(Images courtesy of JorgDubin.com)

Art galleries don’t usually draw the TapouT-clad juicehead crowd — but thanks to an upcoming exhibition at the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach, that’s about to change. From May 6-29, painter Jorg Dubin will be showing nine of his MMA-themed works at the space, which feature such MMA legends as Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Brock Lesnar, and Fedor Emelianenko. Cage-fighters and naked chicks, huh? Sounds like something we can get behind. (Even if the one with Keith Jardine and the redheaded Mariska Hargitay-lookalike gives us the creeps for some reason.) But there’s deep meaning behind these bizarre and unique works. From the press release:

(Props: iBakedAcake)

This poor, misunderstood Jamie Yager kid just can’t catch a break. During last week’s fight, he cheers for his buddy Brad Tavares, instead of his Team Punishment teammate James Hammortree, which just gives Nick "Blown-Out O-" Ring something else to be upset about. "You’re with us or against us…you need to support us, friendships aside," Nick says. "I hear what you’re saying, and I respect where you’re coming from," Yager says. But Ring doesn’t feel very heard or respected. He goes back to the house to bitch about Yager some more with his housemates.

Yager has his own crew — himself, Tavares, Kris McCray, and Kyle Noke — which he has dubbed "The Minority Report." Noke is not sure why he’s been included with the other multi-ethnic types, but he’s cool with it.

Anyway, this is one of those two-fight episodes, thank God, so we won’t have to suffer through too much girly-ass drama and house bullshit. Still in control, Chuck Liddell chooses his boy (and ours) Rich Attonito to go up against Kyacey Uscola. Uscola (18-15) is a skilled wrestler, and has had a long career that’s seen him lose to such notables as Chael Sonnen, Gegard Mousasi, Joey Villasenor, Mike Guymon, and Kyle Noke. He’s going to miss the birth of his child while being on the show.

Team Liddell fighter Rich Attonito returns again in the newest installment of his Cage Potato guest blog. Read on to find out what it’s like to have John Hackleman and Chuck Liddell whipping you into shape, and how a Jersey boy like Rich would have handled the beef between Jamie Yager and Nick Ring.

We were all called together for a big announcement and we waited patiently in the gym for the arrival of Dana, Chuck, and Tito. When I saw them make their way through the doors and towards us I knew that it was all business just by the way they were walking. I knew that something was up and by the looks of it, it didn’t look good. Tension in the air was thick. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong but I started to rewind my brain to see if I could think of anything I might have done that would get me in trouble. I felt like I was back in high school for a second.

Then Dana asked Chris Camozzi to step forward and delivered the terrible news. Chris had broken his jaw and was no longer able to continue in the competition. He was going home. It was like everyone in the room got kicked in the balls all at once. I felt horrible for him. Chris was one of my favorite guys in the house and I was sad to see him go. He earned his way into the house through a hard fought victory. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to have the opportunity you earned right in front of you, and then see it vanish just like that. Watching Chris leave the gym only reinforced how fragile this opportunity can be and made me feel very fortunate to be in the position I was in. The only question now was who were they going to bring back to replace him?

(Chris Haseman would be proud.)

In last night’s episode of Coaches Who Won’t Fight Each Other 11, Team Punishment suffers another setback when Dana "Angel of Death" White comes in and tells Chris Camozzi that he has to leave the competition because of a fractured jaw. Bummer, brah. And so, Tito has to replace his last pick with a guy who got beaten in the preliminary round. After weighing his options, he calls back Seth Baczynski, who lost to Court McGee but showed heart in the process.

Team Liddell’s Charles Blanchard has an advanced degree in giving back-rubs to other dudes. A rub-down given to Team Ortiz’s Nick Ring at 2 a.m. opens up the ridicule floodgates from Jamie Yager, who busts Ring’s balls about the massage and the fruity way he leans against a bathroom door. Yager simply won’t be happy until all his teammates hate him. Later, an altercation in practice leads to Yager calling Ring a "bitch." Ring is ready to throw down, but Tito cools everybody out and explains that they’ll all have to help each other if one of them hopes to win this thing. By contrast, Team Liddell is "Happy Camp," according to John Hackleman.

