If you missed listening to the festivities live last week, we finally got around to uploading our interactive 30th episode of The Bum Rush Radio Show that we recorded on Thursday. Between audio issues and server downtime over the weekend, we were unable to bring you this dose of sweet ear candy until today, but at least you’ve got something to help you through your hangover…er Monday.

Joining us on this 2011 retrospective instalment of show were some of your favorite contributors including Jason Moles, Jared Jones and Seth Falvo. Also calling in to voice their opinions on the year’s biggest stories and UFC 141 were comment section regulars Remedial and karmaatemycat.

(Who’s going to design a ‘Bum Rush’ drinking game for tomorrow?)

It’s been a while since we’ve opened up the phone lines to the Potato Nation, so we figured we were about due for another call-in edition of The Bum Rush Radio Show before we close out the year.

Mark your day planners (or write a reminder on your fridge) that the show will go live tomorrow at 3:00 pm ET and we will be taking calls from our faithful readers and seasoned trolls to get their thoughts on the year in MMA and our performance in 2011.

The Bum Rush is back this week with a short and sweet version of the show. In this episode Ben and Mike run through last weekend’s UFC 137 card and the week’s top stories lightning-round-style.

Well, The Bum Rush Radio Show is finally back in your lives after a brief hiatus. Whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen. Our relationship with you is like Sid’s was with Nancy; you can’t live without us, but sometimes we drive you insane and we’re cool with that. We’ll hide the knives and the heroin and we’ll continue to get along just fine.

Anyway, our special guest this week is acclaimed Xtreme Couture head boxing coach Gil Martinez who is in the final stages of preparations for Gray Maynard’s championship rematch with Frankie Edgar. We talk to Gil about his thoughts on the bout and we find out what he thought about the Ortiz-Mayweather debacle.

Also on the show, we formally meet our new part-time staff member Jared “DangadaDang” Jones as he, Ben and Mike discuss the top news of the week, last week’s UFC 135 event, and the last UFC on Versus card coming up tomorrow.

Veteran MMA reporter Loretta Hunt joins the show this week to talk about her latest book, “Let’s Get It On! The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee,” which she co-wrote with “Big” John McCarthy and is available in bookstores and on Amazon now.

Hunt touched on the process of crafting the story as well as some of the things she learned while interviewing the revered referee for the book among other topics.

(Karyn hanging out backstage at Lollapalooza in ’92 with Chili Peppers Anthony Kiedis and Flea.)

On this special short and sweet episode of The Bum Rush, the guys welcome acclaimed MMA reporter and the host of MMA H.E.A.T. Karyn Bryant.

Bryant talks about a number of topics, including her 20 years in broadcasting, what led her to cover mixed martial arts and how she embraces her show being labeled as  ”The Entertainment Tonight of MMA.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Karyn’s body of work, she has worked for some of the most recognized networks including MTV, CNN, TLC, TBS and TNT and has starred in a number of shows, including Junkyard Wars, Malcolm and Eddie and Movies for Guys Who Love Movies.

Check out some clips after the jump.

We’ve been off for a few weeks mainly due to logistical reasons, but we’re finally back with another episode of Ben’s mom’s favorite MMA podcast.

On this week’s episode weekend writer Seth Falvo joins us as we break down this weekend’s UFC 130 event and next weekend’s The Ultimate Fighter 13 Finale. We also sit down with embattled former UFC welterweight contender Karo “The Heat” Parisyan, who talks about his heartbreaking loss to Ryan Ford at MMA Live 1 last week in Canada, his haters, his thoughts on the media and his plans for the future.

Well, apparently our Free CagePotato campaign finally broke through the seemingly impenetrable armor around Dana White’s heart that only a handful of people including Stephan Bonnar, Forrest Griffin and Chuck Liddell have been able to breach.

The Potato Nation has been asking for it, so tomorrow night we’re bringing back the interactive aspect of The Bum Rush Radio Show. The taping of episode 19 will start at 5:30 pm ET Wednesday.

It’s Friday and there’s another episode of The Bum Rush Radio Show hot of the presses for you to enjoy (or begrudgingly listen to while angrily shaking your fist at your computer) to help ease you into the weekend.

