(Well, clearly Machida is controlling where the post-fight celebrations are taking place.)

Following the UFC 104 title scrap between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua, we were fairly shocked when the scores came back unanimously for Machida. Wasn’t Shogun the aggressor during the majority of the fight? Didn’t he land more strikes? When it came time for the judges to explain themselves, we learned that leg kicks don’t end fights, so you might as well not count them at all. But at least one judge from that night is having a crisis of conscience. From Yahoo! Sports (via Fightlinker):

Besides the addition of TV monitors, Hamilton is also in favor of tweaking the 10-point-must scoring system:

So, two things…

(Sonnen and Okami: Bros before foes.)

By CagePotato.com contributor Mike Russell

When Chael Sonnen was asked after beating Yushin Okami at UFC 104 whether or not he was upset that his fight was relegated to the undercard, his reply was:

“We got men and women at war right now – they got real problems – so me complaining about where I come out on the card would be very arrogant. But with that said, there are guys that I’m opening the show for that would never fight after me had Okami not been my dance partner. They call him Yushin “Thunder” Okami, I call him Yushin “Anchor” Okami; he pulls people down, whereas if you get a fight with me – if you get me on the docket, I’m going to pull you up. I’m going to get exposure and attention and people to care about the fight and “Anchor” Okami’s got the opposite effect. So was it annoying? Yes.”

Two months later the Team Quest middleweight apparently had a change of heart, and invited his former opponent to stay with him for a month at his home in Oregon to help kick off the training camp for his UFC 109 showdown with Nate Marquardt on February 6.

“I’m actually on my way to practice right now and Yushin is sitting next to me in the car.”

It’s the week of UFC 106, but coming off a trip across the pond for last weekend’s show, Dana White doesn’t feel like he has enough material for a new video blog.  Fortunately for him, his personal videographer never uploaded the fight night footage from UFC 104 in Los Angeles, so why not just put that on the internet and call it good?  Things are going smoothly at first.  DW presses the flesh with some celebrities, talks to some fighters in the locker rooms, passes by ace interviewer and hopelessly unfashionable friend of the Potato Ariel Helwani (is that a flannel shirt? is it 1994?) at the 5:15 mark.  But when he watches refereee Steve Mazzagatti’s oddly-timed stoppage in the Cain Velasquez-Ben Rothwell fight, that’s when White loses his cool just a bit.

"Mazzagatti will fuck up any fight," White says directly into the camera.  "The worst referee in the history of fighting.  Period.  I don’t care if there was a fight back in the old days, okay, the Stone Age.  Mazzagatti is the worst referee ever.  The guy has no business watching mixed martial arts, let alone refereeing it."

White then visited both Velasquez and Rothwell to make sure they both knew what a terrible referee Mazzagatti was, and after that he presumably called Mazzagatti’s children to let them know that their father is a failure.  That part must have been edited out.

(Well, at least you’re both winners in *our* book. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

The "immediate rematch" between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua just got a lot less immediate. Following the controversial outcome of their title fight at UFC 104, Dana White wanted to set up a re-do as soon as possible, hoping for UFC 108 on January 2nd. Unfortunately, Yahoo! is reporting that Machida needs surgery on one of his hands, and won’t be ready to return in two months. As of now, it’s unclear when Machida vs. Rua II will actually happen.

The postponement is just the latest in a unbelievably cursed stretch for the UFC that’s seen a number of headlining fights go down due to acting aspirations, injuries, and illnesses. Speaking of which, don’t expect to see Anderson Silva defend his middleweight belt against Vitor Belfort any time soon either. According to Silva’s manager Ed Soares, the Spider is still recovering from elbow surgery, and won’t be ready to compete in time for UFC 108. As with Machida, Silva’s return date is uncertain. Said Soares: "At the end of the day, it’s going to be a great fight [against Belfort]. Like I said before, I don’t think he deserves a title shot, but that’s over with now. It is what it is."

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle’s UFC 104 post-fight party set.)