A few weeks ago this image would have represented nothing more than prevailing internet rumors and some committed fan’s proficiency with Photoshop. But it just so happens that the picture you see here was found in an email sent out by the UFC this afternoon, casually announcing that tickets for UFC 115, featuring a main event bout between Chuck Liddell and Rich Franklin, go on sale this week. No biggie, just a tacit admission that the UFC has been straight-up lying to us for the past several weeks.

Coming as it does just a couple episodes into the new season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” this announcement makes it hard not to have terrible flashbacks to last season, where we were forced to watch “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans jaw endlessly at one another even after we knew the promised payoff bout wouldn’t come. Ortiz and Liddell haven’t even really started to get under one another’s skin, and already we know that it will all amount to nothing.

Cage Potato guest blogger Rich Attonito returns with his take on last night’s episode.  Read on to find out what it feels like to be Chuck Liddell’s second pick, and why his oatmeal-making technique makes for important television.

After the preliminary fights were done, Dana White congratulated us and gave us a brief run down of what was to come. Team picks were going to be held the next day, but first we were going to be taken to the fighter house where we would be spending the next 6 weeks of our lives together. For better or for worse.

The lights of the Las Vegas strip lit up the night as we barreled down the highway in two sets of vans. I remember feeling a great deal of relief and for the first time in the past several days I was able to relax a little bit, until the vans arrived at our destination. Suddenly everyone started piling out of the vans and running into the house like someone had told them there was a million dollars inside for the taking.

("FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-")

After last week’s battle royale, we’re left with 14 middleweight hopefuls, who run up in the TUF house like speed-freaks in a blackout. Is it just me, or is the house nicer than usual this year? It looks like somebody’s actual home, not a reality show barracks. Where are the TapouT bunk beds? Man, is it going to be sweet when they wreck the place.

Not all the fighters survived their qualifying fights completely intact. Chris Camozzi is dealing with a mouth infection from a broken tooth and Clayton McKinney is nursing a jacked shoulder.

It’s time to choose teams, and the coin toss goes Tito Ortiz‘s way. He opts to take the first fighter, which will allow Chuck Liddell to pick the first matchup. The picks go down like this…

Team Punishment: Nick "The Cock" Ring, Kyacey Uscola, Kris McCray, Jamie Yager, James "The Ball Peen" Hammortree, Clayton McKinney, Chris Camozzi
Team Liddell: Kyle Noke, Rich Attonito, Charles Blanchard, Josh Bryant, Brad Tavares, Court McGee, Joe Henle

The eleventh season of TUF began like many others: With a bunch of tatted-up aspiring fighters checking out the gym, comparing their wild hairstyles, waiting for Dana. But there’s a twist, and it’s a big one. A sudden explosion by the Airdyne bikes interrupts the small-talk, and a banner rolls down the wall. It does not say The Ultimate Fighter. It says Tool Academy. Most of the guys understand what that means, and they’re pissed.

"I’m not a fucking tool, bro," says Nick Ring. "I’m a fighter. I have so much extra testosterone that I have to hole-out bar-skanks at least twice a week. I’m actually doing it for Tammy’s benefit, because if she was the only outlet for my passion, she would literally die, bro." We learn that Tammy is the mother of Ring’s twin daughters.

"When I find my girlfriend, I’m going to strangle that bitch," says Brad Tavares. "Uh, I mean I’m going to do whatever I can to rebuild the trust in our relationship."

Okay, so the real twist isn’t that shocking. Basically, instead of 32 fighters battling for 16 spots, it’s 28 fighting for 14; two eliminated fighters will be chosen by the coaches to fight for a final spot in the quarterfinals, after the round-of-14 is completed. DW shows up and implores the fighters to not leave their fights in the hands of the shitheaded judges. He’s pissed off just talking about it. "Don’t be that fuckin’ guy tomorrow." And then it’s just fights and fights and Chuck screwing with Tito and more fights.

