(“Can you tell me what the scale says? I can’t see over my cheekbones.” Props: CombatLifestyle)

By Ben Goldstein

Tired of fad diets? As MMA fighters have proven for years, the best way to effectively take off pounds is to dehydrate yourself until you nearly die — a miraculous system known as “brutal weight cutting.” Here are some of the sport’s greatest success stories…

Sean McCorkle
Lost: 55 pounds in three months, before his submission win over Mark Hunt at UFC 119 (9/25/10)

After charming his way into a UFC contract, Indiana-based super-heavyweight Sean McCorkle was faced with a dilemma — making 265 pounds for the first time since middle school. “Big Sexy” had 12 weeks to come down from his walking weight of 320, which forced him to get very familiar with chicken breast, apples, and oatmeal.

By weigh-in day, it seemed like the world was conspiring against him. “The cut was an absolute nightmare, and the commission scales were off the morning of the weigh-in,” McCorkle explained. “I told them that and the commission said they weren’t. I said I couldn’t possibly be three pounds heavier [on the day of weigh-ins] than I was last night when I didn’t eat or drink anything. So I went to cut an extra three pounds that morning. It took me two hours to cut the weight. Then I weighed in at 263 pounds and I wanted to strangle somebody.” Compared to that, making Mark Hunt cry “uncle” with an armlock was the easy part.

Jake Shields
Lost: 20 pounds in one day before his split-decision win over Martin Kampmann at UFC 121 (10/23/10)

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle’s UFC 111 weigh-in gallery, where you can also see a jacked Frank Mir and fine-looking Rachelle Leah.)

The only time weigh-in stories are ever not completely boring is when someone misses weight by a large margin or when something weird happens. The pushing and shoving that sometimes goes on? Even that has started to get somewhat commonplace, and more often it can be accurately described as ‘jostling.’ So what we truly need in order to have something to talk about is for someone to show up heavy, or possibly with red contact lenses. Fortunately, the UFC 111 weigh-ins had both.

Dan Hardy wore an ‘I Hate Dan Hardy’ t-shirt complemented by evil red vampire eyes, and Rory Markham came in six pounds over the upper limit for his welterweight bout with Nate Diaz. Markham will reportedly be fined $1,000 (or 12.5% of his show money) for his lack of carb-control, while Hardy somehow gets off free for treating the weigh-ins like a half-ass rave. I tell you, there’s no justice in this world.

Full weigh-in results are after the jump.

(Markham lands a vicious head kick on Brodie Farber while pondering that age-old question, is it still a tramp stamp if it has a vaguely threatening message?)

It turns out that we aren’t the only ones who are skeptical about Nate Diaz‘s chances to make it in the UFC as a 170-pounder.  Rory Markham, who will welcome Diaz to the division at UFC 111 on March 27, recently told us he doesn’t see the Stockton, Ca. product having a lot of success in the welterweight class, partly because he lacks the punching power, but also because he’s trying to make the jump too soon.

"Moving up and down in weight always seems like a simple fix, but you have to have time to do it. He’s not taking a lot of time to go up, and I think that’s going to hinder him greatly. If you don’t take it slow, you don’t put on the muscle right. I understand his motivation for going up, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea for him. He didn’t exactly carry a bunch of power at 155, and there are some heavy-hitters up here in this weight class. That’s something I know I carry. I can say that whole-heartedly and humbly."

Markham, who’s 1-1 in the UFC and has his own striking power to thank for 11 of his 16 career victories, says he had a somewhat unusual reaction to being offered the fight with Diaz over the weekend.

(Markham starches Brodie Farber during his Octagon debut last July.)

Following withdrawals by Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Gabriel Gonzaga, Carlos Condit, and Tyson Griffin, MMA Weekly reports that the latest fighter to pull out of UFC 108 (January 2, Las Vegas) is Rory Markham, who recently aggravated an old achilles tendon injury, and may be out of action for up to a year. Markham, who hasn’t competed since his first-round knockout loss against Dan Hardy at UFC 95, was slated to take on fellow welterweight Martin Kampmann, who is coming off his own loss against Paul Daley; Kampmann is still expected to compete on the card against an opponent to be named later.

Though not all of the matchups have been officially confirmed, UFC 108′s lineup is currently looking like this:

(Steve Cofield chats with Dan Hardy after UFC 95.)

By know you may have heard that Dan Hardy is following up on his big knockout victory over Rory Markham at UFC 95 by immediately angling for a fight with Marcus Davis.  He’s already taken some shots at Davis’ attempts to brand himself as a U.K. fan favorite, telling Sherdog.com that “The Irish Hand Grenade” is “not English; he’s not Irish. I was born here, and I’ve been bred here. I don’t mind taking on that challenge and showing him this is my home and not his.”

Boom.  Immediately this fight has a hook.  Not only does Hardy have a point – for all Davis’ attempts to sell us on his Irish heritage, the thick New England accent limits our suspension of disbelief, kilt or no – but he’s also taking a proactive role in his own matchmaking, which is a very smart move for a guy in his situation.

Dan Hardy made a successful UFC debut against journeyman Akihiro Gono at UFC 89, and now he moves up to the main card to take on Miletich camp slugger Rory Markham at UFC 95 this Saturday.  In this exclusive interview “The Outlaw” discusses his strategy for avoiding Markham’s big bombs, the U.K. MMA scene, and the trademark Mohawk that he sports in honor of his nation’s punk rock pioneers.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me, Dan.  What are you expecting out of Rory Markham on Saturday, and what’s your gameplan for dealing with him?

