(You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Photo courtesy of Fight!)

The UFC has been too busy dealing with their own shit to put much effort into screwing with Scott Coker lately [Ed. note: Remember when they were going to hold a rival fight card in Nashville? God, those were were the days.], but yes, there will be a counter-programming show on Spike this Saturday, which will compete with the Showtime broadcast of Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery. Titled "UFC’s Ultimate Fights," the two-and-a-half-hour compilation special kicks off at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and will feature some of Zuffa’s highlights from this year. On the docket…

Shane Carwin vs. Frank Mir, UFC 111: "The Engineer of Suffering" smashes Mir in round one, earning the Interim Heavyweight Championship and a Knockout of the Night bonus.

Leonard Garcia vs. “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung, Aldo vs. Faber: Greatest slugfest since Frye/Takayama. Inspired a best-selling t-shirt.

("Don’t worry about it, Rolles. Listen, why don’t you stick around Vegas for a while and learn the casino trade?" Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Following his ugly loss to Joey "The Mexecutioner" Beltran last Saturday at UFC 109, Rolles Gracie has reportedly been cut from the UFC, joining Mark Coleman, Phillipe Nover, Tim Hague, and Frank Trigg in the list of fighters who didn’t make it out of that show with their jobs intact.

It’s not a common occurrence for a new UFC fighter to immediately get cut if they lose their debut, but Rolles wasn’t just any prospect — his last name gave him a lot to live up to. Whether the pressure came from Dana White or the fighter’s humiliated uncle, there may have been concern about Rolles tarnishing the Gracies’ UFC legacy with any more godawful performances. As a 3-1 fighter, his story is by no means over. But he’ll need a little more seasoning before he makes a return to the bright lights and high pressure of MMA’s biggest stage.

(‘Is this about those stolen Octagon bracelets you found in my locker?  Because I was just holding those for Baroni.’ Photo courtesy of The Sun.)

It’s a tough time to be licking your wounds in the UFC. In a move that likely has every fighter to post an ‘L’ on his record at UFC 109 sweating bullets, the organization has reportedly released the “next Anderson Silva,” the “Godfather of ground-and-pound,” and the guy who was on the wrong end of the UFC’s fastest knockout (officially, anyway). Let’s take them one at a time, shall we?

- Mark Coleman (1-2 in his most recent UFC run) lost a one-sided contest of MMA elders to Randy Couture during a week that saw him run out of gas on the 215 freeway and get heckled by Tito Ortiz in his post-fight interview. Losing your job after all that makes your life start to sound like a cliché country music song. Please just tell us that his dog is okay.

(Funny, I don’t remember this position being taught in those Gracie Jiu-Jitsu instructional videos. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

Being a Gracie in MMA is a little like being a Kennedy in American politics – for better or worse, there are certain expectations. We realize Rolles Gracie had only his fourth professional fight at UFC 109 on Saturday night, so we didn’t expect him to burst on the scene like the second coming of Rickson. We did, however, expect him to beat a guy who took the bout on a few days’ notice, and whose most significant career win thus far was a knockout of Houston Alexander in January.

For the first few minutes things seemed to be going as planned. Then Rolles turned into an exhausted zombie, plodding flat-footed and open-mouthed around the Octagon before eventually giving up altogether and lying flat on his stomach as he waited for the referee to get bored enough to stop the bout.

A lot of trainers might try and soft-pedal their disappointment out of regard for the guy’s feelings after a fight like that. Renzo Gracie is not one of those trainers. Talking to GracieFighter.com, he called the performance “embarrassing,” adding:

(‘Dairy is rape, you son of a bitch!’ Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

You can file this under the category of ‘Things That Should Have Been Obvious Without Any Supporting Evidence,’ but the ratings numbers from Spike TV’s recent broadcasts of select preliminary fights from UFC pay-per-views prove that fight fans actually like seeing more fights for free. As MMA Payout points out, the UFC 109 prelims scored the highest rating yet, despite the lack of big names (sorry Justin Buchholz fans, but it’s true), with an average of 1.7 million viewers for the hour-long broadcast.