(Whaddaya say boys? Once more on the way to the nursing home?)

The rampant speculation train just keeps right on rolling when it comes to Chuck Liddell’s next fight. After persistent rumors that an injury to Tito Ortiz had forced the UFC to change their plans for his first fight after the TUF coaching gig, the newest iteration comes to us via Heavy.com, which claims that Liddell will now be meeting Randy Couture for a fourth time at UFC 116 on July 3. If true, that would put the fight on the same card as the planned meeting between Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin, which would pretty much guarantee the kind of pay-per-view numbers that would convince Dana White to forego base-jumping and just be shot out of a cannon over the MGM Grand and into the moat at Excalibur.

So, is there any reason to believe that it’s actually going to happen? We have no idea, but with all these rumors flying around it seems less and less likely that the Liddell-Ortiz bout will actually happen as planned. At this rate, we’re expecting to hear the Chuck Liddell vs. James Toney rumor any day now.

(And he was really looking forward to shoving a foreign currency into the G-string of a foreign stripper.)

Plans to hold UFC 115 in Vancouver may have been thwarted, according to a report by the Canadian Press, and instead the UFC may be heading to Cincinnati in June. The report states that though the UFC has been pushing hard to get Vancouver to be more open-minded about their particular brand of unarmed combat, “the deal fell through because the UFC and the city could not reach an agreement on other details around the show.”

So help us, if this is about footstomps again, we’re going to lose it.

If the report is true and the UFC really is abandoning the dream of Vancouver for the gritty, oil-stained reality of Cincinnati, we have no choice but to revisit the rumor that Rich Franklin – not Tito Ortiz – will face Chuck Liddell at UFC 115. Dana White swears it isn’t true, and we all know that DW is not the type of man who would ever tell a convenient lie to help his business. Yet now the event that is supposed to feature the showdown between the two TUF coaches may be headed for Ace’s hometown. Seems just a tad bit suspicious, no?

(We weren’t sure what to put up at the top of this post, so we figured, hey, Miesha Tate’s ass, right guys? Photo courtesy of Fight! Magazine.)

Praise Crom it’s Friday! Time to shout out our favorite members of the peanut gallery… 

chamby on "War Machine Returning to MMA in April, Still Out His Damn Mind": I wish that grenade on his neck would blow up already

Aptninja on "Photo Gallery: 17 Amazing MMA Event Posters": (@skeletor) Sperm sometimes move toward an egg rather than the space bar.

ReX13 on "Heads-Up: Win a $200 MMA Warehouse Gear Package in This Week’s FightPicker Prize Pools": (@JoseMonkey) Don’t think i won’t put on this entire outfit and run errands, including stopping at the bank, where i will refuse to take out my mouthpiece while i converse with the tellers. Despite the fact that i have hands so dimunitive that i refuse to go to Burger King, i will not remove my gloves. I will grasp the pen-on-a-chain with an overhand stabby grip and scrawl an approximation of my name, and mumble about "fucking staph" while they count out stacks of ones, per my request. When i am bid a good day, i will grunt the words "protein", "gym", "train", "appreciate your help and have a lovely afternoon", or some combination of preceding, and i will stalk out. I hope the rash guard won’t cover the awesome tribal armband i have planned. If you want to quit being a pencilneck, feel free to come by my gym, Keyboard Warrior, and ask for a free month’s membership (promotional code: Tap, Nap, or Snap).

Goog on "Tito Ortiz Rumorwatch: Now It’s a Neck Injury": "I tattooed my fathe, beat the pith out of Robin Giventh, and thquandered over 300 million dollarth and I’m thtill not the biggest douchebag in thith photo."

If your name has been called, please send your real name, address, and shirt size to feedback@cagepotato.com, and we’ll send you a CagePotato.com Devil Horns tee to you at some point in the near-to-distant future. 

(This is why B.J Penn still wakes up some nights in a terror, convinced that he’s covered in Vaseline and his own blood.)

Whether we want to admit it or not, excuses are as much a part of mixed martial arts as Tapout tees and fist-pose photographs. They have to be. In a world where you must talk yourself into believing that you’re either the baddest man in your weight class or else on your way to becoming it, a loss is something you have to find some way to reconcile, or else have your identity destroyed. That other dude couldn’t have won just because he was the better fighter. No, surely there’s a reason for this temporary setback, and chances are it’s very detailed and probably a little bit ridiculous.

In honor of the post-defeat excuse in MMA, we give you ten of the worst and weirdest attempts to explain away an ass-kicking. They aren’t necessarily untrue (though some are demonstrably untrue), but neither can they turn that L into a W. The best you can hope for is that they make sleeping at night just a little easier for the people who uttered them.

10. Mark Coleman couldn’t afford a proper training camp

(Don’t forget those elbows to the back of the head, either.)

(Did anyone else just get a great idea for a buddy cop movie?)

Do you know what today is? Well, yeah, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, which means that for at least one evening you can puke on the sidewalk outside of your favorite bar without people judging you, but aside from that. Today is a brand new day from yesterday. That means it only makes sense that we get a new Tito Ortiz rumor to force us back to that inevitable question: why do we have to keep talking about this guy?

The newest report comes from Five Ounces of Pain, and it claims that “multiple herniations in the neck” forced Ortiz off “The Ultimate Fighter” and out of his fight with opposing TUF 11 coach Chuck Liddell. Sound familiar?

(‘Abe Lincoln and Mary Todd got nothing on us, baby.’)

Sometimes you have to stop and wonder how people ever dealt with hardship before the invention of Twitter. Before the age when one could broadcast one’s own personal tragedies in 140 characters or less, how did we ever get along? I mean, say you’re a woman who recently went through a miscarriage, as Jenna Jameson claimed on her Twitter account recently. What are you supposed to do with that pain, keep it to yourself? Only share it with close friends and family members? Some life that would be. Your 97,000 followers on Twitter absolutely need to know about this, just like they need to know about the really bad flu your famous pro fighter boyfriend is suffering from, and about your desire to be in an all-girl rock band.

And see, that’s just a couple of days in the Twitter life of Tito and Jenna. A few weeks ago Ortiz raised eyebrows with cryptic messages about how difficult his life had become, prompting all manner of speculation about his health and general well being. Now he tweets that he’s suffering from “the worst ful I have every had [sic]. More IV’s please.”

Yesterday, Scott Coker confirmed that Strikeforce’s upcoming Nashville event would stay with its original April 17th date, instead of switching to April 24th in order to dodge a potential UFC counter-programming show. Well, they asked for it. Fighters Only passes along this major announcement:

(Props: BloodyElbow)

We know what you’re thinking: At some point, CagePotato should stop referencing the 2008 sci-fi thriller Cloverfield, and move onto more current films like Avatar or The Bounty Hunter. To which we’d respond, "Look, he’s blurry and enormous, what do you want from us?" This recent pic, lifted from John Hackleman’s Facebook account, shows that the Chuckbelly is still in full-effect, despite Liddell’s recent naked-squat regimen. But before you start laying down money on Tito Ortiz for Chuck and Tito’s third meeting in June, we should point out that Tito’s been going through some undisclosed personal stuff that may be at least as distracting as a bloated stomach. Then again, Chuck’s been hanging out with The Situation lately, and if that’s not cause for concern, we don’t know what is.

Update, 11:21 p.m. ET: Chuck looks good from the front, and Dana White is pissed. See for yourself after the jump.

Personally, I blame Chael "Epic Troll" Sonnen, who recently proved that even if you have a somewhat dull fighting style, MMA fans will start caring about you as soon as you accuse Anderson Silva of being an overrated punk who’s fluent in both English and Spanish. Sonnen’s recent success in playing the heel is only encouraging trash-talkers to get bolder with their call-outs, and the latest instigator is UFC welterweight contender Josh Koscheck, who has been on Twitter the last couple of days demanding that Tito Ortiz fight him. Considering that Koscheck is two weight classes smaller than Ortiz, this seems like a fight that Ortiz would actually take, although the HBBB hasn’t responded yet.

Obviously, the matchup would never be approved by the UFC or any athletic commission in this country*, even if Kos went on an all-Bojangles diet for the next three months. And in that sense, the call-out is virtually useless, outside of the fact that it gets us talking about Josh Koscheck for a few minutes one Tuesday afternoon. It’s like when somebody says "I’d kick your ass if my friends weren’t holding me back." In this analogy, the "friends" represent the 35-pound weight differential. You’re talking shit with a safety net. Yes, Josh, in the old days of the UFC, you’d occasionally see a guy like Keith Hackney beating the crap out of a guy like Emmanuel Yarborough. But I’m not sure that argument’s strong enough to convince Dana to toss out the unified rules on your behalf.

* Wait a minute. Are they just building up heat for a future headlining fight in Abu Dhabi? Oh God, no.

(Ortiz chats with Ariel Helwani, before and after heckling Mark Coleman.)

There are any number of reasons Tito Ortiz might have decided to try and steal the spotlight by shouting at Mark Coleman during his post-fight interview at UFC 109. For instance, he’s just always been kind of a prick, so there’s that. Or, if that’s not comprehensive enough for you, he’s also an opportunist prick, which is exactly the type of prick who would try to start a fight with an elderly opponent who had just shown himself to be easy pickings. But Ortiz’s official explanation for kicking Coleman while he was down? It was payback for that time his manager pointed out what we already know about Ortiz’s lady friend.

Of course, Coleman’s manager only said those things in retaliation for Ortiz calling Coleman a “sissy” after he pulled out of their scheduled bout with an injury, and then he apologized as soon as he calmed down and realized that an attack on Ortiz’s famous porn star girlfriend was neither cool nor necessary. But the HBBB isn’t going to let a little thing like that stop him from a) erroneously attributing the remark to Coleman, and b) being really immature about the whole thing. Why would he? This is Tito Ortiz we’re talking about here, who still insists that his ‘Chuck Liddell was an alcoholic’ comments were meant in the nicest way possible. He’s not one to let the truth get in the way of an opportunity to act like a total jerk.

(Former internet brawler vs. former NFL bench-sitter. Who ya got?)

UFC head honcho Dana White got down to business with reporters after today’s UFC 109 press conference and told them, among other things, that Kimbo Slice‘s next opponent will indeed be fellow TUF 10 contestant Matt Mitrione.  According to White, the fight is going down at UFC 113 in Montreal, and you know what that means, right?  The Miami Pound Machine is finally going international, playa!

From where I sit, which is on my front porch whittling away at a stick and keeping an eye on those no good neighborhood kids, it’s a matchup that makes sense.  It pits Slice against another foe who can throw them things, so to speak, and hopefully without any weird catchweight stuff to try and tip the scales in his favor.  It also lends him the appearance of fighting a credible UFC heavyweight, because at least Mitrione was on TV acting crazy quite a bit and is coming off an impressive KO win over Marcus Jones on the finale.  The fact that it was his first professional fight and now he gets Kimbo, well, what did you expect?  They aren’t feeding ‘Ferg to the wolves until they’re sure he’s served his purpose.

Speaking of guys who have served their purpose but continue to hang around, DW spoke about Tito Ortiz‘s claim that Chuck Liddell had recently licked alcoholism thanks to an intervention by White himself.  You’d better sit down for this one, because it sounds as if Tito might have been fudging the truth just a bit:

(Sorry, Chuck. If you had your own clothing line, maybe Dana would let you replace the Ultimate Fighter logo with your own brand name. But you don’t, and now you look like an asshole. Photo courtesy of twitter.com/spike_tv.)

The eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter kicks off on March 31st. Here’s some stuff we’ve learned about it lately…

— According to recent reports by FiveOuncesofPain and Bloody Elbow, the middleweight castmembers selected for the show include KOTC/Bodog vet Kyacey Uscola (18-15), Australian EliteXC vet Kyle Noke (16-4-1; won a unanimous decision over Uscola in September), Victor O’Donnell (8-1; seven wins by submission), Travis Lutter BJJ student Cleburn Walker (8-4), Kris McCray (5-0; all wins by first-round stoppage, three in under a minute), American Top Team product Charles Blanchard (7-2), Warren Thompson (5-0; all wins by stoppage), and Charlie Lynch (6-0; all wins by stoppage). The Boston Herald also reports that Greg Rebello (9-2) and Woody Weatherby (7-3) will be part of the cast.

