(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.

(Props: CageWriter)

Now that the dust has settled on his second unsuccessful run at a UFC lightweight title, it’s time for Kenny Florian to look to the future and learn from the mistakes of his past. In this interview with ProMMARadio, Florian blames his long layoff for his submission loss to BJ Penn at UFC 101, and hopes to get back in cage right away against a tough opponent. Some highlights:

On ring rust: "I didn’t think it would be a factor, just because I stayed busy throughout, I was training hard…but it definitely was. Being almost nine months away from the cage, it hurt me. With my striking, it’s always an issue…I just found that I couldn’t get my range and my timing going during the fight, and felt I wasn’t effective there. I just felt uncomfortable with my striking."

On how he was doing until he lost: "I figured that I definitely won the second and third [rounds]. The first, he caught me with a good shot, but I was kind of off-balance so it looked like I got knocked down…Going into the fourth, obviously, with where he ended up with the takedown on top, I knew he was obviously going to win that round and my goal was trying to survive and just try to make it to the fifth where I’d be able to push and try to squeeze out the win…the commissioner came over to me and said that a couple of the judges had me winning the first couple rounds, I was two to one, or one of the judges had me all three, I don’t know exactly what happened, but he told me that a couple of the judges may have had me winning."

(Props: zmmajunky)

As ‘zombiekilla’ mentioned in the comments section of the last post, UFC 101‘s real Fight of the Night took place in the crowd, when a group of meatheaded douchebags got a little too caught up in the action and began warring amongst themselves. As security intervened, a female meatheaded douchebag swung her purse at some other broad, then went after her with furious Brock Lesnar-style hammerfists. Everyone in the vicinity roared their approval and watched it play out, paying no attention to the Aaron Riley/Shane Nelson scrap that was going on inside the Octagon.

And so, we must amend Dana White’s beloved four corners analogy: If people are playing soccer on one corner, basketball on the second corner, street hockey on the third corner, a bunch of drunk Philadelphians are throwing haymakers on the fourth corner, and a professional mixed martial arts contest is taking place in the center of the street, people will watch the meatheads brawl every time. That’s how we know this is the sport of the future.

Unrelated, but important: Forrest Griffin‘s camp confirmed that the fighter suffered a broken jaw and partial hearing loss during his whuppin’ at the hands of Anderson Silva, and sprinted out of the cage in order to seek immediate medical attention. Well, we’re sorry to hear that, but Quinton Jackson still thinks you’re a ‘LOSER!!’

MMA Weekly confirmed with Griffin’s management that Griffin’s jaw was not injured, but "emotionally he is definitely not dealing well with the loss."

(Props: 0fficialbjpenn)

In a night filled with some less-than-thrilling matchups, at least Anderson Silva and BJ Penn remembered that they were in Philly — and for that, they were rewarded handsomely. Silva earned a $60,000 Knockout of the Night bonus for cleaning Forrest Griffin‘s clock in the first round of their light-heavyweight feature at UFC 101, while Penn scored a Submission of the Night bonus in honor of his fourth-round rear-naked-choke of Kenny Florian. Somewhat suprisingly, additional $60,000 Fight of the Night checks went to Silva and Griffin for their match, even though it wasn’t much of a fight. UFC 101 drew a sold-out crowd of 17,411 spectators for a live gate of $3.55 million, a combat sports record for Pennsylvania. Reportedly, almost 11,000 of those fans were already in their seats by the time the first preliminary match started.

During the post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White announced that the UFC was looking to host an event at Boston’s legendary Fenway Park by next summer; the Massachusetts state senate passed a bill to regulate MMA last month. White also said that the UFC could add another event to its schedule in October, in addition to UFC 104 (October 24th, Los Angeles). Since Fedor Emelianenko is slated to make his Strikeforce debut sometime in October, the counter-programming motives are fairly obvious here. Game on…

(Look, deadlines are deadlines, Anderson. You think you’re the only employee of the Curitiba Times with a fight this weekend? Half the guys in the sales department have fights this weekend. And for God’s sake, buy a real tape recorder. / Photo courtesy of LasVegasSun.com.)