This is one of those ideas that, in retrospect, seems baffling for it to have taken this long to come to fruition. The UFC isn’t doing much with those undercard fights anyway – they can’t show all of them, and it’s not like a bunch of people are willing to pay extra online to see Guillard and Torres go three rounds – and, who knows, you might even convince a couple people who were flipping through the channels on a Saturday night to pony up and buy the pay-per-view. Or maybe they find themselves watching Joe Rogan do a thorough analysis of an attempt to clean up ice and they flip back to “Man vs. Wild” reruns. Either way, keep them coming and we’ll keep on watching.  Unless Bear Grylls goes somewhere really crazy, like the moon.  Come on, Man vs. Moon?  Forget about it.  There’s just no way we’re missing that.

In this talk with Fox News’s "Fight Game" it’s difficult to tell whether Phil Baroni is drunk or just on the downward slope of a career spent getting punched in the head.  It’s like that time you did a terrible karaoke rendition of "Little Red Corvette" before throwing up all over your girlfriend’s shoes.  There’s only one acceptable explanation, and it’s ‘I was drunk.’  Let’s hope the seven-dollar beers at the Mandalay Bay were to blame for how this interview turned out, and not ten years worth of abuse in the cage.   

The catalyst for this particular discussion is the UFC 109 victory by fellow New Yorker Matt Serra over one of Baroni’s Xtreme Couture training partners, Frank Trigg.  Apparently, gym loyalties are nothing compared to regional ones.  Plus, Serra goes into the Starbucks where Baroni’s mom works and gives her good tips, while all Trigg has ever done is make an awkward pass at her at Baroni’s wedding.  Yet another situation where ‘I was drunk’ is the only explanation that will suffice.   

After the jump, Eddie Bravo discusses his path to jiu-jitsu, and subtly overstates his own importance.

(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.

(Mark Coleman shows these young whippersnappers what a proper punch-face looks like.  Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine’s UFC 109 gallery.)

After a night of upsets and several plodding decisions at UFC 109, we turn to the Potato Index to tell us who’s up and who’s down.

Randy Couture +77
Yes, he dominated Mark Coleman. And yes, that would have been impressive ten years ago. But let’s be brutally honest here. The way Coleman looked last night, there aren’t many light heavyweights in the UFC who couldn’t have beaten him. It’s still a good win for Couture, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s ‘getting better with age.’ It just means Coleman isn’t.

Mark Coleman -91
Two months in Vegas working with a striking coach and he still can’t be bothered to move his head out of the way of a punch? DW is right; it’s time for “The Hammer” to hang it up. You don’t want to become another Ken Shamrock, Mark.

("Sorry I screwed up your pools, guys. LOL, no I’m not!" Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

Between Chael Sonnen‘s domination of Nate Marquardt and Paulo Thiago picking up the Sub of the Night over Mike Swick, UFC 109 threw some serious curveballs at us. Most people who participated in MMA FightPicker this week whiffed hard at those curveballs. But some of you dinged ‘em out the park. After the first official week of FightPicker play, we’d like to shout out the current point-leaders:

1) Ciarán Parnell: 350 PotatoChips
2) Andrew Palmer: 255 PotatoChips
3) OctoAbortion: 250 PotatoChips

Please, Ciarán, e-mail us at feedback@cagepotato.com and tell us how exactly you have a hundred-point lead on the next closest competitor, this early in the game. There might be a free t-shirt in it for you.

And now for the shameless gloating part of this post. After BG and BF went head-to-head in a Palooka Pool, I (BG) am proud to say my picks were on-point enough to tie for first-place (!!!), while dickface over there tied for fourth. The other winners of Palooka Pool 30 #173 were: nine one siccness, Steve Rowbotham, James Cowley, Michael Aitken, GSPs Swollen Elbow and Torn Groin and Tim Prothero. Take an e-bow, fellas. And I should mention that there was one genius in the pool named James Berberich who managed to get every question wrong. I feel sorry for your mother, bro.

For those who fell short with their UFC 109 picks, you just have to dust yourself off and get back on the horse. Here’s what’s going on in FightPicker this week…

(Serra’s recent training with striking coach Brad Ferro is already paying dividends. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

The UFC handed out $1,184,000 in disclosed salaries and bonuses for Saturday night’s show, with Randy Couture and Matt Serra‘s $200,000+ checks leading the pack. Check out the numbers below, and keep in mind that the figures don’t include additional income from sponsorships, undisclosed locker room bonuses, and cuts of the pay-per-view (Couture), or deductions for taxes, insurance, licensing fees, and monthly Life Alert payments (Coleman).