— Chuck Liddell’s assistant coaches will be his longtime trainer John Hackleman, highly regarded boxing coach Howard Davis Jr., jiu-jitsu ace Scott Epstein, and Strikeforce middleweight champ Jake Shields. Tito Ortiz’s assistant coaches will be his longtime trainer Saul Soliz, WEC lightweight Rob McCullough, BJJ ringer Cleber Luciano, and, as promised, a public-relations specialist to be named later.

(Props: Fight Magazine)

I blame Brett Favre.  His success with the Minnesota Vikings this year must have every forty-something pro athlete thinking that they still have a few more good years in them.  Maybe some of them do.  But maybe some of them are going to get their brains turned into soup while they find out they’re wrong.

Lately Chuck Liddell is sounding like he won’t be happy until he becomes a cautionary tale.  Coming back to coach "The Ultimate Fighter" opposite Tito Ortiz makes good enough sense, and even the a third fight against The HBBB isn’t such a bad idea.  Liddell’s already beaten Ortiz twice with relative ease, so why not do it once more now that his own reflexes have slowed just enough to make it competitive?  But Liddell doesn’t want to stop there.  As he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

"I would like another fight and then I want another fight after," he said. "Hopefully, Dana’s happy with my two wins and I get a shot at a contender and then a shot at a title. That’s four fights and that’s about as far forward as I’ve thought."

No kidding. 

The eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter is set to kick off on March 31st, and Tito Ortiz doesn’t plan on sleepwalking through his second tour of coaching duty like some people we know. As we see on this recent Inside MMA appearance, Ortiz vows to train his guys hard — not just as fighters, but as businessmen:

So will Ortiz be giving seminars on personal branding in between the sparring sessions? ("Nobody leaves this gym until they give me three new t-shirt designs!") Will he make his guys watch old tapes of him on Celebrity Apprentice? As Bruce Buffer points out, Chuck Liddell will probably just show up and be Chuck, so maybe there is an advantage for the TUF 11 hopefuls to work under a master self-promoter like Ortiz. And maybe Tito’s personal attention to his team will make him the surprise good guy of the season…

At the beginning of every year there are always nuggets of conventional wisdom that seem absolutely unassailable in January and are laughable by December. This has always been the case, and not just in the world of MMA. For instance, in January of 1941 Pearl Harbor was a nice, calm, wonderfully exotic place for U.S. servicemen to be stationed. By December it was fodder for a horrible Michael Bay movie. Just goes to show that we never know as much as we think we do, though it doesn’t stop us from making definitive statements that will later seem totally ridiculous. Here now are some of the MMA truths that became lies in 2009…

Lyoto Machida is the most boring fighter in the UFC

At the start of 2009 Machida had finished just two of his last seven fights (one of them a TKO due to exhaustion), and had cemented his reputation as the fighter who was too "elusive" to be interesting. The UFC seemed intent on keeping him away from a title shot, but inked him for a showdown of undefeated Brazilians against Thiago Silva at UFC 94. That’s when "The Dragon" showed his fangs or claws or whatever it is that dragons have, and after knocking out Rashad Evans to claim the light heavyweight title in similarly ferocious fashion a few months later, we were forced to abandon our belief that Machida would forever be MMA’s version of Ambien. Too bad that our revised position didn’t fare much better…

Lyoto Machida is damn near unbeatable

The “Machida Era” was supposed to be a reign as dominant and prolific as that of middleweight champ Anderson Silva, which left many of us scratching our heads when “Shogun” Rua got the nod as his first challenger. Rua was 2-1 in the UFC at that point and he hadn’t beaten anyone even near their prime since leaving Pride. Despite coming in as a heavy underdog, Rua gave Machida all he could handle for five rounds and seemed to be on his way to a decision victory before the judges decided to discount leg kicks altogether. Machida survived with the belt, but not with his aura of invincibility.