If you were listening to a very special Tuesday edition of Ben vs. Ben this week, you heard Ben Goldstein suggest a heavyweight sight gag in the form of 5’11 Pat Barry taking on 6’11 Stefan Struve.  Both fighters were victorious at UFC 104, and they are the shortest and the tallest UFC heavyweights respectively.  It turns out that Barry actually thinks that’s a pretty good idea, and he’s asking for the UFC to set that one up.  In a chat with FightHype.com, Barry said he wants Struve next because “it would be a David and Goliath…I would like to fight him next and then work my way up to Kongo.”

Clearly this is a man who knows how to pick his style match-ups.  Struve obviously has some submissions, but he’s no takedown the artist.  The weakest part of Barry’s arsenal right now is undoubtedly his ground game.  The more fights he can get with guys willing to stand and trade with him, the more time he has to shore up his takedown defense.  In fact, there’s probably no one more critical of Barry’s ground skills than himself right now.  In a bit of self-deprecation that borders on self-loathing, Barry described his takedown defense as “very suspicious” and said that one thing he’s shown in his three UFC fights thus far is that he’s “very suspect on the ground.”

Not that we’d disagree with that assessment, but damn.  How about a little optimism, Pat?  You don’t hear Bob Sapp running around and talking about how he has the cardio of an eighty-year-old emphysema patient.

Cagepotato.com Interviews Dana White – Watch more Funny Videos

The last time Cage Potato sent one of our wily female correspondents to interview a UFC star, it very nearly ended in a sexual assault.  But undaunted, we decided to try again when we heard Dana White would be at the recent “Ultimate Fighter” tryouts, and fortunately for our enthusiastic young interviewer DW is no “Rampage” Jackson.  In this exclusive video interview the UFC prez calls accusations that the UFC gave Kimbo Slice preferential treatment a “crock of shit,” saying that Kimbo had his manager present at his TUF fight, which he claims isn’t necessarily all that special, but no entourage and certainly no phone calls home.  White blames it all on Roy Nelson, but “Big Country isn’t the only one singing that song.  As for his remarks about TUF not being over till it’s over, well, I think we all know what that means: Poppa Slice is going to get to bang again, eventually.

All this, plus commentary on UFC 104, Junie Browning’s departure from the UFC, and what prompted Jackson’s supposed retirement from the UFC in this exclusive video interview.  Enjoy.

(Cain Velasquez works hard for his money, so you better treat him right.  Seriously, you better.  Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine’s UFC 104 gallery.)

The official reported salary figures for UFC 104 are in, and as usual they don’t necessarily reflect a final accounting of what each fighter took home, but they provide us with a good idea.  The event itself pulled 14,892 fans into the Staples Center (though one look at Dana White’s video blogs tells us that they weren’t all paying customers) for a net gate of $1,762,549.  As for how that was distributed among the fighters they came to see, well, check it out:

Lyoto Machida: $200,000 (no win bonus)
Mauricio "Shogun" Rua: $155,000
Cain Velasquez: $70,000 (includes $35,000 win bonus)
Ben Rothwell: $50,000
Gleison Tibau: $38,000 (includes $19,000 win bonus)
Josh Neer: $14,000
Joe Stevenson: $94,000 (includes $47,000 win bonus)
Spencer Fisher: $26,000
Anthony Johnson: $30,0000 (includes $15,000 win bonus)
Yoshiyuki Yoshida: $12,000
Ryan Bader: $30,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus)
Eric Schafer: $13,000
Pat Barry: $14,000 (includes $7,000 win bonus)
Antoni Hardonk: $16,000
Chael Sonnen: $54,000 (includes $27,000 win bonus)
Yushin Okami: $18,000
Jorge Rivera: $36,000 (includes $18,000 win bonus)
Rob Kimmons: $9,000
Kyle Kingsbury: $16,000 (includes $8,000 win bonus)
Razak Al-Hassan: $3,000
Stefan Struve: $14,000 (includes $7,000 win bonus)
Chase Gormley: $10,000

Some thoughts and addendums…
 

("…I, on the other hand, look like a very intelligent and compassionate person." Photo via joblo.com.)