Randy Couture: $250,000 (no win bonus)
def. Mark Coleman: $60,000

Chael Sonnen: $124,000 (includes $32,000 win bonus, $60,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
def. Nate Marquardt: $105,000 (includes $60,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Paulo Thiago: $90,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus, $60,000 Submission of the Night bonus)
def. Mike Swick: $43,000

(Chael Sonnen explains that it’s the Ultimate *Fighting* Championship, not the Ultimate Mitt-Hitting, High-Altitude Training, Flipping a Tire Around, Screaming the Word "Yes" Championship. Props: MMA Fighting)

Following an expectation-exceeding night of action at UFC 109, the UFC handed out $60,000 pay-bumps to the following competitors:

Fight of the Night: Chael Sonnen and Nate Marquardt, for their bloody 15-minute grind, in which Sonnen survived a nasty choke attempt in the third round to secure the decision victory and earn a middleweight title shot.

Knockout of the Night: Matt Serra, for beating down Frank Trigg and proving that his hands are always dangerous, even if they’re on the end of very short arms.

Submission of the Night: Paulo Thiago, for putting Mike Swick to sleep with a D’Arce choke after knocking him to the mat in the second round of their fight. Thiago: 2, AKA: 1.

In other news…

(Couture vs. Coleman: this one’s for all the Geritol. Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

What do you get when you roust two old fighters from their rocking chairs and toss them into the cage for a fight that would have been so awesome ten years ago that your head would have exploded at the mere idea of it?  We have no idea, but we can’t wait to find out, just like we can’t wait to see what happens when Chael Sonnen finally has to stop talking crazy long enough to step in there with Nate Marquardt. 

UFC 109 is coming at you from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas tonight, beginning with some preliminary action on Spike TV at 9 pm EST.  Keep it locked right here for all the live results and insightful commentary you can stand, some of which will be completely obscured by unfortunate typos in the heat of the moment.  As long as you’re here, might as well introduce yourself in the comments section and begin making obscure film/music/pop culture references that are only funny to you.  Huzzah!

Hey you guys, Chris Tuchscherer is not fat…

(Couture vs. Coleman hype video by Genghis Con. Respect your elders, son.)

ATTENTION, POTATO NATION: It’s Friday afternoon, which means there’s still time to join MMA FightPicker and submit your predictions for tomorrow night’s UFC 109 card. For the thousands of players who have already signed up, we thank you, and we want you to know that we’ll be battling alongside you. In fact, BF and BG have both joined "Palooka Pool 30 #173" in an effort to determine a house champion. (Ed. note: The loser of this challenge will have to get a tattoo on his ass that says "Ben owns this. Not me, the other Ben.") So please join a FightPicker pool if you haven’t already, then take a look at how we’re answering the questions this week…

1. Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman at UFC 109: Who will win?
BF: Randy Couture. If Couture can only beat one type of fighter on the UFC roster, it’s the type that Coleman happens to be: old, a little bit slow, and too dependent on his wrestling ability.
BG: Randy Couture. Couture is the master of the gameplan. Coleman drives around Vegas for two days with his low-fuel light on because he’s always late to practice, and runs out of gas on the 215 even though he "put that little extra in there" to begin with. Difference in mental preparation, is what I’m saying.

2. Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman: Who will score the first takedown?
BF: Randy Couture. This is a little tougher to call, because sometimes the first takedown is determined in part by who’s gunning for takedowns right out of the gate, which should be Coleman. I still think Couture can stifle him until he’s ready to work for something out of the clinch, maybe early in the second round.
BG: Randy Couture. Ditto to all that. You might see these two guys try to prove a point by slugging for a couple rounds, but the Natural will eventually put Coleman on his back from the clinch.

3. Nate Marquardt vs. Chael Sonnen: Who will win?
BF: Nate Marquardt. Chael Sonnen says he doesn’t know what tools he has to beat Marquardt with. It might be the most sensible thing he’s said in weeks.
BG: Nate Marquardt. Okay, agreeing with you is starting to get very boring. I’d better start making some ridiculous picks to liven things up around here…

(‘Oh, all the free kittens are gone? That’s cool. You might want to take that ad out of the paper. Just, you know, so somebody like me doesn’t get his hopes up only to have them crushed and ground into a fine, depressing powder. But whatever.’)