MMA had more than its share of unforgettable moments this year — though many of them were unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. With 2009 drawing to a close, we’ve collected and ranked the year’s lowlights. Now let’s never speak of these things ever again…

#9: The "Hello Japan!" incident at DREAM.7 (3/8/09)

Fighting in the Saitama Super Arena must be an incredible experience. There you are, surrounded by 20,000 eerily quiet Japanese people who all seem to appreciate the intricacies of the sport. During his match against submission wizard Shinya Aoki at DREAM.7, American journeyman David Gardner tried to honor the occasion by waving to the crowd and saying "Hello Japan!" The problem was, Aoki had his back at the time, and as soon as Gardner’s hand went up, Aoki whipped his arm under Gardner’s neck and sunk in a rear-naked choke. "Oh my God it is so dumb," Bas Rutten lamented in the broadcast booth. Dumb is an understatement. Even "Wouldn’t Get Up From Butt Scoot" is a more respectable way to lose a fight. Way to represent the Red, White & Blue, Dave.

#8: Chuck Liddell dances with the stars (9/21/09-10/13/09)

When Dana White temporarily retired Chuck Liddell following his knockout loss to Mauricio Rua at UFC 97, few could have guessed that the Iceman’s next move would be an appearance on a dance-competition show that no red-blooded MMA fan in their right mind would ever watch. Liddell joined the ninth season of Dancing With the Stars with no formal dance training to speak of, and despite his best efforts he didn’t fool any of the judges, who called him everything from "graceless" to "gentle neanderthal." After four weeks of low scores and fruity costumes, Liddell was sent packing. On the bright side, Chuck expanded his fanbase on network television, outlasted fellow competitor Tom DeLay, and probably wound up banging his redheaded dance partner. Still, Tito Ortiz’s stint on Celebrity Apprentice now seems like the most badass thing in the world by comparison.

(Props: Spike.com)

Saturday night’s Spike Video Game Awards crowned UFC Undisputed 2009 as the year’s Best Individual Sports Game, beating out such notable titles as Fight Night Round 4 and Wii Sports Resort. And while that’s not a huge accomplishment considering that the UFC and Spike are in bed together and the whole broadcast was basically just one big advertisement, the ceremony did offer a first look at next year’s installment of Undisputed.

We begin with a montage of UFC stars telling us what being a fighter does and doesn’t require. To be honest, it sounds like a very demanding profession. Tito Ortiz tries so hard to sell his line, God bless him. Though there isn’t much actual game-footage to judge, some minor improvements are on display: Anderson Silva switches from southpaw to orthodox stance. Frank Mir is held against the fence. And of course, Kimbo Slice joins the cast, swinging some wide-ass punches at a faceless opponent. UFC Undisputed 2010 is slated to hit stores on May 25th — what improvements would you like to see in the updated version?

(The over/under on how long it will take Chuck to remind Tito of the two times he mercilesssly kicked his ass? Twelve seconds.)

There are a lot of similarities between how I felt when I heard that Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell would coach the next season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” and how I felt when I found out there was no Santa Claus. In both cases, I was initially flooded with overwhelming grief. How could this be, I wondered. What kind of world are we living in? Just when I thought there was something to believe in – be it the promise that Liddell would bow out gracefully at Dana White’s insistence, or the promise that a fat, seemingly immortal man would invade my home in order to give me a Nintendo for getting good grades – it gets snatched away from me.

Those were dark days. Both times I responded by masking my pain with hard drug use and shoplifting, the latter of which, if you haven’t tried it, is a total rush and much easier to get away with when you’re eight years old. But after I got out of rehab and got my life back together, I came to see the positives in each situation. I started seeing them for what they were, instead of what they weren’t. And you know what I found? There’s ample reason to be grateful for this turn of events.