Weigh-ins for UFC 101: Declaration went down moments ago at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, with all fighters coming in at or below their contracted limits. No real surprises, expect for when Amir Sadollah cruised in at a somewhat worrisome 166.5 pounds; very unexpected for a guy who’s last fight was at middleweight. At the other end of the spectrum, Tamdan McCrory showed up to the weigh-ins in a full sweat-suit, and had to towel off before stepping on the scale, but still hit his mark on the button. The numbers are below. Swing by tomorrow night as we liveblog the pay-per-view card beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.

Main Card
BJ Penn (155) vs. Kenny Florian (155)
Anderson Silva (205) vs. Forrest Griffin (205)
Kendall Grove (185.5) vs. Ricardo Almeida (185)
Josh Neer (155.5) vs. Kurt Pellegrino (154.5)
Amir Sadollah (166.5) vs. Johny Hendricks (171)

Preliminary Card
Shane Nelson (156) vs. Aaron Riley (154)
Tamdan McCrory (170) vs. John Howard (169.5)
Alessio Sakara (185.5) vs. Thales Leites (185)
Dan Cramer (169.5) vs. Matt Riddle (170)
George Roop (154) vs. George Sotiropoulos (155)
Danillo Villefort (170.25) vs. Jesse Lennox (171)

(Get ready for hell, Philly. Stay just about as hellish as usual, Pittsburgh.)

You know what time it is.  With UFC 101 set to invade Philadelphia on Saturday night, we debate the possibilities for an upset, whether the lackluster undercard presents the perfect opportunity to go make ourselves some hoagies, and so much more.

Who has the best chance of scoring an upset this weekend: Kenny Florian, Forrest Griffin, or Brian Bowles?
 
BG: I have to go with Griffin, because at least you can point to his size as one clear advantage he has over Anderson Silva. Plus, he’s a tough S.O.B. who’s not afraid to take a punch — which means he’ll probably do better against the Spider than Patrick Cote and Thales Leites, who seemed to be psyched out before they even stepped into the cage. I like what Forrest has been saying about "touching" Silva, and focusing on just making contact. I’m not saying he’ll be successful, but at least he’ll give Silva a fight, and that’s a good start. You can’t shock the world if you don’t put the ball into play.

(Johny Hendricks vs. Richard Gamble, 3/15/08)

Saturday night will see the Octagon debuts of three welterweights who joined up with the WEC just before the league folded its 170-pound division. Now the UFC will give these fighters a chance to prove themselves — slotting one of them in a high-profile main card fight against TUF 7 winner Amir Sadollah. Get to know UFC 101’s trio of newbies below…

JOHNY HENDRICKS (WW)
Experience: 5-0 record (3 wins by TKO, 1 by submission). His last two fights were in the WEC, where he defeated Justin Haskins and Alex Serdyukov.
Will be facing: Amir Sadollah (1-0 MMA/UFC)??
Lowdown: While wrestling at Oklahoma State University, Hendricks won two NCAA Division I titles at 165-pounds, and was a three-time Big 12 Conference champion. After graduating in 2007, he racked up three MMA wins in local Oklahoma shows before joining the WEC. But despite his fearsome wrestling credentials, he doesn’t plan on laying on top of Sadollah for three rounds. As he said in this UFC.com profile: “You can’t afford to play in Amir’s guard at any point. A lot of wrestlers have tried that with Amir and have ended up failing badly…I actually now like to stand and strike. I’ve tried to finish all my fights while standing on my feet. If I take a guy down and he wants to get back up, I’ll just let them…I want to provide entertaining fights, not wrestling matches. If I’m not active on top, I’ll back out and stand up. The happiness of the fans is what pays the bills and I’m aware of that.” Hendricks has recently been training at Striking Unlimited in Las Vegas.