If somehow you didn’t know who Chael Sonnen was before this week, chances are you do now.  He’s spent the run-up to his fight with Nate Marquardt at UFC 109 making inflammatory statements about almost everyone but his opponent.  I spoke to Sonnen for this SI.com feature on Saturday night’s bout, and as expected it turned out to be an interesting conversation.  Here, for your enjoyment, are selected outtakes from that talk.

Lately you’ve been making waves with your comments about Anderson Silva, saying he actually speaks perfect English but hates the media too much to talk to them. I guess I’m wondering, if it’s not a ploy to get attention, why go after Anderson now?

I didn’t really say anything about Anderson. All I said is what you said there, and that’s no big deal. Once I destroy Nate Marquardt in a few days I will set my sights on him and I will really let it go. Believe me, when I sink my teeth into this guy, those comments aren’t going to seem like anything. I was making a very fair observation. Anderson Silva speaks English. Any time the media comes around he has such disdain for you guys that it’s ‘se habla Espanol.’ He doesn’t have to talk to the media, and in fact he refuses to, and yet the media goes out and strokes his ego and puts him on the cover of everything. It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen.

(This can mean only one of two things: either the UFC is putting on a main event between two MMA dinosaurs, or it’s ‘makeover your dad’ week on "The Ellen Degeneres Show." Photo courtesy of Combat Lifesyle’s presser gallery.)

So who’s going to win the old-timer’s main event bout at UFC 109? Which undercard fighter is most likely to join the ranks of the unemployed after this weekend? Why is my Toyota making that weird sound? At least two of these important questions will be answered in this installment of Ben vs. Ben. Read on to find out which remains a mystery.

There’s some crazy talk that the winner of Randy Couture-Mark Coleman could be in the running for a title shot. Do you have any interest in seeing that? If not, what would you recommend as a next step for the winner and the loser?

BF: If by “in the running,” you mean well behind the winner of Rampage Jackson-Rashad Evans and somewhere just in front of the winner of Tito Ortiz-Chuck Liddell, then sure. In other words, the elderly survivor here is not completely out of the picture. At least not until he is forced to win at least one more fight, at which point he’ll be knocked right out of the picture once again.

You may not know this if you are not an American, or if you are a shut-in who reads nothing but MMA news and advice columns on the internet, but the Super Bowl is this Sunday.  It’s the one weekend where even non-football fans pretend to be interested in the game so they can gain access to a bunch of high-calorie snacks that they did not prepare.  Statistically, it’s also a great weekend to get a DUI, be involved in a domestic violence situation, or throw up.  Bonus points if you hit the trifecta.

But if you’re looking for expert predictions on Sunday’s game, don’t ask a bunch of MMA fighters.  Many of them can’t be bothered with pro sports that don’t involve sanctioned face-punching, and others are Brazilian or British or some other damn thing, which means they are barely even aware of the existence of the NFL.  Still, watching Demian Maia do his best to understand the situation is charming in a way.  Watching Frank Trigg pretend that he’s co-hosting the pre-game show definitely is not.  

Instead of trying to figure out who will win, you should probably focus your energy on deciding what to do this Sunday while your UFC 109 hangover is wearing off.  To that end, our friends at Holy Taco have devised a helpful flowchart for you to consult.  And if you need help getting pumped for some serious binge eating, the boys at Greg Jackson’s gym have got you covered after the jump.

Things to love about Steve Cofield‘s interview with Mark Coleman, in no particular order:

– The way Coleman describes a car accident in which he skidded through the intersection and went up on "the medium."

– That he says he’s been living in the Palace Station of late and dreads leaving because of all the stuff he has to pack up, making him the first person in history to put off a move from the Palace Station to the Manadalay Bay.

– That when Coleman finishes telling his story about running out of gas on the 215 freeway and Cofield asks if he’s ever had something similar happen before he responds, "Well, hell yeah."

(Rolles Gracie vs. Sam Holloway, 9/20/07)

A quick look at the four fresh talents who will be hunting for success in the Eight-Sided Shape on Saturday night…

PHIL DAVIS (LHW)
Experience: 4-0 record (3 wins by first-round stoppage) in various regional leagues. Last competed in June ’09, choking out David Baggett at a UCFC event in Pittsburgh.
Will be fighting: Brian Stann (8-2, 2-1 UFC)
Lowdown: They call him "Mr. Wonderful." A four-time All-American and 2008 Division I National Wrestling Champion for Penn State, Davis began his MMA education with Greg Jackson before moving to San Diego, where he now works out with Brandon Vera at the Alliance Training Center. His fighting mentality was instilled in him from an early age, as he had to scrap with his two older brothers for two available seats at their family’s dinner table. By the age of 12, Davis was “eating dinner almost every night.” [Ed. note: Wow, that's kind of fucked up.] Davis thinks it’s pretty cool that Brian Boitano gets roses thrown at him after his performances, and would like that to happen for him someday.