Most longtime fans have gone through some variation of the following experience: You spend months trying to convince your co-workers that MMA is the baddest sport ever invented, and they need to give it a chance. So they come over to your place one night to watch a UFC event, and what they see instead is sloppy brawling, boring ground-hugging, and inexplicable judges’ decisions. "It’s usually a lot better than this," you say desperately as they slowly file out the door. But it’s too late; they’re gone, they won’t be back, and you’ll be eating most of your lunches alone from now on. It’s a humiliating feeling. Now imagine if those co-workers were Oscar-nominated actor Liam Neeson and The Hangover‘s Bradley Cooper, and you’ll have an idea of what Quinton "Rampage" Jackson had to endure on Saturday. Sour grape warning begins now:

(Pat Barry vs. Dan Evensen @ UFC 92. Somehow Barry skates by on those useless leg kicks.)

Everyone’s favorite maverick judge, Cecil Peoples, supposedly explained the rationale behind his scoring of the Machida/Rua fight at UFC 104 in a talk with CageReport.net.  He begins with the usual defense, pointing out that he has a different perspective on the fight than the fans do, and then launches into an explanation of why Machida’s strikes counted for more than Rua’s:

“Mauricio Rua was being aggressive but it wasn’t effective aggressiveness which is what we as the judges look for when scoring a fight. The way I saw it, Lyoto was landing the more cleaner and damaging strikes throughout the fight – if you take a look at the judging criteria clean strikes are valued more-so than the quantity of strikes landed. Although Rua threw a lot of low kicks they were not as damaging as Lyotos diverse attack in the earlier rounds which is why I scored the first three rounds for Machida. You have to keep in mind we always the favour the fighter who is trying to finish the fight, and leg kicks certainly don’t do that."

Of course, sometimes leg kicks do end fights.  It just doesn’t happen all that often.  And even when leg kicks don’t serve as the knockout blow, they still damn well hurt and frequently end up making the difference in a fight.

Cage Potato reader B.J. sent us this screenshot of ESPN.com shortly after the main event at UFC 104 concluded.  Either they didn’t wait to hear the official decision before writing their headline, or else their overpowering sense of justice simply would not allow them to believe it at first.  I admit that I have some sympathy, because I almost made the same mistake myself when I was writing our liveblog.

In the light of the events of Saturday night, some of you have asked us if we’re going to apologize to "Shogun" Rua for insisting that he had no chance against Lyoto Machida.  Our answer to that is, if we apologized every time we made fight predictions that didn’t pan out, where would we find the time to do anything else, like making fun of fighters’ tattoo choices or ogling ring girls?  Okay, so Rua surprised us.  He very nearly surprised the oddsmakers, too.  He came in with a great gameplan, he stuck to it, and in fair universe he’d be the champ right now.  But as that unanimous decision and the fame of Tila Tequila have both proved, ours is not a fair universe at all.   That’s why the gods of pro fighting invented rematches.

(Dana White discusses the impending Machida/Rua rematch, and UFC 104′s other fighters weigh-in on last night’s controversial decision. Also, Steve Mazzagatti shouldn’t be allowed to even *watch* MMA. Props to MMA Fanhouse.) 

- Don’t ask us how two of the three judges who presided over last night’s main event gave the first three rounds to the champion. Just take comfort in the fact that there will be an immediate rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua. Dana White announced the news at yesterday’s post-fight press conference, saying "They won’t make the same mistakes next time. Each one will try to win decisively." For the record, DW thought Shogun won the fight.

- Anthony Johnson was basically fined $10,000 per pound for missing weight. After tipping the scales at 176 on Friday, Rumble scored a ferocious TKO victory over Yoshiyuki Yoshida in just 39 seconds. But because he came in heavy, he was ineligible for UFC 104′s $60,000 Knockout of the Night bonus, which instead went to Pat Barry. (Barry picked up a second $60,000 award for Fight of the Night; his opponent Antoni Hardonk got a check for the same amount, while beanpole submission artist Stefan Struve was awarded the Submission of the Night bonus for his triangle choke of Chase Gormley.) Johnson was already giving up 20% of his purse. When asked about the botched weight-cut, AJ had this to say:

(Let’s all take one last look at Shogun and then call it a day. Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

So you missed Dana White by ten minutes when he was giving away tickets at the mall, and now you’re desperate for UFC 104 results coupled with pithy commentary?  We’ve got you covered.  From Lyoto Machida and "Shogun" Rua squaring off to determine which Brazilian guy with poor English skills is on the top of the 205-pound heap, to Ben Rothwell and Cain Velasquez‘s heavyweight tilt and maybe even the Yushin Okami/Chael Sonnen bout that the UFC is intent on protecting us from, we’ll be rolling right along and typing about what we see.  Won’t you join us and accuse one another of being gay, newbs, or both in the comments section?

