Skip to the 19:55 mark of the video for the KO. Props: IronForgesIron.com

Imagine you wake up from a devistating spinning backfist knockout. You’re already pretty confused as it is, and now you’re finding out that you lost your fight by…unanimous decision? That’s how it feels to be Daniel Acacio, who met Pete Spratt at Amazon Forest Combat 2 last night.

Before anyone else points it out, you’re right: this technically isn’t a knockout. Spratt, who is no stranger to winning Knockout of the Day honors, landed the spinning backfist that caught Acacio right on the chin as the horn sounded for the end of the fight. So technically, this isn’t a knockout, and the fight went to the judges’ scorecards, who all saw the fight in Spratt’s favor. So yes, this is technically “Unanimous Decision of the Day”- because I’m sure it matters to Acacio’s remaining brain cells and all.

(Celementi’s post fight interview with Sweden’s answer to Ariel Helwani)

I can think of a few good reasons that last weekend’s Superior Challenge 7 card may have slipped of our radar. With the juggernaut that was UFC 129 dominating the MMA landscape at the time, former UFC fighters vying for mostly-irrelevant titles in a far away land just didn’t seem to matter too much. Fast forward one week and things get slightly more interesting.

As this event marked the first time that the Unified Rules would govern MMA bouts in Sweden, one might have expected a smooth night fights set to the harmonic backdrop of “The Sign”. However, following decision losses in their respective title bouts, Jeremy Horn and Rich Clementi have officially filed protests with the Swedish Mixed Martial Arts Federation to have the results of those matches overturned.

(Video courtesy YouTube/ARK1988LAB)

You would think that if one were to interview 15 MMA experts, at least one would have a differing opinion than the rest.

Apparently this isn’t the case in Brazil, where pretty much everyone believes that Anderson Silva is going to beat Vitor Belfort.

Although a few of the 15 Brazilian experts Tatame recently asked about their predictions for the fight added the disclaimers that, "anything could happen" and that "Vitor is a tough opponent," not one of them chose "The Phenom" to win the bout, even with his recent revelation that Jesus will be his cornerman for the fight.

Check out the 15 ways the 15 experts think Silva is going to beat Belfort after the jump.

(The UFC’s newest Octagon Girl looks very familiar. GSP, as usual, is not impressed. Props: Twitter.com/BrittneyPalmer)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail feedback@cagepotato.com for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…

– ‘WEC 52: Faber vs. Mizugaki’ Open Workout Highlights (Heavy.com/MMA)

– Vazquez, Mendes Look to Settle Differences at WEC 52 (Versus MMA Beat)

– Rodriguez, Monson, Trigg, Sokoudjou Score Wins at Israel FC; Shonie Carter Might Retire After Loss (MMA Fighting)

– According to the Rumor Mill, Bellator May Be in Deep, Deep Doo-Doo (MiddleEasy)

– Jose Aldo’s Coach Turned Down Kenny Florian Fight Because It Wasn’t ‘Interesting’ (MMA Convert)

– Scott Carson Lashes Out at the ‘Keyboard Warriors’ Who Are Writing Him Off Against Herschel Walker (Five Ounces of Pain)

– Rashad Evans Explains ‘Conflicting Stories’ Are His Source of Frustration (LowKick)

– Thales Leites Back On The Winning Track At Superior Challenge 6 (FightMagazine)

– Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller Beats the Crap Out of MTV Bully (MMA Scraps)

– Urijah Faber Looking To Make a Statement at WEC 52 vs. Takeya Mizugaki (SBNation.com/MMA)

(“Matt Horwich’s ‘Infinitely Accelerating Current Of Creativity’ is a searing literary masterpiece … an engrossing epic about the triumph of the human spirit.” – New York Times Book Review. VidProps: YouTube/KarynBryant)

Lost in the shuffle of our despair over Jens Pulver’s sixth straight defeat and the tedium of Tim Sylvia slouching all over Paul Buentello at PWP’s War on the Mainland show this weekend was that longtime MMA journeyman and noted insane-iac Matt Horwich won the promotion’s middleweight title with a fourth-round submission over Thales Leites. Long a practitioner of Nogueira-style Zombie Fighting – wherein you take as many punches to the face necessary to get the fight to the ground – Horwich weathered some early bluster from Leites before locking on a rear naked choke with less than a minute left in the first championship round. That’s just how the undead do, playboy.

