ricco Rodriguez auctioning off his championship belt is that Rodriguez will reportedly be appearing in a new VH1 series called Celebrity Rehab, in which Loveline host and addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky guides a group of down-and-out ex-celebrities (and the term is being used very loosely here, even for VH1′s standards) through an arduous recovery process. Ricco Rodriguez, who was suspended by the CSAC in 2006 for testing positive for cocaine and marijuana following a local MMA event in Bakersfield, will be appearing alongside actor Daniel Baldwin, former pro wrestler Joanie “Chyna” Lauer, porn star and one-time gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey, actress and Flavor Flav-paramour Brigitte Nielsen, and five other faded pop culture figures; the show debuts on January 10th.

So, first off, we’d like to take back what we said about Rodriguez’s situation not being as sad as when Corey Haim tried to auction off his teeth and hair; this is possibly sadder. Haim can get a wig and dentures to replace his hair and teeth (and hopefully he has by now), but Rodriguez will never get another championship belt. Plus, the fact that he’s an addict sheds some doubt on this claim that he’ll be using the money to open up a new MMA school. If you’ve ever watched Intervention (or, you know, dealt with addicts in real life), you’d know that any monetary windfalls usually wind up feeding the monkey, no matter how many promises are made otherwise.

We’d also like to say that Dr. Drew is a God among men and we cannot fucking wait for this show to start. It’s everything that Celebrity Apprentice should be!

UPDATE: With four days left in the auction, there are still no bids for Rodriguez’s belt.

Okay, so it’s not as sad as when Corey Haim tried to auction off his rotted-out teeth. But whenever a fighter tries to sell a championship belt, there’s an inescapable air of desperation. So it goes with Ricco Rodriguez, the veteran fighter who briefly became the UFC’s heavyweight champ in September 2002, after a fifth-round TKO of Randy Couture — an incredible achievement that you can relive by buying his championship belt on eBay. Though Rodriguez lost his title to Tim Sylvia in his next fight, the belt would still be a prized collector’s item for any affluent UFC fan (hear that, guys who bought Octagon?) and is on the block with a starting bid of $29,999. From the ad:

THE ULTIMATE COLLECTABLE FOR THE UFC FAN!! THIS IS THE TIME TO BUY, AS THE SPORT GROWS IT WILL ONLY GO UP IN VALUE!! THIS IS THE BELT PUT ON RICCO RODRIGUEZ AFTER DEFEATING RANDY COUTURE IN UFC 39!!. HE’S SELLING IT TO HELP RAISE MONEY FOR A SCHOOL WE ARE OPENING IN THE SOUTH.

THE WINNING BIDDER WILL ALSO BE GIVEN AN AUTOGRAPHED PICTURE OF THE BELT ON RICCO, AND WELL AS A PICTURE HANDING THE BELT TO THE NEW OWNER.

DON’T BE THE GUY KICKING YOURSELF 20 YEARS FROM NOW WISHING YOU BOUGHT THIS WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE. THEY DON’T COME ON THE MARKET VERY OFTEN. RICCO ISN’T EXCITED TO PART WITH IT, BUT HAS A FAMILY NOW AND IS LOOKING AT THE FUTURE. HE WANT TO TEACH PEOPLE WHAT HE’S LEARNED IN THE OCTAGON , RING, AND MATS, AND NEEDS AS MUCH CAPITAL AS POSSIBLE TO GET IT DONE RIGHT. AND HE WOULD RATHER JUST WIN ANOTHER DOWN THE ROAD!!

Well sure, we’d all love to “win another down the road,” but lightning only strikes once for some people, and Ricco is probably one of them. Surely there are other things he can do to raise 30 grand besides sell off the physical representation of his greatest accomplishment. It would break my heart if nobody bid on the belt — there are no bids yet, with five days left in the auction — and then Ricco was forced to reduce his starting bid to $25,000, then $20,000, and then eventually this is happening.

Still, if each of you wanted to send me $10, I could buy the belt, take a picture of myself wearing it, and then post that picture on CagePotato.com — that way, the belt could belong to all of us.

(Props: MMA Fever)