The action gets underway at 6 pm PST/9 pm EST.  Remember to hit refresh often.

(The suit may make your opponent feel like a bum, but we’ll see who’s laughing when the sponsorship money gets tallied up. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

With our technical problems now solved (for the moment), we bring you the UFC 104 edition of Ben vs. Ben in its entirety.  There will be no further interruptions.  We hope.

Realistically, what chance do you give Shogun Rua to pull off a major upset at UFC 104 this Saturday?  If you had to bet on him, what odds would it take before it seemed like a good idea?

BF: Here’s the problem with Shogun – when he was at his best in Pride’s twilight years, he was beating people thanks largely to his aggression and constant pressure.  He was like a Wanderlei Silva who threw straighter punches and didn’t have a flash chin.  But against Machida, being hyper-aggressive on the feet just means getting knocked out faster.  If you aren’t technically superior (and Rua isn’t), the only option left is to put him on his back and try to wear him out on the mat, which isn’t exactly Rua’s forte.  No two ways about it, he’s getting knocked out.  Whether it happens early or late-ish is up to him.

(Clever, Kimbo…)

The MMA Halloween Costume Contest that we announced last week is slowly picking up entries, but we want more, More, MOAR. You have until next Thursday to throw together a makeshift MMA-themed costume and e-mail a photo of yourself to feedback@cagepotato.com. The winner will receive an extra-special prize, though we haven’t quite decided what it’ll be yet. Good luck trying to come up with a costume idea that’s as amazing as this.

Also: If you weren’t one of the 3,300 people who got free UFC 104 tickets from Dana White, be sure to swing by CagePotato.com tomorrow night for our thrilling liveblog of the show. The Spike TV preliminary card broadcast begins at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT, and the pay-per-view broadcast starts an hour later.

(Props: MMA Fanhouse)

Following yesterday’s UFC 104 press conference, AllElbows.com‘s E. Casey Leydon got up in Dana White‘s face, and the conversation inevitably turned to Kimbo Slice. Despite multiple reports from TUF 10 castmembers that Kimbo had a large "posse" in attendance for his fight — yes, that’s the word they keep using — Dana claims that only Slice’s manager was there, while his wife and kids were definitely not. "I’ve never seen such crybabies in my whole life as the heavyweights [on TUF 10]," Dana says. Here’s another example: Roy Nelson told USA Today that Kimbo had his own media room and could make phone calls. Dana’s response:

After the jump: A longer DW interview with Ariel Helwani, where Dana discusses Cain Velasquez‘s potential as a future champ, selling two Brazilian main-eventers, the necessity of teammates fighting each other, an update on the Dan Henderson situation, those Showtime knuckleheads, Bernard Hopkins’s criticism of MMA as gay porno, why "Big" John McCarthy isn’t reffing at UFC 104, and Chuck Liddell’s future in the sport.

The 10/20 edition of the Danavlog is full of bad omens. After getting a bullshit ticket from some douchebag traffic cop, DW and his crew stop by Cold Stone Creamery — not Pinkberry — and Dana winds up paying the price with a tummy ache. And the Cold Stone workers didn’t even sing to him! Can this day get any worse? WHAT HAS HE DONE TO OFFEND YOU, GOD?

As if he doesn’t have enough problems, Dana has an Esquire writer following him around for a profile. So obviously he’s going to try out the bomb bag again. It fails so incredibly hard. Seriously, listen to that barely audible pop at the 3:13 mark. "Something’s bursting," Mike says. Hilarious. Then, it’s time to play video games and air hockey at Dave & Buster’s. Are you getting all this, Esquire guy?