The easy storyline for the main event of UFC 101 is as follows: BJ Penn is the spoiled champion who has enjoyed success due to prodigious fighting ability, and not necessarily through hard work, while Kenny Florian is the hungry, focused, scrappy challenger who works harder than Penn outside of the cage and is mentally tougher inside of it. But the Prodigy we’ve seen in the training camp for this fight isn’t the lazy, complacent one we know and love. The fact that BJ has brought in Marv Marinovich as his strength and conditioning coach, and has moved out of the insular world of Hilo to train with an impressively stacked camp in California, suggests that Penn wants to try new things in the wake of his one-sided loss to Georges St. Pierre at UFC 94. For a fighter so far along in his career, it’s an inspiring and somewhat unexpected attitude. And if Penn is taking this fight as seriously as Florian, it’s a bad sign for the challenger.

Later in the above video preview, Anderson Silva calls Robert Drysdale a "fool" and an "idiot" for suggesting that Forrest Griffin will submit him during their light-heavyweight feature. Spike’s "Countdown to UFC 101" special premieres tonight at 11 p.m. ET/PT. After the jump, Diego Sanchez discusses his imminent title shot and who he’d like to see prevail in the Penn/Florian match.

"I’m gonna beat him skill for skill, round by round, I’m gonna take him apart, and I may finish him in the first round." So says the fiercely confident Kenny Florian in the above trailer for UFC 101 (August 8th, Philly). Florian clearly sees his lightweight title fight against BJ Penn as the moment his entire career has been leading up to. An oddly clean-shaven Joe Rogan tells us that Penn has been training harder than ever , and says "I think we’re going to see a new, invigorated BJ Penn, and that’s a bad sign for everybody in the lightweight division."

Later, Dana White proclaims that "the Anderson Silva/Forrest Griffin fight has all the makings to be fight of the year," and Joe suggests that Griffin take a page from the Dan Henderson playbook: "[Forrest] is one of the biggest guys in the light-heavyweight division. If he gets Anderson to the ground, and he can hold onto him and beat on him for three rounds, it is conceivable that Forrest can walk away with a decision." Wow, you hear that Forrest? It’s conceivable! Onward to victory!

(Props: MMA Fanhouse)

Coming off a painful loss against Rashad Evans in December, you’d think that Forrest Griffin would want a tune-up match before stepping into a another dangerous fight. Yet Griffin sees his meeting with Anderson Silva at UFC 101 (August 8th, Philadelphia) as "an opportunity to really test yourself, just as a person, as a man, as anything." Griffin’s gameplan will rely on some pace-pushing and "intelligent aggression." As for his chances against the Spider, Forrest is reliably humble: "Am I the guy to beat Anderson Silva? Why not? Somebody’s gotta do it. Might as well be me."

After the jump: BJ Penn discusses coming back after his own devastating loss, and says he should have poisoned Kenny Florian‘s food when he had the chance.

(No, B.J.  That does not count as working on your clinch game.)

There are any number of concerns one might have about B.J. Penn’s readiness when he shows up to fight.  That he might be suffering from ‘overtraining’ is typically not one of them.  And yet, without a hint of irony, that’s what Penn says he is effectively guarding against for his UFC lightweight title fight with Kenny Florian at UFC 101.  As he tells AroundHawaii.com (via MMA Mania):

“The training’s going great for UFC 101. I’m making sure not to overtrain. And, you know we started a couple months ago, and I’m training with Marv Marinovich, and we’ll be spending our last 8 weeks in California with a bunch of good training partners, with Marv Marinovich there, Jason Parillo will be there, Rudy Valentino’s gonna fly up, so I feel VERY good about this training camp.”

Well, that’s a load off our minds.  In a related story, Thiago Alves assured reporters that he wouldn’t come in underweight for his fight with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 100, while Mark Coleman vowed not to be too young and vivacious for his bout with Stephan Bonnar.