Also true to form, shit didn’t really start to get weird until the post-fight interview, when MMA Heat’s Karyn Bryant caught up with Horwich to get his thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Horwich was only too happy to oblige, talking about his poetry, the relativity of subatomic particles, string theory and submission grappling. If you want to see a textbook example of a reporter doing the “smile and nod” check out Bryant at the 58-second mark, when Horwich mentions for the first time what a “beautiful multiverse” we live in. Cuz she’s a straight-up pro, Bryant immediately marshals the troops and asks Horwich if he’s “going to write a song” about this win. I mean, of course he is. Later, Bryant says something about a fight being a “unity of two bodies.” Dude, Karyn, inappropriate.

(Let me get this straight. I’m fighting Carrot Top?)

Falaniko Vitale has been forced off of the August 14 “War on the Mainland” card for unknown reasons and will be replaced by former IFL middleweight champion Matt Horwich (23-13-1) in a Powerhouse World Promotions (PWP) LLC 185-pound championship bout against former number one UFC middleweight contender Thales Leites (17-3-1).

“We’re excited to add Matt Horwich to our already stacked card,” PWP CEO Brian Manna said. “They are two of the best BJJ fighters in the world. Either one will make a great PWP middleweight champion.”

2-6 in his last eight outings, including losses to Dan Miller, Ricardo Almeida and Jason MacDonald, Horwich may not be the fighter most deserving of a title shot, but is likely being rewarded with a crack at the newly-created belt for stepping up to face Leites on less than two weeks notice.

 
(Where’s your muay thai now, playboy?)

For most fighters, losing their next fight after losing a championship bout would mean that they likely would drop down a few slots on the main card.

Matt Serra lost his belt to Georges St-Pierre, then lost to Matt Hughes and got another chance to redeem himself against Frank Trigg. Chuck Liddell lost his belt to Quinton Jackson, then lost to Keith Jardine and was given Wanderlei Silva in his next fight. Evan Tanner lost his belt to Rich Franklin, then lost to David Loiseau and was given Justin Levens as a chance at redemption.

Then there’s Thales Leites, who loses via unanimous decision to Anderson Silva and subsequently drops a close split decision to Alessio Sakara and he’s given his walking papers and has to fight the unemployment line.

(Lister vs. Leites, 12/4/09. The video appears to have some problems midway through, but you aren’t missing much.)

Dean Lister got back in action this weekend for the first time since the dismal performance against Yushin Okami that prompted his dismissal from the UFC. As you may recall, after that painfully boring fight Lister took to the internet to offer a pseudo-apology (or, if you prefer, a fauxpology) to fans before then challenging those fans to come down to his gym and fight him if they’re so freaking tough. Oddly, this did not seem to win people over.

On Friday Lister squared off against fellow UFC castoff Thales Leites at MFC 23 and the result was sadly predictable. Leites did everything he could to press the action, but once again Lister reverted to pulling guard and settling for a stalemate once his ineffectual takedowns failed him. He lost the decision, further alienated whatever fans he may have had left, and, from the sound of it, even pissed off his cornermen:

I hope that not everyone is too abusive to me in this forum cause I would like to apoligize for my fight against Leites. Even my own corner let me know that this is an abomination of a fight and my worst performance ever, so what can I say??? the first kick landed by Leites set the tone of the fight. While he absolutely beat me fair and square and I have no excuses, this is the blow (kick) that set the pace. This is my bad leg, my knee that I have always had problems with. This I guess is similar to saying in another fight for instance "he broke my eye socket" and I lost, lol so yes my leg was damaged in the first damm round, like I said, not an excuse but the reason I was so immobile and not able to do anything… well from my point of view. I must give my opponent credit and he has improved his striking to an incredible extent.

(Photo courtesy of daylife.com.)