RONNYS TORRES (LW)
Experience: 14-1 record (12 wins by stoppage), with all fights taking place in Brazilian leagues including Shooto Brazil and Jungle Fight.
Will be fighting: Melvin Guillard (22-8-1 with 1 no-contest, 5-4 UFC)
Lowdown: Due to a series of injuries, Torres has been out of action since September 2008, when he scored a first-round submission over Eliene Silva at Jungle Fight 11; Torres was originally supposed to face Guillard last April.  The Nova Uniao prospect with the oddly-pluralized first name has had to cut over 30 pounds to make the lightweight limit. He plans on making his cage-entrance to gospel music. "It is step by step that I will arrive to the top," Torres says. "I only ask that God illuminates me."

If you’re waiting until the last minute to make your FightPicker picks for UFC 109, either because you’re the kind of sad sack who always waits until the last minute with everything, or simply because you’d rather compete in a pool against such sad sacks, you should see this first.  It’s a clip from the UFC’s most recent "Countdown" show, in which we see Paulo Thiago at work in his BOPE unit.  Like the nice man in the beret says at the 0:50 mark, "When society needs help, they call police.  When police needs help, they call BOPE."  In other words, BOPE takes no shit off nobody.  Just look at their crazy logo if you don’t believe us.

The awesomeness of all this was not lost on Mike Swick, who wrote on his Twitter: "I have to admit, his segment was badass!  I’m in the gym with blondie and Fitch and he’s rapelling out of Helos with an M4.  Damn you Thiago!"

Just something to think about if you’re caught between picking Swick or Thiago and can’t decide.  One of those fighters has been in the kind of critical situations that "hardens a man’s spirit," while the other has to hang out with this freaking guy every day.  Actually, that’s still a tough call. 

(For those of you who hate reading, watch me, Steve Cofield, and Dave Farra run through our betting picks for Raw Vegas.)

The UFC’s Seniors Tour kicks into high gear this weekend with the Randy Couture-Mark Coleman main event at UFC 109, which means the gamblers among us have even more variables to take into account than usual. We may not have to worry about Octagon jitters from these guys, but we do have to ask ourselves other important questions, like whose joints are more viable these days? Who starts more sentences with, ‘Back in my day…’? Who will reek worse of Icy Hot at fight time? Perhaps most importantly, who needs that win bonus more?

Some things for you to ponder as we look at current betting lines from across the internet, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Randy Couture (-396) vs. Mark Coleman (+350)
Nate Marquardt (-350) vs. Chael Sonnen (+325)
Mike Swick (-220) vs. Paulo Thiago (+202)
Matt Serra (-130) vs. Frank Trigg (+125)
Dan Miller (+325) vs. Demian Maia (-330)

The breakdown…

(Before and after: There are 16 differences and two incredibly thick eyebrows in the above photos. Can you spot them all?)

First off, we’d like to send some hearty back-slaps to everybody who helped beta-test MMA FightPicker last week. We think we’ve caught all the major bugs, and the game is pretty damn healthy at this point. So without further ado, allow us to announce the official launch of MMA FightPicker. If you head over to fightpicker.cagepotato.com right now you’ll see a new set of pools offering action on this Saturday’s UFC 109 show. Place your predictions on the outcome of Couture vs. Coleman, the likelihood of Demian Maia picking up another Submission of the Night bonus, and 11 other questions, and try to claw your way up the leaderboard, which currently includes a player named "OctoAbortion" [Ed. note: Nice.] and Ben Fowlkes’s wife but not Ben Fowlkes himself. After you make your selections, the real work begins — please tell every fight fan in your life about MMA Fightpicker, either through Facebook or through the ol’ word-of-mouth. We want to make this thing gigantic, but we won’t be able to do it without your help. Thanks so much for your continued support, Potato Nation. Now get pickin’!