Finally, around the 5:40 mark, Cain Velasquez and Mauricio Rua show up, and it isn’t long before Dana bomb-bags them. Suck it, Bellator — this is how you harness the power of the Internet to promote fighters. Also, future Celebrity Rehab star Chuck Liddell shows up drunk and belligerent, and lifts Dana off the ground as he’s trying to give out some UFC 104 tickets. All in a day’s work, I guess, if you can legitimately call it that.

If the name Razak Al-Hassan means anything to you at all as an MMA fan, there can only be one reason.  He’s the guy who, when locked up in a tight armbar against Steve Cantwell at last December’s UFC Fight For The Troops, decided to go ahead and let his arm get popped on national TV by an enthusiastic sadist.  It was grotesque, it was sort of dumb, and it was a learning experience.  Maybe.  At least, you’d think that after suffering an injury that sidelined him for several months Al-Hassan would have a healthy appreciation for the necessity of the tapout.  Talking with the Las Vegas Sun (via Cage Writer) that does not appear to be the case:

Although the injury kept him out of training for four months, Al-Hassan says that he wouldn’t have done a thing differently looking back on the fight.

“At this level, with this kind of opportunity, I want to make sure that I do everything in my power to win,” he said. “I’m pretty infamous for the injury now, but I’d rather go out like that, than to not be remembered at all.  At least fans know that I’m going to bring it and I’ll go out on my shield any day of the week.”

— Shogun‘s trainer thinks that the fact that Rua has never been knocked out will somehow protect him from getting knocked out by Machida.

(Weird, that’s the face I make when I even consider drinking urine.)

While you can usually find odds on the full fight card for a UFC event – even the dark matches that some ticketholders don’t bother to show up for – most online bookies seem to be trimming back their activity for UFC 104.  Is that a statement on the undercard itself?  An indicator that they’ve realized the futility of trying to lay odds on guys who most people know almost nothing about?  A freak occurrence?  We have no idea.  All it means to us is that we’ll have to scratch Stefan Struve over Chase Gormley from our parlay.  Bummer.

The best lines on the internet come courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Lyoto Machida (-405) vs. Shogun Rua (+353)
Cain Velasquez (-290) vs. Ben Rothwell (+280)
Joe Stevenson (-225) vs. Spencer Fisher (+205)
Anthony Johnson (-300) vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida (+300)
Ryan Bader (-412) vs. Eric Schafer (+355)
Antoni Hardonk (-115) vs. Pat Barry (+115)
Yushin Okami (-215) vs. Chael Sonnen (+200)

The breakdown…

Well, they’re back.  UFC president Dana White may say that he’s done doing video blogs from time to time, but who’s he kidding, the siren’s song of talking into a camera is impossible to resist for very long.  In this edition, DW travels to Mesquite, Nevada to watch his cousin lose a fight (though we don’t get to see exactly how he loses, which is weird).  After that he heads to Los Angeles to give away some UFC 104 tickets with the help of Twitter, which, to hear Dana tell it, is the most magical invention of the last fifty years.  Don’t get us wrong, we use it too, but does he realize that it’s basically just Facebook status updates without any of the other perks?

After the jump, a preview of the UFC 104 "Countdown" show, including Lyoto Machida‘s hero’s welcome in Brazil after winning the light heavyweight strap.  What do you want to bet that Rashad Evans did not get the same response when he won it?

Cain Velasquez is a man of few words.  Like, very few.  Maybe no more than fifteen or twenty throughout this entire six-minute video blog.  Actually, that’s not completely true.  He does a phone interview at the end and it really jacks up his word count, but those of us who have done writing jobs where we get paid by the word know that trick.  You just go back through and add ‘that’ or ‘just’ to every sentence, and before you know it you made yourself an extra thirty bucks. 

Really, all we learn about Cain here is that AKA is a non-stop ball-bust-a-thon when Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch around, he likes to train while listening to the Mexican radio station, and he has an infant daughter who he appears to love.  Looks like you’re going to have to do the talking on this one, Ben Rothwell…

Could UFC 103‘s altruistic experiment of airing some of the undercard bouts on basic cable before the main card be a recurring tradition? According to a press release distributed by Spike TV this afternoon, the UFC will be doing another live prelim show on Spike directly before the UFC 104 pay-per-view on October 24th. Guaranteed for the one-hour commercial-free broadcast will be…

Ryan Bader (9-0, 2-0 UFC) vs. Eric Schafer (11-3-2, 3-2-0 UFC): TUF 8 winner Ryan Bader, who most recently won a unanimous decision over Carmelo Marrero at Condit vs. Kampmann, will try to take another step up the light-heavyweight ladder against tough ground specialist Eric Schafer, who’s coming off back-to-back first-round stoppages of Houston Alexander and Antonio Mendes. Seems like a perfect next step in Bader’s development, as well as an opportunity for Schafer to prove that he’s a legitimate contender.

Antoni Hardonk (8-5, 4-3 UFC) vs. Pat Barry (4-1, 1-1 UFC): It might be win-or-go-home time for these two leg-kick specialists, who will both be trying to bounce back from losses. Hardonk most recently suffered a second-round TKO against Cheick Kongo at UFC 97, while Barry was quickly choked out by Tim Hague at UFC 98. It’s too bad that Barry didn’t take the Hague loss as a sign that he should drop to light-heavy, because Hardonk’s reach advantage is going to be frightening.

Other preliminary bouts could air during the broadcast, if time allows. UFC 104′s compelete lineup is after the jump.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

After two consecutive knockouts over Thiago Silva and Rashad Evans, Dana White can finally start referring to Lyoto Machida as fighter who "loves to stand up and bang." Which is a good thing, because it might be hard to sell UFC 104‘s main event otherwise: Two Brazilians, one of them an elusive karate practitioner, the other a former PRIDE champ on the decline who got his title shot out of convenience and who will probably lose this fight. In the above preview, Joe Rogan makes sure to remind us of Shogun’s glory days, and Dana White reminds us that Rua most recently knocked out Chuck Liddell ["Chuck Liddell, Chuck Liddell"]. Still, Lyoto is impossible to hit and incredibly efficient with his attacks. Can Rua be a legitimate threat to his title, or will he be dominated and demoralized like everyone else the Dragon has faced in the Octagon? Also, Cain Velasquez gets props for the way he rebounded from abuse in his last fight against Cheick Kongo, but Ben Rothwell guarantees that Mr. Brown Pride has never been hit as hard as he’s gonna hit him. I mean, just look at those clips of Rothwell beating the crap out of Andrei Arlovski. (Rothwell won that fight, right?)

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

Chuck Liddell was saved from the chopping block this week on Dancing With the Stars — sorry, Kathy — which means that he’ll have to deal with the show’s awful contestants for at least one more round. The UFC is trying to make lemonade out of bullshit by filming a video blog in which Chuck takes us on a tour of the trailers behind the set, asking the quasi-celebs who they’re picking for UFC 104‘s main event of Lyoto Machida vs. Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. As you can imagine, the brilliant analysis comes fast and furiously, courtesy of the painfully thin and gawky Aaron Carter, snowboarding champ Louie Vito, Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin, and Dallas Cowboys legend Michael Irvin, who’s both attracted and repelled by the sport, and is convinced that Chuck is going to fight the winner. "I’m comin’ back for one of ‘um sooner or later," Chuck says. Then Tom Delay walks by and is like "Kimbo Slice would kick your ass, you washed-up redneck." Seriously. I can’t believe they kept that part in.

After the jump: Michael Bisping and Dan Hardy spend a day pimping UFC 105 (November 14th, Manchester) in relative obscurity.

(Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

After giving tender consideration to nearly 200 of your entries, we’ve selected the two winners of Friday’s caption contest, who will both be receiving DVD copies of How Bruce Lee Changed the Word, courtesy of A&E Home Entertainment. But first some honorable mentions:

Fedor vs. Bas: And this was the last time Rua touched Lyoto.

Rockologist: "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like piss. If you piss into a cup, it becomes the cup. You piss into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. Piss into my mouth, it becomes my breakfast."

Ceeph: Lyoto Machida seen here, thanking Shogun for his impending KO of the Night bonus.