Yesterday, we mentioned that the UFC had made the unexpected decision to bring back old-timer Dennis Hallman after a four-year absence from the organization. Now we’ve learned that the UFC has re-signed another hardy veteran, adding a fight between 38-year-old Vladimir Matyushenko and Igor Pokrajac to UFC 103. A one-time UFC light-heavyweight title contender, Matyushenko went 3-2 in the UFC from 2001-2003, scoring wins over Yuki Kondo, Travis Wiuff, and Pedro Rizzo. Since then, the Janitor has gone 9-1, became the IFL’s light-heavyweight champion, and most recently won a decision over Jason Lambert at Call to Arms 1 in May. It was also reported that 35-year-old PRIDE/UFC vet Marcus Aurelio will be returning later this month at UFC 102. Between Vlad, Aurelio, Hallman, Ortiz, and the possibility that Chuck Liddell isn’t quite retired, it’s clear what’s going on here: TUF 11: Last Call. The coaches will be Chuck and Tito, the minimum age will be 33, and the winner will receive $100,000 in prescription medication.

(Silva keeps talking about the elusive "perfect fight" with "Inside MMA.")

You might think that Patrick Cote, of all people, would be somewhat sympathetic regarding the negative fan reaction after the five-round snoozer between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites at UFC 97.  You’d be wrong.  Despite being one half of a middleweight title fight that was unsatisfying for different reasons, Cote wasn’t afraid to come right out and blast Leites, telling FightHype.com the fight was “boring.”  Which, of course, we already knew.  But he didn’t stop there.

(A brief glimpse of an offense. Photo courtesy of SI.com’s UFC 97 gallery.)

Since Anderson Silva doesn’t seem terribly interested in defending his UFC 97 performance against critics, and because his lack of English skills makes that difficult anyway, his manager, Ed Soares, has been doing it for him.  Soares said in a recent interview that he didn’t think Silva’s fight with Leites was “a bad fight,” and even partially blamed the UFC for putting a “one-dimensional” fighter against the champ.  He also made the case for Silva’s dominance by pointing out the lack of damage he took in the fight:

"After watching the fight on TV, I thought [Silva] fought a good fight. He didn’t finish him, but I thought he fought a good fight. Technically, I really didn’t see anything wrong with the way he fought. Who goes in there and fights five rounds with somebody and doesn’t even have a mark on his face? Not too many people can do that."

[…]

"I don’t know. People have to look at it that way instead of always thinking that Anderson is going to go in there and knock people out or submit them really quick. It just doesn’t happen sometimes."

Soares is right.  It is unrealistic to think that even Silva is going to finish everyone in spectacular fashion, especially if he’s facing an opponent who doesn’t want to engage with him.  But that’s only part of the problem. 

(BOOM, THAT JUST HAPPENED. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

Well, I was waiting for this one. On Michael Bisping‘s belated Week 3 TUF blog for UFC.com, the Team U.K. coach took some time out to savage UFC 97′s main event, and state for the record that he would have given the fans the show they deserve:

If Bisping can get past Dan Henderson at UFC 100, he’ll likely get the chance to back up his words. And it’s hard to disagree with him. Cote and Leites played it timid against Silva, and didn’t inspire him to greatness. Maybe all the champ needs is a confident challenger. Or maybe Anderson’s just gone batshit loony. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, Matt Hughes tried his own method of baiting Anderson for a future fight…

(A tough night in so many different ways. Photo courtesy of SI.com)

Even our supercomputer had trouble dealing with the data from a bizarre main event at UFC 97.  We had to hit it with a broomstick a couple times just to keep it chugging.  Not a great Saturday night for the UFC, but at least it’s over now.  Let’s see who’s up and who’s down.

Anderson Silva -129
Against Cote, the computer was willing to cut him some slack based on past performances.  But two lackluster showings in a row, followed by an inability or unwillingness to comprehend why fans might have been unsatisfied, that equals a big drop.  Is this the Silva we can look forward to from now on?

Thales Leites -176
You get the opportunity of your lifetime and spend most of it flopping onto your back?  We think you’re going to regret that decision.  How Leites thought this strategy might yield a victory is a real mystery.  What the UFC can do with him now is another.

(Props: MMA-Core)

I don’t know about you guys, but where I come from we refer to the above behavior as "screwing around."  Clearly Thales Leites didn’t show up with the intention of bringing the fight to Silva last night, so he shares some of the blame for the most unsatisfying main event since, well, Silva vs. Cote.  But when Silva starts fighting like a sixth grade bully, more intent on making you look stupid than on actually hurting you, it’s hard to argue that he performed like a champ. 

Leites may have flopped around on the mat for five rounds, but what did any of us really expect from him?  Silva, on the other hand, is supposed to be the holy terror of the UFC.  We’re all very impressed at the cool stuff he can pull off during a fight, but we’re way more impressed when one of those cool things is knocking people out.