Once again: If you’re seeing an "Access Denied" page while trying to log into the game, please log out of your CagePotato account then log back in. Clearing your cookies may help as well. If none of that works, e-mail us at feedback@cagepotato.com.

(Props: GenghisConMMA via BloodyElbow)

Of Robbie Lawler‘s 18 wins, 15 have come via KO/TKO; of Melvin Manhoef‘s 24 wins, 23 have come via KO/TKO. We may not agree with Lawler’s strategy going into tomorrow night’s fight, but sometimes you just have to say "fuck it, this is going to be a slugfest, and it’s going to be awesome." Genghis Con‘s preview compilation for the middleweight battle captures that spirit perfectly. Lawler vs. Manhoef is going to end with somebody staring at the ceiling, the owner of a brand-new concussion. The only questions are: Who will it be, and how long will it last?

After the jump: Wes Sims makes it very clear why he’s such an enormous underdog against Bobby Lashley, and Chael Sonnen takes a break from his homophobic Republican heel routine to speak candidly about his upcoming UFC 109 matchup with Nate Marquardt, which will very likely produce the UFC’s next middleweight title challenger.

(Looking good, Matty! Photo courtesy of Tokyo Five.)

Long Island’s Matt Serra may love to crack jokes, but he wants you to know that it’s not all he’s doing as his fight with Frank Trigg at UFC 109 grows closer. In our exclusive interview, Serra gives us his thoughts on his opponent, his career in the UFC, and why he spends so much time in the barbership.

This fight comes at a time when you and Frank Trigg are both coming off losses and both in your mid-thirties. Where do you think this is going to leave you if you win or if you lose?

I don’t really know, and I don’t care. That’s up to whoever does those rankings or whatever. Technically, I’m coming off two losses. Do I feel like that? No, because I don’t even feel I lost my last fight. They offered me Frank Trigg, and I don’t look at as my chance to move up or anything like that. I see this as an entertaining fight and an exciting fight, on paper, and a good match-up. That’s basically how I look at it. I had the belt, and if my career leads back there then great. If it doesn’t, I’m looking for exciting fights.

Since you are coming off two losses, even though, as you said, the fight with Matt Hughes could have gone either way, do you worry about your job security if you lose this fight?

(Three out of four former PRIDE announcers agree: Jerry Millen is an opportunistic douchebag.)

By Cagepotato.com contributor Mike Russell

Nearly two years have passed since the collapse of PRIDE Fighting Championships and although the future of the organization most assumed to be dead is somewhat foggy, one fact that has been made crystal clear is that a growing number of ex-employees of the beloved Japanese promotion despise the show’s former American producer, Jerry Millen.

If you recall, Bas Rutten was the first to open up about Millen’s lack of professionalism and knowledge of mixed martial arts as well as his abusive treatment of former commentators Stephen Quadros and Mauro Ranallo. Here’s the quote from Bas’ original post from the Sherdog forums:

Ranallo, who like Rutten worked for the promotion prior to Millen being hired, quit PRIDE in 2006 citing his differences with Millen as his primary reason for leaving:

Now Ranallo’s former broadcast partner Frank Trigg has entered the fray to add his account of Millen’s evil ways in an exclusive and candid interview with Cagepotato.com.

(‘I’ve always wanted to do this!’)

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

After spending all of 2009 making a strong case for himself as the UFC’s top middleweight contender, Nate Marquardt finds himself facing Chael Sonnen at UFC 109 while Vitor Belfort leapfrogs him for the title shot against Anderson Silva.  In this exclusive interview Marquardt opens up about his dealings with the UFC, his thoughts on fighting Sonnen, and the bout with Dan Henderson that never materialized.

CagePotato.com: In your last fight you took on Demian Maia at UFC 102 and knocked him out in 21 seconds. I imagine you probably couldn’t be happier with that result?

Nate Marquardt: Totally (laughs). There wasn’t much more I could have asked for.

You’ve spoken before about training to do specifically what you ended up doing. Did the fight go the way you thought it would or were you surprised by the quickness?

I don’t think you could ever plan for a fight to end that quickly. When I gameplan I look for specific stuff that’s going to work on the guy that I’m comfortable doing. Other than that you can have a gameplan but it can’t be your only thing. You have to be a smart fighter and when something you weren’t training for happens you have to be able to change your game in the middle of the fight.