NealTaflinger: The always-evasive Machida slips Rua’s eye contact and counters with a handshake.

El Famous Burrito: "Your lifeline seems to terminate right around midnight, October the 24th. Also, your beloved bicycle is at The Alamo, in the basement."

hotsaucemonster: "Thank God I’m fighting someone Brazilian, what say after I’m done removing your nuts through your mouth we eat steak, wear speedos and pronounce our Rs with H sounds?"

Akilleez: "It looks benign to me, but just to be safe I am going to freeze it off."

Horror Fighter: "Look down there! It’s the midget from the last caption contest!"

And now the winners…

(Props: xkingkongx)

The UFC has confirmed ten fights for UFC 104 (October 24th, Los Angeles), making the Machida vs. Rua headliner official, as well as adding a main card bout between Sean Sherk and Gleison Tibau. Sherk is coming off a disappointing unanimous decision loss against Frank Edgar at UFC 98, while Tibau most recently lost a controversial split-decision against Melvin Guillard at the TUF 9 finale in June.

Unfortunately, Sherk vs. Tibau comes at the expense of two other fights that are probably more worthy of main card status. Currently slated for the undercard are TUF 8 light-heavyweight winner Ryan Bader vs. Eric Schafer (who are both riding two-fight win streaks in the Octagon) and Yushin Okami vs. Chael Sonnen. Yes, Okami is on the undercard once again, despite his current three-fight streak against Jason MacDonald, Evan Tanner, and Dean Lister. My God this disrespect. You know, UFC, if you’re not careful, you’re gonna lose him.

The updated UFC 104 lineup is as follows…

(Brown Pride vs. White Beef.)

With the Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin rumor now widely confirmed, multiple sources are reporting that Cain Velasquez will now take on new UFC acquisition Ben Rothwell at UFC 104. Unfortunately, this means Chase Gormley has been left without an opponent. On the other hand, who cares about Chase Gormley? The battle between the young juggernaut (Velasquez) and the big, hardy veteran (Rothwell) may determine the UFC’s next heavyweight contender after Carwin. Who ya got?

In other UFC news…

— That rumor about Gilbert Yvel being picked up by the UFC is probably bullshit.

("Hey Lesnar, I heard you like guns. WELL HOW DO YOU LIKE THESE?!?" Photo courtesy of milwaukeemma.com)

Why let Strikeforce have all the fun in picking over Affliction’s carcass? According to Sherdog, the heavyweight scrap between Ben Rothwell and Chase Gormley that was supposed to be featured on the undercard of "Trilogy" will now happen at UFC 104 (October 24th, Los Angeles). Rothwell has won 14 of his last 15 fights, with notable wins over Roy Nelson, Krzysztof Soszynski (twice), and Ricco Rodriguez, and a sole loss to Andrei Arlovski at Affliction: Banned. Gormley is a promising 6-0 heavyweight from Bodyshop Fitness Team who holds wins over Jon Murphy and Eric Pele.

But that could just be the beginning. InsideFights.com hears that a whopping twenty Affliction fighter contracts have been snapped up by the UFC. The names haven’t been released yet — maybe they’ll be revealed at Friday’s "crazy" press conference — but considering guys like Vitor Belfort, Jorge Santiago, Takanori Gomi, and Paul Daley are still floating in the breeze, Christmas may be coming early for Dana & Co. We’d include Fedor Emelianenko on that list, but as long as M-1 keeps denying that their #1 asset is heading to the Octagon, there’s no reason to keep playing with your emotions.

(Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

According to Ryan Bader’s Twitter page, the TUF 8 light-heavyweight winner will return to action at UFC 104 (October 24th, Los Angeles) against "Eric Shaufer." (We’re assuming that means Eric Schafer, the UFC vet who’s coming off back-to-back first-round stoppages of Houston Alexander and Antonio Mendes.) If the announcement is accurate, it would be a surprisingly quick comeback for Bader, who wrecked his knee during his three-round domination of Carmelo Marrero in April; early predictions said he’d be out of action for up to a year. UFC 104 will be headlined by the light-heavyweight title fight between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua, and may also feature the heavyweight contenders match between Shane Carwin and Cain Velasquez.