(MMA Fanhouse)

In this installment of the Tito Ortiz Talks About All the Cool Stuff He’s Got Planned, None of Which Will Actually Happen Show, the Huntington Beach Bad Boy discusses the fight league he’s not starting with Strikeforce called Punishment Fighting Championship, and his not close-to-finalized fight deal with Strikeforce. Honestly, we hate posting these Tito-related non-stories, but maybe some of you are interested in his continuing plunge into irrelevance. Anybody?

After the jump: A flashy little trailer for UFC 101, and a new career-spanning Dan Henderson highlight reel from Machinemen.

In his latest video blogging effort B.J. Penn proudly shows off his 166-pound frame more than a month out from his lightweight title defense against Kenny Florian at UFC 101.  Penn looks pretty lean at that weight and even has the suggestion of abs, but he certainly doesn’t look a man who has cut every ounce of expendable weight off his frame.  This makes me wonder a) what made him think he could give up so much size and strength to GSP, who is at this very moment preparing to fight a 200-pound Thiago Alves? and b) is fighting at 155 pounds enough to ensure that Penn will show up in shape this summer?

(Kenny Florian, who may be taking over for Barack Obama in 2013, plugs UFC 101 on Good Day Philadelphia.)

MMA Junkie passes along the news that UFC 101 (August 8th, Philadelphia) has been given the official title of "Declaration" — get it, geniuses? — and points out that the main card bouts (as well as five prelim fights) are now finalized. Here’s what we’re dealing with:

MAIN CARD
B.J. Penn vs. Kenny Florian (for lightweight championship)
Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin (LHW)
Amir Sadollah vs. Johny Hendricks (WW)
Kendall Grove vs. Ricardo Almeida (MW)
Josh Neer vs. Kurt Pellegrino (LW)

(Props: MMA Fanhouse)

With Dana slowly transitioning out of his web presence, the UFC is getting into an event-specific rotation for their video blogs. Last time we had Chuck Liddell letting us see the days leading up to his retirement, and now we’ve got Matt Serra giving us an impromptu episode of UFC Cribs. (Livin’ lawge, Matty!) Later, Serra stops by the gym, mainly just to mock Ray "The Hoarder" Longo. Many laughs are had, many balls are busted.

B.J. Penn shows us how he’s preparing to whip Kenny Florian’s text message-denying ass this summer – in some dude’s garage.  Okay, it doesn’t look all that impressive, but you should know that Marv Marinovich is the father of former USC quarterback and NFL washout Todd Marinovich, who just happened to be profiled in Esquire magazine last month (see, we read stuff).  In the article Marv is portrayed as a revolutionary in the field of sports training and also as a complete nutjob who tried to make his son into a football cyborg and wound up at least partially helping to make him into a drug addict.  Now he’s got his hands on B.J. Penn.  Look out, world.

(Pain don’t hurt. Image courtesy of udothedishes.com.)

Like James Irvin and Patrick Cote before him, Forrest Griffin is pretty sure he knows what Anderson Silva’s past opponents have been doing wrong, and doesn’t plan on making the same mistakes when he takes on the Spider in August. As Griffin told MMA Mania:

I spoke to Kenny Florian last week for this SportsIllustrated.com article on the effects of the dreaded “Octagon jitters,” and naturally our conversation turned to his upcoming UFC lightweight title fight against B.J. Penn at UFC 101.  When I asked about Penn’s claims that Florian had warned him of potential “greasing” by Georges St. Pierre before their UFC 94 superfight, Florian did his best to downplay the dust-up.

“I’m not sure what that was.  Maybe it was a miscommunication, after what I had said about Roger Huerta.  Maybe it was head games on his part.  Maybe he genuinely believes that.  I don’t really know.  But I have a lot of respect for B.J.  I think he’s a proud champion.  I think he worked hard for that fight against Georges, and he just wasn’t able to deliver.  That can be hard to deal with.  I think that loss hurt him.”