(Ricco Rodriguez battles Randy Couture at UFC 39 while wearing the henna tattoo that almost brought down an industry. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

This Saturday, former UFC heavyweight champion Ricco Rodriguez faces TUF 10 vet James McSweeney in the co-main event of BAMMA 5 (MEN Arena; Manchester, England), which you can watch live via $10 online pay-per-view at bammatv.com. With 10 consecutive wins already under his belt — and his personal demons under control — you’d think that a decisive win over McSweeney would move Rodriguez one step closer to a UFC return. That’s what we thought anyway, until we asked Ricco about it on last week’s episode of The Bum Rush Radio Show. (The interview with Rodriguez begins at the 1:30:11 mark.)

As it turns out, the recent report that claimed Rodriguez was on the verge of signing a new contract with the UFC was mostly hot air. And in fact, it would be a minor miracle if “Suave” got anywhere close to an Octagon during his lifetime. Here’s the excerpt from our Bum Rush interview, in which Ricco Rodriguez — for the first time ever — explains why he’s been blacklisted from the organization.

***

RICCO RODRIGUEZ: No, [the report] definitely wasn’t accurate. There were some talks to possibly get into the UFC, but that opportunity is just not available, and I just don’t ever see myself returning to the UFC. Dana holds a grudge pretty well, and he has his reasons, and I don’t blame him. I understand what I did at that time, and it was a tough pill to swallow and he has every right to be upset with him…The truth of the matter is, is that I single-handedly almost tore down the UFC at one point in my career. A lot of people don’t know this, and you’ll probably be the first one that I’ll ever admit this to.

The Bum Rush Radio Show is back for a 16th episode this week, and it’s a doozy.

On this edition of the podcast, the guys recap Saturday’s opening round event of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix and break down next weekend’s UFC 127 card before welcoming CP fighter-blogger Ryan “The Big Deal” Jimmo and MMA icon Ricco Rodriguez.

Despite not having a special guest on this week’s episode, we still put out a well-rounded show featuring Ben, Mike and Chad’s thoughts on last weekend’s Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg show, breakdowns and predictions for Saturday night’s UFC 126 card and our take on the week’s top headlines.

As always, you can subscribe to the show on iTunes and you can send your show ideas to contest@cagepotato.com.

We are in the process of adding a fourth member to the The Bum Rush and we will be announcing a contest soon to that end.

With Ben on vacation this week, Mike takes the wheel of the show with Chad riding shotgun. Besides running through some of the week’s top news, the guys run down Saturday night’s UFC Fight for the Troops card which will feature our three guests on the show, Cody McKenzie, Melvin Guillard and Pat Barry.

As always,  The Bum Rush is available on iTunes or via direct download by right-clicking HERE.

If you like the show, all that we ask is that you continue to listen, tell a friend or 500 and give us some positive feedback in iTunes. And if you can’t stand listening to the three of us pretend to know what we’re talking about, then leave some comments below so we can work to make the show better for you.

Ben Mike and Chad are back this week with the thirteenth episode of Potato Nation’s ever-growingly popular bi-weekly Bum Rush Radio Show podcast.

On this show the guys run through the big winners and losers from the UFC’s New Year’s Day UFC 125 card, dissect the Strikeforce heavyweight tournament and give their thoughts on Chael Sonnen’s latest scandal.

Later on in the show former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal stops by to chat about a number of topics including the status of his knee rehabilitation, his tryout with the WWE and the unlikely character who influenced him the most to become a fighter.

As always, we suggest you download the podcast through iTunes and ask that if you like the show you give us some positive feedback in iTunes as well as here in the comment section.  If you don’t have iTunes, (we aren’t going to judge you, but man, who doesn’t have iTunes?) you can download the show the old fashioned way HERE. 

We welcome your suggestions for future segments or guests you would like to hear on the show as well as any recommendations to make the show better.

Hopefully we can make your Friday 78 minutes less mundane.