I expect him to come to try and knock me out.  I don’t think it’s any secret what his gameplan’s going to be.  My gameplan is going to be to stay out of the way of his punches and land my own strikes and wear him down.  I think I’ve got the endurance advantage.  I’ve been the distance in a few of my fights and he’s never experienced the end of that third round.  I think I’ve got the advantage in conditioning and I’ll be able to drag the fight on a little longer until I get the chance to knock him out.

(Props: MMA Mania)

Remember when Rory Markham told us that he thinks he’s the hardest hitter in the UFC’s welterweight division?  Well, his opponent at UFC 95, Dan Hardy, doesn’t seem too worried about it in this video from the UK’s Telegraph.  He doesn’t plan on letting Markham hit him with any clean shots.  Which, as game plans go, is a pretty good one.  Why doesn’t every fighter just do that?

Talking with The Mirror, Hardy was slightly less gentlemanly with regards to Markham:

(Skip to the 1:27 mark, where the ass-kicking begins.  And don’t try to act like you aren’t digging the music, either.)

In his time with the IFL, Rory Markham became known as the guy who didn’t really start fighting until he got hurt.  More than one of his bouts began with him getting dropped and ended with him getting his hand raised, so much so that trainer Pat Miletich used to plead with Markham to fight smart before he got rocked.

But as Markham admits in this exclusive interview, that’s just not his style, as anyone who saw his devastating head-kick KO of Brodie Farber in his UFC debut knows by now.  At UFC 95 next Saturday night Markham takes on England’s Dan Hardy in London.  Chances are, things will get ugly fast.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me, Rory.  Now that you’re in the UFC, how have things changed for you?

You know, I’ve been putting in a lot of time, trying to hone my skills since October.  I found that I was weak in certain areas and I knew I needed to improve.  Being in the UFC now, it’s improve or die.

What areas do you feel you needed to improve in?

I don’t want to touch on bad instances, but there was one moment in the Brett Cooper fight where I really felt like if he hadn’t gotten the takedown and I could have kept it on the feet, there would have been a drastically different finish to that fight.  Since then I’ve been really trying to hone my wrestling skills.  I see what wrestling has done for guys like Georges St. Pierre and even, I think people overlook what it did for B.J. Penn.  When he went out with Randy [Couture] and Matt Lindland, that’s when he really hit his stride.  That’s something I noticed that I needed to work on.  Definitely in the long run, maybe not in this fight or even the next one, I think it’s going to add to the longevity of my career.

(Looks like Jesse Taylor picked the wrong week to quit drinking. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

The UFC’s always fluctuating end-of-night bonuses totaled $25,000 apiece for Saturday’s “Silva vs. Irvin” event. The four lucky men who left the Palms one-fortieth of a million dollars richer are…

Knockout of the Night: Rory Markham for his skull-crushing head-kick KO of Brodie Farber.
Submission of the Night: CB Dollaway for his “Peruvian Necktie” choke of fellow TUF 7 castmember Jesse Taylor.
Fight of the Night: Frankie Edgar and Hermes Franca for their three-round tussle that Edgar took unanimously thanks to his takedowns and GnP.

The must-see Markham/Farber knockout is below, and the Dollaway/Taylor scrap is after the jump — and we threw in Cain Velasquez’s beatdown of Jake O’Brien for good measure. (If you find a working link for Edgar/Franca, please post it in the comments section.) Serious props to MMA TKO.

Videos removed by request…

(Photo courtesy of DanHenderson.com)

MMA Weekly reports that Dan Henderson’s next Octagon appearance will be a middleweight bout against Rousimar Palhares at UFC 88 (September 6th, Atlanta). Palhares (8-1) is the Brazilian Top Team rising star who pwned Ivan Salaverry so hardcore during his Octagon debut at UFC 84 that Salaverry retired from fighting. Henderson is coming off of back-to-back title fight losses, to Quinton Jackson at UFC 75 and Anderson Silva at UFC 82. Palhares has serious potential, to be sure, but his relative lack of experience puts him at a great disadvantage against one of the most accomplished fighters in the world. Still, if Palhares can pull off an upset, he’ll put himself in the mix for a middleweight title shot.

In other UFC fight-booking news…

— Joe Lauzon has agreed to fight Kyle Bradley at UFC Fight Night 15 (September 17th; Omaha, Nebraska). Bradley, a Team Voodoo product and veteran of various regional leagues, made his Octagon debut as a welterweight at UFC 81, where he was destroyed by Chris Lytle in 33 seconds. He’ll now be fighting at his natural weight of 155.

— Rory Markham, a Bettendorf-based IFL standout who most recently submitted Jay Ellis at Adrenaline 1 on June 14th, will be making his UFC debut at UFC Fight Night 14 (July 19th, Las Vegas). His opponent will be Brodie Farber, a former Rage in the Cage middleweight champion who’s won his last six fights in the MMA Xtreme organization.

— Thomasz Drwal, the Polish light-heavyweight whose 13-fight win streak was snapped by Thiago Silva at UFC 75, will make his second Octagon appearance at UFC 87 (August 9th, Minneapolis) against 5-0 IFL veteran Andre Gusmao. Drwal was slated to fight David Heath in February, but was forced to pull out of the bout with a knee injury.