We’ve been waiting for the UFC to tell us what the importance of the Randy Couture-Mark Coleman main event at UFC 109 really is.  Finally, the wait is over.  To the untrained eye it might just look like two MMA dinosaurs going at it because neither of them has anything better to do, but that’s far too simplistic.  Really, this fight is happening now because it didn’t happen back when both guys had hair and you could still become a UFC champ by beating up fat dudes who wore shirts into the Octagon.  But beyond that, Dana White explains that Couture wants to win because he’s a competitor and winning is better than losing, as a rule, but "as far as livelihood and career, Mark Coleman needs this win a lot worse than Randy Couture does."

Translation?  Couture has a little money saved, as well as some other sources of income, but Coleman is broke as a joke and needs this paycheck bad.  Cue the close-up of Coleman looking old and haggard, juxtapose it with clips from his dominant, extremely well-muscled youth, and then close with DW suggesting that Coleman’s fourteen-year career has all been preamble to this fight, intoning, "if he can go in there and beat Randy Couture, wow, holy [expletive], Mark Coleman’s back."

And scene.  That’s how you cut a promo, people.  And, just in case you’re curious, this is how you deal with a frustrating loss…

(Koscheck’s hair used to be straight before that punch. Nah, just messin’ with you guys. Photo courtesy of Josh Hedges/UFC)

Due to an undisclosed injury, Josh Koscheck has pulled out of his scheduled rematch with Paulo Thiago at UFC 109 (February 6th, Las Vegas). Koscheck confirmed the news on Twitter, writing "I will be good to go back to training in a couple weeks I hope!!…It’s all good & I’ll get my body rested & back to the top real soon." Koscheck and Thiago previously met at UFC 95 in February, where Thiago pulled off a shock upset via first-round KO. Since then, the Brazilian supercop has dropped a decision to Jon Fitch and won a decision over Jacob Volkmann.

Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long for a replacement opponent. According to MMA Fighting, Koscheck’s teammate Mike Swick has already stepped up to face Thiago. Swick is coming off his unanimous decision loss to Dan Hardy, which was his first defeat at welterweight. This will be the third American Kickboxing Academy fighter that Thiago will throw down with. So, the AKA guys know him well, but he knows them too, and they know he knows, dig? UFC 109′s lineup is after the jump. Let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of another curse…

(No Don, there is not going to be free tequila at this film festival. And no, we are not shitting you about that.)

There are two types of old school MMA legends: the ones who will gladly tell you how much better the sport and its athletes are now than they were ten years ago, and the ones who will insist that the fighters of today are all a bunch of gutless pussies. Don Frye is in the latter camp. He frequently says that he doesn’t watch the UFC or even follow the sport in general with much interest, and yet he also seems certain that the kids these days are a bunch of punks who spend more time styling their hair than beating people up. It’s sort of like how your grandfather can manage to hate gays and people of other ethnicities despite not personally knowing anyone from either demographic. Some gifts just come with age.

But now the UFC may have finally put together a fight that interests Frye. Talking with The Rumble this week, “The Predator” admitted that even he can’t pass up the chance to see Mark Coleman and Randy Couture go at it in the main event of UFC 109:

"This might be the first UFC I buy and actually watch in about 10 years, you know?" Frye said. "These two guys, it’s going to be one hell of a barnburner. They’re going to show these new guys how to fight."

Due to a fractured ankle, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira has been forced to withdraw from his co-headlining bout against Brandon Vera at UFC 109 (February 6, Las Vegas). Shortly after the news broke, Vera posted (then quickly removed) the following message on his Twitter page: "just found out I’m firing Jon Bones Jones on March 21st in Denver Colorado. hope u heard it here first!!!!"

We can only assume that Vera meant "fighting Jon Bones Jones," and that he won’t be flying out to Denver to terminate Jones from his contract, Clooney-style. And the March 21st date may also be a misprint: MMA Junkie and MMA Weekly both report that the yet-unsigned fight is actually slated for March 31st, and will headline an Ultimate Fight Night card just four days after UFC 111 (March 27, Newark). The 3/31 Fight Night show will lead directly into the premiere of TUF 11.

With Vera losing a close decision to Randy Couture at UFC 105, and Jones coming off his unfortunate DQ loss against Matt Hamill earlier this month at the TUF 10 Finale, both men will come into this fight with a lot to prove. Jones certainly has the wrestling advantage — as well as the spinning-elbow advantage — but will Vera’s rangy kickboxing cause problems for young Bones?