(Forget money and fame – Phil was fighting back when the prize was a weird trophy and a semi-attractive Japanese chick. / Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

When we learned that the match between UFC veteran Phil Baroni and 23-year-old prospect Brad Tavares would indeed be aired before the UFC 125 pay-per-view broadcast this Saturday, it reminded me of our last chat with the New York Bad Ass on episode 11.1 of the Bum Rush Radio Show. Baroni has reached that point in his career where youngsters are trying to make their names off of him, and he has to beat them if he wants his own name to retain its value. I asked Phil if he felt like the last in a bygone generation of fighters, considering that so many of his rivals are no longer competing. And I thought his response was worth sharing again…

With the holidays nearly upon us and your work week winding down, we figured we’d give you something to do while you drink your bourbon spiked coffee alone in your office today.

This is our twelfth and final episode of the year, but it’s a good one.

Besides our "expert" breakdown of UFC 125, we opened the phone lines up again for this show to hear from the Potato Nation one last time before heading into 2011.

At approximately the :79 minute mark (for those of you who can’t stand our hodgepodge of Canadian and American accents) UFC lightweight contender George Sotiropoulos stops by to talk about a number of topics, including his upcoming fight with Dennis Siver at UFC 127, the lightweight title bout between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard coming up on New Year’s day, the hate towards 10th Planet jiu-jitsu and the controversy surrounding his competition legwear.

*We apologize in advance for a fragment of latent audio from a past episode that somehow made it into the intro by Ben when he’s talking about our pal Dallas Winston. We’re in the process of uploading the new version of the show with the soundbite removed, but it likely will take an hour or so to complete the process.

As always, we suggest that you subscribe to The Bum Rush on iTunes if for nothing else but simplicity’s sake, but if you’re still against all things Apple, you can download the episode by right-clicking HERE.

(Where are these plugged in?)

Just a reminder that we’re going live for our last episode of The Bum Rush this year at 5:30 pm ET today and it will be an interactive affair.

Tell your boss that you have an important call from a client overseas that you have to take, unless of course you work at Burger King, in which case you’re SOL until we post the finished product on Thursday morning.

Call in and talk MMA and the state of the Potato in 2011 with Chad, Mike and Ben.

You never know, you might even win something.

Here are the details:

If you want to call in and participate in the show,  follow these instructions:

Dial (724) 444-7444
Enter: 89629 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN if you have a Talkshoe account.
We will be notified that you are in the queue to talk with us.
You can listen to live, HERE at 5:30 pm ET

In case you’ve been wondering, we haven’t abandoned the live, interactive editions of The Bum Rush, we’ve just been trying to figure out how to fix all of the audio issues we’ve encountered since we began using Talkshoe.

Since you’ve been asking about when we’re going to include the Potato Nation in another podcast, we figured we’d make our last episode of the year an interactive one so we can drink rum and eggnog and shoot the shit with our homies during the holidays.

You can listen to live, HERE at 5:30 pm ET tomorrow and then check back in on Thursday for bonus taped interviews added to the show with UFC lightweight George Sotiropoulos and Nemesis fighter Chris McNally.

If you want to call in and participate in the show,  follow these instructions:

Dial (724) 444-7444
Enter: 89629 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN if you have a Talkshoe account.
We will be notified that you are in the queue to talk with us.

(Besides his go-for-broke style of fighting, Big Country’s penchant for telling it like it is has made him a fan favorite.)

Roy Nelson stopped by The Bum Rush Radio Show recently and as always, the outspoken UFC heavyweight contender didn’t pull any punches when discussing the topics we broached.

When asked about his recently publicized contract dispute with Roy Jones Junior’s Square Ring Promotions, "Big Country" says the frivolous lawsuit, which came about eight months ago is old news and that reports that he didn’t have his manager or lawyer read through the contract are false. He says that he was given the impression that SRP was no longer promoting MMA events and that his obligation to the organization (who only promoted two events and at time of writing has no other cards planned) was completed.

"It’s pretty much eight-month-old news. There’s nothing really new and exciting. It’s just a lot of legal processes. In the United States anybody can sue anybody. This has been going on for months and if this is a new story that people are writing about now, somebody hasn’t done their homework," Nelson says. "From my understanding, there was no further obligation with them. We were trying to get some fights with them and we helped them out a bit [with setting up some matches] because they were doing some smaller shows and they wanted to get into the MMA business. Now, apparently they aren’t getting into the MMA business."

Realizing that we forgot to touch on UFC 124 on last week’s episode of The Bum Rush, we put together a pretty decent little show for this week, which although it clocks in at just over 30 minutes, is packed from top to bottom with goodness.

In this episode, which could be argued is our pound-for-pound best, perennial Potato Nation favorite, Phil Baroni stops by to talk about a number of topics, including his upcoming UFC 125 bout with Brad Tavares, the fact that he’s one of the last old school brawlers and his thoughts on his American Kickboxing Academy teammate Josh Koscheck’s championship bout with Georges St-Pierre Saturday night.

Stefan Struve also checks in with the guys to discuss his online rivalry and UFC 124 heavyweight scrap with Sean McCorkle, how he got his start as a fighter, which fighter he looked up to growing up and much, much more.

If you don’t have iTunes you can download the show HERE.

If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and spread the word about our marginally entertaining and somewhat informative Friday time wasting show.

As always, we appreciate any input — good or bad — about the show. Let us know if there are any segments or MMA personalities you want to see on future episodes.

(See, Forrest? You used to *love* microphones… / Photo courtesy of milwaukeemma.com)

When we hosted Stephan Bonnar on the latest edition of our Bum Rush Radio Show, we ran through the standard set of questions about his training for tomorrow night’s fight against Igor Pokrajac, his opinions on TUF 12, and his future as a broadcaster. But considering Bonnar’s long history with Forrest Griffin, we couldn’t resist asking for his take on the question that’s been plaguing us lately: "Why is Forrest such a dick to reporters?" Bonnar’s candid and insightful answer is after the jump. If you haven’t already, please give the new episode a listen, and subscribe on iTunes!

This week’s episode of The Bum Rush is a jam-packed one featuring a double dose of fighter interviews, a rundown of some of this week’s hot MMA news topics as well as pre-fight breakdowns of this weekend’s TUF 12 Finale and Strikeforce: Henderson vs. Babalu events.

Roy Nelson stops by the show to talk about where his contract status stands and what he hopes to accomplish in 2011, and as always, "Big Country" has plenty to say about these topics and more. The guys also catch up with Stephan Bonnar ahead of his TUF 12 main card bout with Igor Pokrajac to talk about training and his thoughts on everything from the MMA media to the UFC-WEC merger.

As per usual, you can listen to the entire episode in the player below, but for the best listening experience we suggest you subscribe to The Bum Rush on iTunes. Alternatively, for those of you staunchly opposed to supporting anything that puts money in Steve Jobs’ bank account, you can download the show HERE.

It’s Friday. You ain’t got no job and you ain’t got shit to do so CP’s gonna get you your MMA radio fix.

If you didn’t listen in during the taping of the interactive portion of the show Wednesday, it’s incredibly professionally done and we had at least 5000 listeners and a line-up of callers we had to turn away because we ran out of time. 

If you did listen, come on guys, it wasn’t that bad was it? Give it another listen. We promise we fixed everything in the mix.

One thing you didn’t hear on Wednesday was an exclusive interview we did with Jorge Rivera for this episode in which the UFC middleweight basically calls Chad an idiot for saying that a fighter doesn’t have to be exciting as long as he wins.

We’re hoping we have another decent turnout for our live taping of The Bum Rush Radio Show Episode 10 today at 5:30 pm ET.

There are several ways that you can interact with us during the show, including chatting live with our editors and your fellow members of The Potato Nation or calling in to hear your regional cadence accentuated on the air.

Besides breaking down UFC 122 and 123, we will be giving away more CP T-Shirts and will be asking for input on a number of ideas we’re working on for the site.

To listen to the show when we go live, click HERE.

To call in, dial (724) 444-7444 and when prompted, enter id number 89629. 

Let us know in the comment section if there are any topics we should discuss during the show.

If you missed our first interactive episode last week, you can listen to it HERE.

Hope to see you all on chat tomorrow and to hear from at least some of you during the show.