(Post-fight presser footage, via Versus.com)

Anderson Silva seems to be getting too used to disappointing fans.  Check the look on his face when a reporter takes him to task for not doing more to try and finish Thales Leites.  He seems more bored than anything else.  His manager and Chuck Liddell both get angry for him, but it’s as if Silva himself can’t be bothered with it.

Dana White will continue to defend Silva’s status as the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter, and he has a lot of good points, particularly about Fedor being “at a buffet in Russia,” and not at all interested in proving himself against the best in the world.  But at the same time, if the world’s best fighter can’t entertain anybody but himself, what’s the point?  

This is the second straight time Silva has left us bored and confused with his performance.  He’s so concerned with fighting a “perfect” fight, he doesn’t care whether anyone actually wants to see it.  That’s a problem.  The UFC set a North American attendance record with 21,451 people packed into the Bell Centre last night, and yet the organization’s best fighter may have spent five rounds proving to the audience in the venue and at home that he isn’t concerned in the least with giving them their money’s worth.

Mauricio "Shogun" Rua took home a $70,000 Knockout of the Night bonus for putting Chuck Liddell away, but he also ended "The Iceman’s" career with the TKO victory.  At least that’s what UFC prez Dana White said at the post-fight press conference, telling reporters "It’s over."

Liddell didn’t make any declarations that were quite so final, but he seemed resigned to the fact, admitting it was "probably the case" that he is now retired.  Man, what a downer.  Thanks a lot, Shogun.

The other $70,000 bonuses went to Matt Wiman and Sam Stout for Fight of the Night (really?), and Krzystof Soszynski for Submission of the Night.  Anderson Silva did not receive a bonus.  We imagine that when he asked Dana White why, Dana looked at him with disappointment in his eyes and said, ‘You know why.’

More videos are after the jump.

(Young kid named Thales goes to jail for the first time, and gets thrown in a cell with a mean-looking dude named Anderson. Anderson says to Thales, "so do you want to be the mommy or the daddy?" Figuring he doesn’t have much choice, Thales says "the daddy." To which Anderson replies, "good, now come over here and suck mommy’s dick." True story. Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

Let’s get ready to REDEEEEEEEEEM OURSELLLLLLVES! The Thunderdome has returned to Montreal’s Bell Centre, and the stakes are high. Can Anderson Silva make it a historic nine Octagon wins in a row? Who keeps their top-ten 205′er status in the Liddell/Rua fight, and who completes their dramatic flame-out? And…ah…who else is on this card again? Live round-by-round updates and commentary await you after the jump; refresh the page every few minutes to get all the latest.

CageWriter brings us this video of UFC 97‘s headliners weighing in yesterday in Montreal. Anderson Silva established his dominance during the face-off, coming so close to Thales Leites that the challenger had to take a step backwards (3:45 mark); he’s lucky the Spider didn’t give him two for flinching. Don’t forget to come back to CagePotato.com tonight as we liveblog the action beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.

Below: Yesterday’s edition of Dana White’s video blog, in which DW finally loses his UFC Undisputed championship title to Georges St. Pierre ("I think there was Vaseline on the controller"), hangs some more with his Army vet buddy, and gives his fighters the traditional F-bomb-laced pep talk.

(Props: MMA Fanhouse. Skip to 4:44 for the good stuff.)

At yesterday’s UFC 97 conference de presse (that’s fancy talk for press conference) Dana White made the bold claim that an Anderson Silva win over Thales Leites on Saturday night would solidify him as the greatest champion in UFC history.  In other words, if the guy who is a 5-1 favorite according to some bookmakers does what everyone expects him to do, this will prove that he’s the best.  

This is a difficult line of reasoning to follow.  If Silva wins at UFC 97 he’ll be 9-0 in the Octagon.  That’s a record.  It breaks the previous streak set by Royce Gracie and tied by Jon Fitch.  But there’s a reason why, even before Jon Fitch tied that record, none of us (with the exception of that one dude who stopped watching MMA in 1997) talk about Royce Gracie as the greatest champion in the history of the UFC.

It’s not just how many people you beat; it’s who you beat.

(‘No, it isn’t funny. What happened to the dress I bought you? The one with an actual neckline? It’s like you want people to stare or something. Oh, now I get it.’)

You know what time it is.  Time to get serious about the important questions surrounding UFC 97.  Questions like, ‘What the hell are we getting for our money here?’ and ‘What’s up with your stupid face, stupid?’  That’s right.  It’s Ben vs. Ben time.

What exactly does Chuck Liddell have to do to prove that he’s still got it?  Is anything less than a devastating KO going to be enough?
 
BG: It’ll either have to be a knockout, or an incredibly dominant decision victory where all three judges score it 30-24 and Shogun Rua‘s face looks like hamburger afterwards. Here’s the deal: There’s no way that Shogun could have magically set the clock back to 2005 in the three months since he barely defeated Mark Coleman at UFC 93, and I think we all expect a shabby performance out of him tomorrow night. So Chuck basically has to prove that although he may no longer be able to hang with younger, more complete fighters, his skills haven’t deteriorated as much as Rua’s have.

If both fighters turn in mediocre efforts, the UFC will have a hard time figuring out what to do with them. (You can’t cut the winner and the loser. Can you?) That was probably Dana White’s motivation for calling out Liddell in public and demanding a dazzling performance — if Chuck fails again, there’s no obvious next step with him, promotion-wise. Do you throw him against talented up-and-comers like Luis Cane and Jon Jones, who might smash his old ass?  Do you try to build him back up against complete cans? Either way, he won’t be in important fights anymore, and that may not be an option for the UFC, or for Chuck himself.

BF: The only way a decision victory would be enough for Liddell is if a) Rua fights like it’s the 2005 Pride GP all over again, b) Chuck still comes close to finishing him several times, and c) after the fight all we can talk about is what amazing heart and conditioning Rua showed in merely surviving that assault.

(He owns at least one working bicep.  That’s a good sign, right?)

Let me be real, son.  Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites is, on paper, the most one-sided UFC title fight since Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra I.  And yes, we know how that one turned out, but there’s still no plausible reason to believe that the Thales Leites we’ve seen in the Octagon could beat even the uninterested Anderson Silva we saw against Patrick Cote…or is there?

In the interest of trying to make UFC 97’s main event seem a little more competitive than the oddsmakers think it is, here’s our best attempt at making the very difficult case for Thales Leites.

1. Aside From His UFC Debut, He’s Never Lost an MMA Bout
Losing your Octagon debut is almost a rite of passage for young fighters, like getting screwed by a sponsor or doing something so cool it makes Joe Silva leap out of his chair.  Leites lost his first UFC bout via decision to the very credible Martin Kampmann in 2006.  Since then, dude’s been hanging nothing but W’s.  Okay, his win over Nate Marquardt was highly suspect, but his quick submission over Drew McFedries wasn’t. (Sidenote: how did he go from a win over Marquardt to a bout with McFedries, anyway?  Not exactly a step up in competition there.)

A source close to the camp of UFC middleweight contender Demian Maia has informed Cage Potato that the Brazilian is expected to be offered the next middleweight title shot against the winner of the Anderson Silva/Thales Leites bout (in other words, Silva) late this summer.

There’s no official date set, but our source says Maia’s camp is expecting the bout to take place in late August, which would most likely put it at UFC 102 in Portland, Ore.  The middleweight title bout would certainly bolster a card that’s rumored to be headlined by Randy Couture returning home to the Pacific Northwest to take on Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. 

If anybody’s earned a shot at the middleweight strap, it’s Maia.  The undefeated submissions wiz made Chael Sonnen look like a novice in his last bout, and his jiu-jitsu skills would offer a challenge that we haven’t yet seen Silva face during his run as UFC champion.

Stay tuned for more details as they emerge.

(‘Hey, cut that out!  It’s mildly annoying.’)

UFC 97 will go on as planned in Montreal in April, with only one slight alteration of the normal rules: no foot stomps.  Considering that there was some concern over whether the event would take place at all after the local commission got scared and claimed never to have really sanctioned MMA at all, this is indeed great news.  Now Anderson Silva will be free to destroy Thales Leites as planned.  And if he loses, he can always blame the altered rules for taking away a vital piece of his attack.  Not that he really uses foot stomps regularly, but it’s the threat of foot stomps that keeps opponents guessing.  Now it’s back to the drawing board for Silva.

A report from Corus Sports that is written in some indecipherable script known as “French” confirmed the news.  We have no idea what it says, but oddly enough our friends at Fightlinker are familiar with this strange tongue.  And here we thought they only knew broken English.  Looks like we owe them an apology.

There’s no word yet on what exactly the commission in Montreal found so objectionable about foot stomps while at the same time being unbothered by punches, kicks, knees and elbows, but as long as Chris Leben isn’t added to the card we’re guessing it won’t be much of an issue.  MMA, onward!

 
(Props: MMA Mania)

Maybe the epic visual presentation for St. Pierre vs. Penn 2 has spoiled us, but we’re getting the sense that the UFC’s design department doesn’t really care about their upcoming Montreal show. Above is the poster image they’ve released for #97, which features old stock images of the four headliners in front of a generic cage background, surrounded by a cloud-like fog. Are these the men that are guarding the gates to MMA heaven? And what’s up with the janky-ass bubble-block lettering?

It seems significant that UFC 97 will be just the second UFC pay-per-view event since September to be identified with a word ("Redemption") rather than by the headlining matchup (i.e., "Couture vs. Lesnar," "Franklin vs. Henderson"). We’re guessing that’s because the idea of "Silva vs. Leites" headlining a card tends to bum people out. Still, "redemption" works well as a unifying theme. Liddell and Rua will be battling to rescue their careers after putting in woeful performances in their last fights, and Silva will be trying to redeem himself in the eyes of fans after his oddly restrained and anti-climactic performance against Patrick Cote in October.

Still, if it were up to us, we’d call the card "Silva and Liddell," have the two of them on the poster by themselves, and hope fans are duped into thinking that they’re fighting each other. And we’d dial back the fog machine by at least 50%.

After the jump: The latest announced and rumored matchups for UFC 97. [Updated at 12:16 p.m. PT]

(Leites smashes Pete Sell at UFC 69. Photo courtesy of miyanville.com.)

According to MMA Junkie, UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva and Thales Leites have verbally agreed to face each other at an April event (update: IntheGuard.tv says it’ll be UFC 97 on 4/18), though bout agreements have not been signed yet. As the story goes, the UFC is hoping to replicate the success of UFC 83 by returning to Montreal for the card, one year after "Serra vs. St. Pierre II."

This of course means that Silva won’t be headlining UFC 95 (February 21st, London), and it means that his next match won’t be one of those "superfights" that people love so much. Not taking anything away from Thales Leites, who’s obviously very talented, but does anybody believe that he’s truly the #1 contender in the UFC’s middleweight division? Though Leites is on a five-fight win streak — just like Patrick Cote was when he got his title shot — the only big name he’s beaten during his current run is Nate Marquardt, and he would have lost that fight if Marquardt didn’t have two points deducted for illegal strikes; one judge still scored the fight for Nate.

Now that Dan Henderson is (temporarily?) back at light-heavyweight, I see two guys ahead of Leites in the middleweight title picture…

Remember Anderson Silva, the UFC middleweight champ, the guy who got so pissed at the reaction to his fight with Patrick Cote that he wanted to be put on another UFC card as fast as possible just so he could punch a hole in someone’s face and shut everybody up? 

Well he’s calmed down now.  Despite Dana White’s indications that Silva would headline UFC 95 in February, possibly against Thales Leites, Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, says they’re thinking they’d rather wait until April to fight again.

"With our timing and our scheduling, it just makes more sense to come back [in April]," Soares said.

"As of right now, nothing has been 100 percent decided yet," Soares said. "It looks like we’re looking to fight in April. We don’t know what can happen, but as of right now, I think we’re going to be fighting in April."

Okay, so that’s not a firm declaration that Silva absolutely will not fight in February.  He seems like a guy who can be convinced to strap on the gloves and hurt somebody if Dana White sweetens the deal and gives a speech that includes the phrase “it’s the boss’s car,” but it still sounds like bad news for the UFC 95 card.

(Does Aquaman get laid? You better believe it.)

Yesterday MMA Fanhouse located a story from a Croatian newspaper that detailed undefeated UFC middleweight Goran Reljic‘s heroic rescue of two men who had accidentally driven their car into the Adriatic Sea (it happens, okay?). Apparently Reljic had been asleep when he heard the crash, then jumped in the ocean, smashed the car window with his fist, and pulled the two men out. Oh yeah, and he did it despite the back injury that caused him to pull out of a bout with Thales Leites at UFC 90. Just to make things more interesting.

This, it seemed, was an uncommonly brave act. Except that it wasn’t so uncommon. At least not for Reljic. According to a story on UFC.com today, it wasn’t the first time he had saved someone from the death trap that is the Adriatic:

“Actually this is second time that I know Goran saved a life in the water,” [Reljic’s manager, Zoran Saric] recalled. “Two years ago, he jumped into a wild storm near the cliffs in the Adriatic Sea, where a person was swimming and trying to get out the water, but the waves and current were so strong that they were pulling the person back in. I have no idea how Goran managed to pull that person out of the sea, but he did it.”

The section of that quote I’d like to highlight is “this is the second time that I know.” That’s fairly open-ended. For all we know, Reljic does this all the time.

In fact, I did a little research, and on nights when Reljic has a fight, statistics show that drowning deaths in the Adriatic Sea increase by 175%. Okay, that’s not true at all. Like I’m about to do any research. Come on. But the point is, if you’re planning on dicking around anywhere in or around the Adriatic Sea, it’s best to check the UFC schedule to see if Goran Reljic will be free that day, just as a precaution.

What a bizarre night. If, like me, you can’t quite make sense of what you saw last night, the video above gives you another chance to sort through it all. What does it say when Bruce Buffer provides more intensity than the main event?

Bonus awards for UFC 90 were $65,000 a piece and it played out like this:

Fight of the Night: Sean Sherk and Tyson Griffin
Submission of the Night: Spencer Fisher
KO of the Night: Junior Dos Santos

Awarding bonuses this time around must have felt like a strange process. There were only two submissions (Thales Leites’ choke of McFedries was not impressive enough somehow) and one knockout, and picking a fight of the night had to be a lot like picking a favorite Arena League football team. Apparently 15,359 people showed up to be disappointed by the most unsatisfying UFC in recent memory, with a live gate totaling $2.85 million.

Dos Santos’ vicious knockout of Werdum is after the jump, along with the so-called fight of the night and more.

(Why is only one person in this photo really selling it?)

- Talking wrasslin’ and Playboy Mansion parties with Daniel Puder. (MMA Rated)

- Marcus Davis wants to punch each other in the face like gentleman. (Sub Fighter)

- Roger Huerta says the UFC is twisting his words. (MMA Madness)

- UFC signs Mike Massenzio to fight at Ultimate Fight Night 15. (Five Ounces of Pain).

- Couture says Affliction has the right approach to taking on the UFC. (Steve Cofield)

- Knee injury derails Dean Lister-Thales Leites bout. (MMA Weekly)

- Cops found weed on Snoop Dogg’s tour bus? Are you sure? (Holy Taco)

- When to skimp and when to splurge: a guide for men. (Wall Street Fighter)

(“Conviction” returns in October.)

— Thales Leites and Dean Lister will reportedly meet in a middleweight bout at UFC Fight Night 15 (September 17th; Omaha, NE), while lightweights Thiago Tavares and Kurt Pellegrino are slated to fight at UFC 88 (September 6th, Atlanta); both Tavares and Pellegrino are coming off losses in their last fights, to Matt Wiman and Nate Diaz, respectively. The UFC has also confirmed widely rumored UFC 88 matches between Rich Franklin and Matt Hamill, Dan Henderson and Rousimar Palhares, and Karo Parisyan vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida.

— Gina Carano will fight next at an EliteXC event on October 4th. According to Sherdog, the event is likely to be televised on CBS, and her opponent may be Kelly Kobald, a Minnesota Martial Arts Academy product who started her career on a 16-0-1 tear before dropping her last two fights to Tara LaRosa and Julie Kedzie.

— This may help explain why Affliction’s attendance was so good: All tickets in all sections were discounted to $39.95 on the day of the show.

— Sengoku’s lightweight grand prix — which will go down August 24th in Saitama, Japan — will include IFL lightweight champion Ryan Schultz, King of the Cage lightweight champion Clay French, Cage Force lightweight champion Mizuto Hirota, and former DEEP lightweight champion Kazunori Yokota. Takanori Gomi and Frank Trigg will also be fighting, in separate non-GP bouts.