With the Santa situation, I eventually realized that I didn’t have to be good all the time to get presents from some omniscient being; I just had to not get caught by my parents or other authority figures. That really freed up my social life. With the TUF 11 situation, there are also some silver linings worth taking note of…

("Tito, you ever notice how our chins start at the same height, and yet the top of your head extends three inches above mine? It’s kind of unsettling, actually.")

As much as we could all use a long break to recover from the atrocities of TUF 10, this goddamned show will be back before you know it. Spike TV has announced that the eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter will premiere on March 31st. As you’ve already heard, the coaches will be Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. Both UFC legends have previously held coaching gigs on TUF (Liddell on the first season, Ortiz on the third), both previously enjoyed long light-heavyweight title runs, and both have earned one victory in their last five attempts. Liddell can barely speak anymore, and every time Ortiz opens his mouth it’s like acid in our ears. Keep your expectations low, that’s all we’re saying.

The show’s cast will be made up of 16 middleweights; UFC vets Nick Thompson and Jason Lambert tried out for the show, though their spots in the cast haven’t been confirmed. It’ll be interesting to see how well the combination of Chuck and Tito draws compared to Kimbo Slice, who helped put 5.2 million asses in sofas on Saturday night. They’ll probably need at least one well-known personality in the cast if they want to avoid a massive ratings dropoff. Can Chad Ochocinco cut to 185?

(The beanie?  Tito says it’s to cover up his exposed brain matter. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

I was just sitting here working on a get well card for Tito Ortiz – you know, because of his cracked skull – and just as I was almost finished gluing the little tissue paper flowers onto the construction paper, I happened to see the list of medical suspensions handed down by the NSAC after UFC 106. The injured foot that Forrest Griffin mentioned in his post-fight interview? That’s on there. The smashed face that Luis Cane obviously suffered from a Little Nog left hand? That too, only it’s described as an “orbital fracture,” which is just the medical term for smashed face. But you know what’s not on there? Tito Ortiz’s cracked skull. Or his bulging discs. Or any injury worthy of a suspension.

(Scorecard image courtesy of BSurely. Click to enlarge.)

UFC 106′s Griffin/Ortiz rematch was a tricky one to judge, not just because the first two rounds were fairly even, but because it was contested both on the feet and on the ground — and as we’ve seen many times in the past, MMA judges can have vastly different opinions on the relative value of each aspect of a fight. In the end, Glenn Trowbridge saw it 29-28 for Tito Ortiz, while Marcos Rosales had it 29-28 for Griffin. The deciding vote was cast by a guy named Lester Griffin, who, from his angle, witnessed a one-sided shellacking. His 30-27 score for Forrest Griffin was later described as "crazy," "outrageous," and "insane" by Dana White. Lester was the only judge who scored round 1 for Forrest, and (along with Rosales) credited the second frame to Forrest as well, which is arguably an even more controversial choice.

So who is this guy? As jkd4200 pointed out, Lester Griffin is known to some as "Surf Dog," an original member of the full-contact stick-fighting collective Dog Brothers. Warning: What you’re about to see may shock you…

(If you ask us, that’s worth 50 grand right there. Photo courtesy of the Toronto Sun via Fightlinker.)

We’ve already passed along the headliners’ payouts from UFC 106, but now the complete salary list has been released by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, so we figured hey, why not share them with you people? The UFC paid out $1,301,000 in disclosed salaries and bonuses, with 57% of that total going to Forrest Griffin, Tito Ortiz, and Josh Koscheck. Check out the pay scale below, and keep in mind that the figures don’t include income from sponsorships, undisclosed "locker-room bonuses," and cuts of the pay-per-view, or deductions for taxes, insurance, licensing fees, and tanning salon memberships.

– Forrest Griffin: $250,000 (includes $150,000 win bonus)

– Tito Ortiz: $250,000

– Josh Koscheck: $246,000 (includes $53,000 win bonus, $70,000 Fight of the Night bonus, $70,000 Submission of the Night bonus)

– Antonio Rogerio Nogueira: $170,000 (includes $30,000 win bonus, $70,000 Knockout of the Night bonus)