Our first interactive edition of The Bum Rush Radio Show went really well yesterday thanks to our loyal readers and listeners who really made the episode.

We’re thinking about doing a live segment for every episode moving forward, so let us know what you think about the idea and whether or not you’d all be interested in participating in future shows.

If you didn’t catch Episode 9 live yesterday, we spoke a bit about UFC 121 and the UFC-WEC merger as well as a glut of other topics including how CP came to be. Some of our loyal readers got in on the action sharing their favorite Cage Potato moments and how they stumbled across our little site.

Rounding out the show, we spoke to UFC middleweight contender Nate Marquardt about his UFC 122 opponent Yushin Okami, PEDs, the opinion of some that Team Jackson fighters play it safe and taking Internet trolls to task for real.

Have a listen, give us your suggestions for future episodes and tell us what you like and what you hate about the show.

If you don’t have iTunes (which you really should) and you can’t listen to the live player at the top of the page, you can download the show HERE.

(We have cake. And t-shirts…Come on, don’t make us be the only guys listening.)

Well, we’re pretty sure that we’ve got all of the bugs ironed out from yesterday’s show that never happened and we’re going to try to do this thing again today.

We apologize for any inconvenience the show’s cancellation may have caused the three or four listeners who were planning on tuning in.

Since we had a lot of suggestions asking that we move the show back a few hours to accommodate all of our readers/listeners with "real jobs," we’re aiming for a 5:00 pm ET start today forthe latest intimate and interactive edition of The Bum Rush Radio Show.

Call in and tell us about your fondest or funniest CagePotato moment or ask one of us some intimate or thoughtful questions and you could score yourself the official uniform of the Potato Nation: The coveted devil horns CP t-shirt made popular by the cool kids on the site who actually received their near-mythical prizes in the mail.

Log in a few minutes early and we’ll know if we’re having any issues with TalkShoe.

Judging by the test-run we did today, though, everything should be good to go. 

If you want to call in and listen to the show, follow these instructions:

Dial (724) 444-7444
Enter: 89629 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN if you have a Talkshoe account.
We will be notified that you are in the queue to talk with us.

Just a friendly reminder that we are recording our first interactive version of The Bum Rush Radio Show podcast today to commemorate Cage Potato’s third anniversary this October at 2:00 pm ET.

You can listen live here at 2:00 and call in to join the show using the following instructions:

Dial (724) 444-7444
Enter: 89629 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN if you have a Talkshoe account.
We will be notified that you are in the queue to talk with us.

Call in on your bosses dime to shoot the shit with Ben, Mike and Chad about all things MMA and to share your fondest Cage Potato memory and you could win one of our CP devil horn shirts.

If we continue to get blacklisted by MMA organizations at the rate we’re going, we may have to switch up our marketing campaign a bit, which means these babies could become collectors items some day.

If you’ve ever wanted to be on The Bum Rush Radio Show, you’ll finally get your chance Wednesday.

To commemorate CagePotato’s third anniversary this October, we’re putting together a special interactive segment of our uber-popular (in our own minds) podcast on Wednesday that will allow the Potato Nation to share its favorite CP memories and to shoot the shit about whatever you feel like with Ben, Mike and Chad.

We’re going to try out the new format using Talkshoe, webcasting and conference call service that allows listeners to call into the show and interact with call hosts and other callers.

(Cool! We’ve always wanted to meet Cheick! / Image courtesy of Facebook.com/Real.Cheick.Kongo)

Sometimes when you’re writing an MMA opinion blog, you forget that the fighters you occasionally talk shit about are real people, with real feelings, who would really beat the crap out of you if they found out where you lived. Case in point: Cheick Kongo, who didn’t appreciate a certain article I recently posted about him. Cheick joins Dana White in the growing list of UFC-folks who won’t be inviting me to any parties in the near future.

So Cheick, if you’re reading this and you want some justice, please don’t resort to violence. Instead, come onto our radio show next week so you can defend yourself and explain why you aren’t a dirty fighter. If you’re available, contact us through our site or Facebook page, and we’ll set up a time that’s convenient. Hope to hear from you soon…

(BG)