(Forrest Griffin’s July 2008 interview with StrictlyFighting is suddenly relevant again. Skip to the 0:30 mark for Griffin’s thoughts on the Spider moving up to light-heavy.)

Both MMA Junkie and MMA Bay are independently reporting that UFC 101 (August 8th, Philadelphia) will host a semi-superfight between middleweight champ Anderson Silva and former light-heavyweight champ Forrest Griffin. It would be Silva’s first match at 205 pounds since his 61-second knockout of James Irvin last July — which also happened to be the last time Anderson was entertaining. If this rumor holds up, it would mean the following:

(‘Okay, quit messing around now.  Where’s the rest of my paycheck?’)

Give the UFC credit, they can spot a nascent, kind-of-but-not-really grudge match in the making a mile away.  MMA Madness reports that Matt Hamill will meet Brandon Vera at UFC 101 in Philadelphia to see who has the chops to make it in the light heavyweight division and who will end up on the receiving end of an assholish celebration.

As you probably recall, Hamill head-kicked Vera’s friend and training partner, Mark Munoz, into a briefly frightening unconscious state, then paraded around the Octagon like he’d just hit a walk-off homerun in the last World Series game ever.  Hamill would later explain the celebration by pointing out that a) he’s deaf, so vibrations from an excited crowd get him really pumped, and b) he doesn’t head kick that many people, and this one was pretty sweet.

(Time to "kill that master"? Photos courtesy of GrapplingStore and MMASplatter.)

According to a new posting on BJPenn.com, the UFC lightweight champ will defend his lightweight title against #1 contender Kenny Florian in the headlining bout of UFC 101 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 8th. The report states that Florian has already signed the bout agreement, and Penn’s own signing was imminent. It will be the first time the UFC’s lightweight title has been contested in 15 months, since BJ Penn defeated Sean Sherk by TKO at UFC 84 last May. Florian has won his last six fights (five by stoppage), but hasn’t competed since his first-round submission of Joe Stevenson at UFC 91 in November.

If the Penn/Florian report is accurate, it would mean that two of the UFC’s five championship titles could potentially be on the line in the month of August. As we previously reported, a middleweight title scrap between Anderson Silva the winner of Anderson Silva/Thales Leites [Ed. note: Ha! Sorry, Thales!] and Demian Maia may be added to UFC 102 (August 29th; Portland, Ore.).

(Dana White does the hard sell on TUF 9.  Props: Cage Writer)

– Forrest Griffin and Thiago Silva are expected to get back in action against one another at the still officially unannounced UFC 101 event in August that will feature a Randy Couture/Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira main event.  With both Griffin and Silva coming off losses this is one of those wonderful situations where somebody has to turn things around while someone else has to drop two straight and then reevaluate his life and career.  All signs point to the event taking place in Portland, OR. – also known as the town with best strip clubs in America.  Count us in.

– Since he apparently thinks he’s a boxer now, I suppose it’s only fitting that Gray Maynard inked a sponsorship deal with Everlast MMA.  Maynard’s pounded-flat mug is even going to be the focal point for an ad campaign, so I guess it pays to abandon all your wrestling training and beat guys up on the feet.  Does it pay to make a decision-machine like Maynard your poster boy?  Everlast will find out, possibly the hard way.

– Sean Sherk thinks he’s in line for the next lightweight title shot if he beats Frankie Edgar at UFC 98, and he expects that the belt will still be around B.J. Penn’s waist after he faces Kenny Florian.  Drawing on his experience fighting both men, Sherk says Penn “has pretty much every advantage” in a bout with Florian.  That might be whitewashing Penn’s conditioning issues a little too much, but what do you expect from Sherk, who just assumes everybody is out there doing caveman training every day.

(Mickey Rourke prepares for his next role.)

The Natural and Minotauro — two legendary heavyweight champions whose last performances had fans wondering if their days of competing at the sport’s highest level were over. But later this year, one of them will triumph once again. MMA Weekly breaks it: