(Stay still and let me hit you, you Kalib Starnes wannabe fight avoiding wuss.)

We haven’t seen or heard much from BJ Penn leading up to his UFC 118 rematch with Frankie Edgar, which either means he’s been humbled a bit from the loss or he’s too busy training to talk to the media.

Well, the former UFC lightweight champion jumped back into the limelight with a bang this week, quashing the notion that losing to Edgar knocked him down a peg or two.

In a promo video for the August 28 show, Penn said that Edgar’s corner helped persuade the judges that the New Jersey native won the fight and that Frankie did nothing but run from him for 25 minutes during their fight in Abu Dhabi at UFC 112 back in April.

"He’s running around. Just step up and fight. And then I see his whole team run and pick him up. All your boys put you on their shoulders and dance you around in front of the judges and try to steal the victory. I’m not gonna be a part of that," Penn said. Whatever, man. That’s the man you are. You’re the "ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPION?" Okay. I got you. It’s a joke."

(Photo courtesy of MMA Junkie)

By Elias Cepeda for CagePotato

After an impressive seven-year career competing around the Northwest and as a member of the Nevada Lions in the IFL, John Gunderson (22-7) finally got his ticket to the big show when we was invited to fight Rafaello Oliveira as a late replacement at UFC 108. Though he lost that match by decision, his performance was enough to earn him a second shot — and that’s when things got tricky. A scheduled meeting with Paul Taylor fell apart when Taylor withdrew from the match not once but twice. Luckily, Canadian newcomer Mark Holst has agreed to replace Taylor at the TUF 11 Finale on June 19th. Gunderson took some time to update us on his upcoming redemption-match, and his quest to find success in the UFC while juggling his other two jobs — personal trainer and soccer dad.

CAGEPOTATO.COM: After taking your first UFC fight on short notice you had a full camp and were set to fight Paul Taylor in April at UFC 112 but then the bout didn’t happen because he pulled out. What happened there?

JOHN GUNDERSON: I got the fight with Paul Taylor in Abu Dhabi and flew all the way out there, weighed in and apparently that night Taylor started having problems. He had migraines and got real sick and wasn’t able to compete. The UFC turned around right away and put me on the finale card against Taylor again. But about three or four weeks ago I found out that Paul Taylor pulled out again and now I’m fighting Mark Holst. They didn’t tell me why and I didn’t even ask.

Let’s back up for a second and talk about what it was like to have gone through an entire camp, then go all the way to Abu Dhabi and have your opponent not compete. When did you find out and how disruptive was it?

Oh yeah, I’ve never gone through anything like that. The day of the fight we actually got on the bus to take us from the hotel to the event center which was literally five minutes away. So I was an hour, hour and a half out from fighting and that’s when they told us. You can imagine, go all the way out to Abu Dhabi after losing my first UFC fight. In the back of your head you are thinking that if you don’t win this one, that’s it. So leaving the hotel, I was ready. I felt like it was taken from me but the UFC gave me another opportunity right away so…

Wait, you were on the bus and that’s when you found out? Did you have a period of denial at first, like did you think there was still some chance that you would get to fight?

(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.

    
      
(Keep your eyes on the grand prize. Images courtesy of 62Gear.com)

After two weeks of furious photoshopping, we have nominated 15 artists as finalists for our Six Deuce MMA poster design contest. Please spend the rest of your afternoon considering the posters after the jump, then vote for your favorite in the poll over on the right. (It’s a little ways down the page, under the "Most Recent Comments" box and the UFC Fan Expo ad.) Get your votes in by Sunday night at midnight ET. We’ll announce the winners on Monday. Many thanks to everybody who entered, and please show Six Deuce some love for making this happen!

(Our last hope? Photo courtesy of Fight! Magazine.)

By CagePotato contributor Matt Kaplan

Chael Sonnen is many things: top UFC middleweight contender, hopeful Oregon state rep, realtor, quote generator. An Anderson Silva fan, though, he is not. After thrashing Nate Marquardt at UFC 109, Sonnen is next in line to take on what he sees as an “insignificant” champion in Silva, who, despite his best efforts, “couldn’t” finish Demian Maia at UFC 112. Ladies and gentlemen, Chael Sonnen…

CAGEPOTATO.COM: Were you at all rubbed the wrong way by Anderson Silva’s fight against Demian Maia at UFC 112?
CHAEL SONNEN: No, I did my level best to watch the fight, but just couldn’t get through it.

Dana White was effusively apologetic after the fight. Do you think Silva owes anyone an apology? Would it even make a difference?
He is insignificant, really. Nobody cares about him. They never have. If BJ wasn’t on that card, that arena would have been a ghost town.

Did you see anything in that fight that made you even more confident in your chances at beating Silva?
No, he was dominant over a tough guy, impressive in ways.

What impressed you about Silva’s performance?
He is accurate and moves well.

Why do you think he didn’t put away Maia, whom he clearly outclassed in the stand-up game?
He couldn’t, Maia was too tough.

Did you perceive the goading, motioning, shouting by Silva to be showmanship or disrespect? Or perhaps a little bit of both?
Look, I’m not a gang banger. I don’t talk about “respect.” That term is for street thugs, not me.

(DW’s face at 0:11 says it all. Props: bigpimpinx)

From Dave Meltzer via FightOpinion:

“Doug Crosby’s in a lot of trouble right now because apparently he went on the Internet and was trolling people and making fun of them and all this…they’re ripping on him and he’s making fun of them and that is conduct unbecoming a judge, and I know several of the commissions called him and then the UFC called him as well and they told him to, you know…GET OFF THE INTERNET and there’s a lot of commissions right now very upset about judges on the Internet. I think that they were very mad at Cecil Peoples when he made that stupid leg kick thing after the Shogun Rua fight with Machida, so I think that there’s going to be [an] unofficial rule…that you cannot go out there and troll people on the Internet…

I don’t see anything wrong with a judge explaining [himself] but a judge should absolutely not be out there making fun of people. Then again, I don’t know… (laughs) The Internet’s a funny thing, I mean, should Dana be on Twitter telling everyone fuck you? And he’s doing that and…he’s the most powerful guy in the whole business! So, he’s setting quite the example here.”

So, no more bizarre post-fight rants from Douglas Crosby; I guess that’s something we can all get behind. But hey, if you don’t want to be assaulted by Doug’s brain-droppings, just stay out of his UG threads. I’m more concerned with the judging itself. Has he been reprimanded for that yet?

(Props: BJPenn.com)

While on a media tour promoting his new book Why I Fight, former (!) UFC lightweight champ BJ Penn took 18 seconds out of his day to announce that an immediate rematch with Frankie Edgar is in the works. Nothing is set in stone yet, but the UFC wants the fight, and BJ wants the fight, and all of BJ’s fans want the fight, so there you go.

Of course, this opens up a debate about whether BJ Penn deserves a chance to reclaim his belt right away. Immediate title rematches are a tricky thing. When Machida vs. Rua II was set up directly after their first meeting, it made sense because there was a general uproar about the decision unfairly going to Lyoto, who seemingly only won because leg kicks don’t count. But what can you really say about Penn vs. Edgar at UFC 112, other than it was a close fight that was difficult to score (particularly for the judges)? Edgar was never put in serious danger, and he would actually be the clear winner under the Unified Rules of Stockton, in which the loser is the guy who looks more fucked up afterwards, and the winner is the guy who was kicking more ass at the end.

BJ Penn is a more popular star than Frankie Edgar, so the UFC is using the "close fight" angle to try and get one of their golden boys back on his throne, rather than sending in Gray Maynard as Edgar’s first belt defense. (Admittedly, Edgar vs. Maynard sounds like pay-per-view poison.) Do you accept this as just part of the fight business, or should BJ have to knock off another contender first to prove that he’s still the same old killer, and his passionless performance last Saturday really was due to illness?

(Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

After losing the lightweight title to Frankie Edgar Saturday night at UFC 112, it has been a long couple of connecting flights from the United Arab Emirates back home to Hawaii for Team BJ Penn. Fresh off the plane, Penn’s coach Rudy Valentino spoke with Cage Potato about what went wrong in the fight and what is next for Penn.

All three judges scored the fight for Frankie Edgar – for what it’s worth I scored the fight for Edgar as well – but every single round was close and was difficult to score. How did you view the outcome?

One judge scored every round for Edgar but what I saw in the fight when I was watching it, and I haven’t watched it again on tape, but watching it as it happened, I felt that BJ won the first three rounds. The fourth round was even and I think he lost the last round. So I feel BJ won the fight. He was also battling a sinus infection and was on antibiotics, so he was not one hundred percent. I’m not making any excuses, that is just what happened. I didn’t see him lose that fight but I did see him lose the last round. As for effectiveness of punches, I thought BJ had it. Frankie got two takedowns but BJ got up real fast and nothing happened on the ground there, so I don’t know if they could score the fight based on those two takedowns.

The unsatisfying post-fight explanation has become something of a tradition for UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva. After putting on performances that are either bizarre, boring, or both, he inevitably ends up at the press conference after the event, trying to explain through his manager/translator, Ed Soares, why he just forced us to sit through another fight that featured only occasional bursts of offense among extended periods of posturing and playing.

After a decision win over Demian Maia at UFC 112 that saw Silva essentially stop fighting altogether in the final two rounds, the story went that he was trying to punish Maia for his “disrespect.” In the lunchtime video interview above, Soares repeats that claim, insisting that Maia “talked a lot of crap before the fight, and said a lot of things personally about Anderson.” Because of such an unprecedented show of disrespect – who ever heard of talking trash about an opponent before a fight, after all? – Silva got emotional and “wanted to make him pay.”

Here’s where we could ask why making Maia pay didn’t include any sustained attempts to knock him out at any point during the fight. We could also ask how spending the final two rounds running in circles was supposed to make Maia suffer. But we won’t. Instead we’ll ask, how exactly did Maia disrespect Silva before the fight?

("Let’s have a good, clean fight, protect yourself at all times, and don’t leave it in the hands of the judges. Trust me on that one." Photo courtesy of MMAFighting.com.)

Yes, the lightweight title fight between BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar at UFC 112 was close through all five rounds, and we’re not going to launch into the corny argument that a challenger should have to definitively "beat the champ" to earn a decision victory. But when the judges’ scores came back for that fight, we were a little shocked by the 50-45 tally that Douglas Crosby turned in for Frankie, especially since Penn pretty clearly took the first round, probably deserved rounds two and three, and the only round that was obviously Edgar’s was the fifth.

Responding to the uproar from Penn fans, Crosby created a thread on the UG — humbly titled "The JUDGING GENIUS returns from the Middle East" — to explain his interpretation of the fight. Well, not so much explain as rant incoherently and endlessly, making the forum posters increasingly furious. Crosby’s manifesto, compiled by FightOpinion, is after the jump; please note that these words were produced by an actual professional MMA judge chosen by the UFC. Read on if you dare…

(Video courtesy of  YouTube/MMAUltimateSet.com)

Re-watching Anderson Silva’s puzzling performance against Demian Maia at UFC 112 last night, I was reminded of the above outtake reel from the aspiring Brazilian Rich Little’s instructional video compilation he filmed with training partner Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. 

In the clip, which at times seems eerily similar to the Paulo Filho-like, Bizarro World showing he had in Abu Dhabi, “The Spider” clowns on MMA luminaries like Royce Gracie, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, and even his own training partner, Lyoto Machida.

(DaMarques Johnson turns the tables on Brad Blackburn. Photo courtesy of allelbows.)

Since UFC 112 featured two title fights that both went the distance in completely baffling fashion, we didn’t get to see much preliminary card action, with the exception of Phil Davis’s first-round stoppage of Alexander Gustafsson. Here’s how the dark matches shook out…

– Phil Davis def. Alexander Gustafsson via submission (anaconda choke), 4:55 of round 1. 
– Rick Story def. Nick Osipczak via split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
– DaMarques Johnson def. Brad Blackburn via TKO, 2:08 of round 3
– Paul Kelly def. Matt Veach via submission (guillotine choke), 3:41 of round 2
– Jon Madsen def. Mostapha Al Turk via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

With three straight losses, Al Turk is definitely heading to the scrap yard after this one, while Blackburn and Veach may also be in trouble after suffering their second-consecutive defeats. But enough about those poor losers. Blackburn’s opponent DaMarques Johnson picked up a $75,000 Knockout of the Night bonus for putting Bad Brad away with a body kick in the third round of their fight after getting handled for most of the first two frames. Rafael Dos Anjos was awarded the Submission of the Night bonus for his armbar of Terry Etim, while the Fight of the Night was given to Mark Munoz and Kendall Grove for their two-rounder, which Munoz won via TKO after almost getting finished repeatedly in round one.

(Props: MMAFighting.com)

If Anderson Silva‘s inscrutable performance at yesterday’s UFC 112 left you feeling angry and cheated, Dana White feels your pain. White stormed out of the arena after the fourth round of Silva’s non-fight with Demian Maia, but not before dropping Silva’s championship belt off with the Spider’s manager, Ed Soares, refusing to deal with it himself. At the post-fight press conference, White ripped into the middleweight champ, telling media "I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in the ten years of being in this business." (Hmm. Does that sound familiar?) "I don’t know how yet," Dana continued, "but I will make this up to the fans that bought that shit tonight."

Having to repeatedly apologize for Anderson’s fights may have soured the UFC president on Silva permanently: "He said the other day that he wanted to cut to 170 and fight GSP. I don’t want to see that fight now. He doesn’t deserve to fight GSP…I’d like to say he lost his mind tonight, but this is the third time this has happened, this isn’t the first time."

Later, in an interview with Ariel Helwani, Dana called UFC 112 his lowest moment as president of the UFC, and appeared genuinely heartbroken that he had let down the people (and investors) of Abu Dhabi. It bothers him that he has to apologize to fans while Anderson seems to have no urge to do the same. Asked who he’d be interested to see Anderson fight next, White replied "Anderson doesn’t interest me right now."

 (Roger Huerta was right. This tattoo does make you punch harder.)

(Props: MMAFighting.com)

Weigh-ins for tomorrow’s UFC 112: Invincible event went down earlier today at Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi, with all 22 fighters successfully hitting their marks. Though there were no big surprises in the results, there were a few memorable moments in the face-offs, including Nick Osipczak going nose-to-nose with Rick Story, BJ Penn‘s death-glare on Frankie Edgar, Matt Hughes getting unanimously booed by the Abu Dhabi crowd during a brief interview, and Anderson Silva‘s confident dismissal of Demian Maia: "This is my time, this is my belt, the UFC is my house. No problem." The numbers are after the jump…

(‘Okay boys, let’s step back and put our shirts on before we send the wrong message to the local authorities.’ Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

As you may have heard, UFC 112 is popping off in Abu Dhabi on Saturday morning/early afternoon. In addition to providing you with a liveblog that you absolutely don’t want to miss, we’re also going to go ahead and argue about what this series of long-odds title fights really means, and what the UFC should do next once the dust settles. Won’t you join us?

Who would you less want to be right now: Frankie Edgar or Demian Maia?

Look alive, Potato Nation: You only have until tomorrow night at 11:59 p.m. PT to enter pools for this weekend’s UFC 112-related MMA FightPicker action, so get crackin’. As we mentioned last week, we’re giving away a Sony BRAVIA 32" 1080p LCD HDTV to the winner of the current prize pool, which only has three players so far. So basically, one of those three unworthy jackassess will be taking home a goddamned television, just for manning up and wagering 3,800 PotatoChips. How does that make you feel? Inspired? Furious? Well, that’s the situation, and only you have the power to change it.

In other news: Phil Pennington, your iPad has been shipped. Here it is leaving our hands! 

It’s hard not to wonder if the heat in Abu Dhabi is getting to Dana White. In this chat with MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani, he casually mentions that he’s planning on going to an even more remote location for a UFC event this summer, and he doesn’t even care if the fights are recorded for posterity. That’s right, the UFC is headed to Afghanistan to put on an event for the troops stationed there, and the fact that they might not be able to film the action, let alone broadcast it to fans back home, seems less like a deal-breaker than a slight bummer to DW.

We have to ask, what are the fighters going to say when they’re told that they are all fighting in dark matches on the other side of the planet? And can the UFC, in conjunction with the U.S. military, truly assure that no one captures the action on a cell phone or a flip cam? Will we be dependent on an artist’s rendition to find out how things went? And what if the fight of the year happens on a card that no one has any footage of? Does it really make a sound?

Deep, deep questions here, and yet no answers. As for this rumor that White supposedly owes the Bellagio in Vegas $1 million for a gambling debt, the UFC prez’s answer on that seems pretty definitive.  As juicy a story as that would be if true, something about it seems too tidy.  Come on, a million dollars?  When people really get in gambling debts, it’s rarely in such perfect round numbers.  Trust me on this.

(The affable Gracie uses one of his patented knock-knock jokes to disarm Hughes just long enough to set up a collar choke. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestlye.)

Your old pal the Enabler tried as hard as he could, but damned if he could locate any online bookmaker that was giving odds on whether or not the UFC’s hastily thrown together stadium in Abu Dhabi would collapse under the strain of a sandstorm and trap everyone inside its terrifying skeleton of twisted metal and promotional posters. I refuse to believe I’m the only person who thinks that the chances of that happening are at least as good as Demian Maia’s odds.

We might as well take a look at stuff we can bet on, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com.

Anderson Silva (-650) vs. Demian Maia (+600)
BJ Penn (-675) vs. Frankie Edgar (+552)
Matt Hughes (-360) vs. Renzo Gracie (+361)
Mark Munoz (-150) vs. Kendall Grove (+155)
Terry Etim (-138) vs. Rafael Dos Anjos (+135)
Phil Davis (-435) vs. Alexander Gustafsson (+420)

The breakdown…

(Props: Brion S.)

We’ve reached the mid-way point in our massive MMA event poster design contest, and we’ve already gotten some amazing submissions. To inspire the rest of y’all into getting your asses in gear, we’ve decided to post some of our current favorites, which continue after the jump. Please send your poster entries to feedback@cagepotato.com by next Tuesday. We’ll pick some finalists for voting a week from today; the top vote-getter will score a big ass prize-package from Six Deuce, which includes MMA fight shorts, a Glorious Sweater of Absolute Victory t-shirt, Muay Thai training gloves, hand wraps, ankle supports, and a leather speed bag. Three runners up will score the shorts — a prize worth $45, just for losing. Please swing by 62gear.com and let ‘em know you care!

(Props: Brian R.)

(Props: Steve W.)

(Renzo Gracie vs. Frank Shamrock, 2/10/07)

Matt Hughes is, according to some oddsmakers, about a 5-1 favorite to beat Renzo Gracie at UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi this weekend. Maybe that’s because of how easily Hughes smoked Royce Gracie at UFC 60, or how he managed to survive an early scare and ride out a decision win over Gracie student Matt Serra at UFC 98. Or, then again, maybe it’s just because Renzo hasn’t fought in over three years (what you see in the video above is the unsatisfying result of that outing) and is bound to have a little bit of ring rust at 43 years old. Regardless, Gracie told MMAFighting.com in a recent live chat that he thinks he’ll beat Hughes with his superior jiu-jitsu (what, you thought he was going to say punching power?), but his fight isn’t the only one on the card where he’s predicting an upset:

"I don’t want to fight at 155 just because I don’t want to fight the new champion, Frank Edgar. I believe Edgar is going to beat B.J. Penn. He has all the tools to do it."

Just in case you were wondering, Edgar is an even bigger underdog than Gracie. But hey, this is the same guy who predicted Serra’s upset win over Georges St. Pierre. That’s got to count for something, right?  Or absolutely nothing at all?

Something about fighting Anderson Silva seems to bring out the crazy in some people. From Chris Leben’s stated goal of “roughnecking” him to James Irvin’s woefully misguided belief that all he needed to do was take two to give one, absurdly inadequate game plans have become a staple of any pre-fight hype when Silva is on the card. But God bless Demian Maia, he seems just a little more realistic about the whole thing.

Not only does he freely acknowledge that Silva is probably the most complete fighter in the world, he also knows that he only has one chance to win and it involves getting him to the mat and submitting him. It’s the first part of that equation that seems like it might be problematic, though.

(Photo of the work-in-progress courtesy of Flash.)

In just six days, the UFC will hold its first-ever event in the Middle East. For those of you who assume there’s a Bojangles Coliseum available in every city in the world, let me assure you that that’s not the case. (Bojangles should be so lucky.) Instead, the historic event required that a brand-new open-air stadium be built from scratch in about 20 days. Meanwhile, my neighbor Chris has been trying to build a deck in his backyard for three years. And before you think that this stadium is just some slapped-together P.O.S., check out this article on the massive undertaking published yesterday in UAE’s English-language paper, The National:

After a short week of pickin’ for UFC Fight Night 21: Florian vs. Gomi, it’s time to stretch out a bit. The pools for next Saturday’s UFC 112 card are now open on MMA FightPicker and two things are worth noting: 1) You have a full nine days to enter pools and make your selections, and 2) Up for grabs in the prize pool this time around is a 32-inch television. Seriously. And it’s a nice one, too. A 3,800-chip buy-in gains you access to the 25-person-limit prize pool, in which the first-place winner will score a Sony BRAVIA 32" 1080p LCD HDTV, valued at $549.99.

Yes, 3,800 Potato Chips is about 3,750 more than you have at this point; we realize that. So why not buy some chips? Put it this way: If you need a 32" flat-screen and you think you have a good handle on how UFC 112 will play out, you could pick up a brand-new television at a very deep discount. The prize pool requires a minimum of 16 players, and it includes a tie-breaker question that you’ll need to answer. Any of you sissies have the guts to play? Anybody feel like taking a look at the questions before making such a rash decision?

UPDATE: Okay, listen up crybabies. We realize it’s not fair to con you into buying chips when the prize pool could shut down for not hitting the minimum number of players. So we’re going to lift the minimum player requirement for this one. Thanks for all your feedback, and please check back later…

(Props: YouTube.com/MMAVids10)

Hey guys, who wants to see a classic striker vs. grappler battle? The extended preview for UFC 112 (April 10th, Abu Dhabi) tries to sell us on the idea that Demian Maia‘s nasty jits poses an undeniable threat to Anderson Silva. Not that Maia’s grappling ability is exaggerated, but if Nate Marquardt can send Maia into orbit before the fight gets to the ground, Anderson certainly can as well. Speaking of outmatched challengers, UFC 112 also features Frankie Edgar‘s first title fight against lightweight living legend BJ Penn. Joe Rogan shouts out Edgar’s speed, intelligence and wrestling ability and says he presents "a very unique challenge to BJ Penn." But does he have any real advantages? Keep in mind that Penn hasn’t been taken down by a lightweight since Takanori Gomi, six and a half years ago. At least the third fight on the card isn’t a squash match: Renzo Gracie vows to do to Matt Hughes what Matt did to his cousin Royce in 2006. Which old master still has what it takes to compete in the year 2010?

After the jump: Dana and Joe put in some overtime to hype the lightweight title rematch between Benson Henderson and Donald Cerrone, which goes down April 24th at WEC 48: Aldo vs. Faber.

(As any rider could tell you, it’s the longest eight seconds of your life. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Just two months after his dominant UFC debut against Brian Stann at UFC 109, Phil "Mr. Wonderful" Davis (5-0) will reportedly return to the Octagon at UFC 112 (April 10th, Abu Dhabi), to face Swedish slugger Alexander Gustafsson (9-0). Gustafsson made his own UFC debut at #105, where he knocked out Jared Hamman in 41 seconds. (Video of that fight is after the jump, in case you don’t remember it.) It seems like the UFC wants to waste no time in fast-tracking one of these guys into light-heavyweight contendership, at the expense of the other.

For the record, Davis ideally wanted to make his next UFC appearance in June, and graded his performance against Stann a B-. "I’d say that I need to refine everything," Davis told MMAFighting.com. "I can’t really say I need to do better at just this or that. I think my standup needs to get better, I think my wrestling needs to get better, I think my jiu-jitsu needs to get better, and I think I need to work at being more explosive." [Ed. note: No comment.]

(Demian Maia puts a hurtin’ on Jason MacDonald at UFC 87. Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the "Which Barely Credible Challenger Wants to Get Thrashed by Anderson Silva on Two Months’ Notice?" sweepstakes. From UFC.com:

* Sure. He’s also a mediocre kickboxer.

** Come on, nobody uses the phrase "top six." Just say "top five" and hope nobody questions it.

So let’s break this down…

(‘Nate, whaddaya say we call it a draw and go get some cheeseburgers?’ Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine)

The great mystery as to who will step up and challenge for Anderson Silva‘s middleweight title at UFC 112 on April 10 is looking like it will be solved by process of elimination.  Chael Sonnen, who became the number one contender with his upset of Nate Marquardt, now says he won’t be making the quick turnaround to face Silva in Abu Dhabi.  But with Sonnen and Vitor Belfort both ruled out, who’s left? 

Marquardt is coming off a loss at UFC 109.  Demian Maia won a fairly plodding and unimpressive decision over Dan Miller.  Wanderlei Silva and Michael Bisping are set to go at it next weekend at UFC 110.  Face it, there just aren’t many acceptable substitutes available.  If the UFC grabs the first warm 185-pound body they can find and shoves him into a title fight with Silva, we’re looking at a potential farce of epic proportions.  And haven’t we learned our lesson about matching Silva against guys he’s not really interested in beating up?

The best solution at this point would be to either pull Silva from the event entirely and wait until a credible contender is available, or else forget about the title for a little while and get to work finding an interesting 205-pounder who’s willing to accept the challenge.  Easier said than done, I suppose.

(‘And don’t let me catch you looking at my little sister again!’)

Good news for those of you who already bought your plane tickets to Abu Dhabi and have spent the last few weeks learning how to say, ‘Stand ‘em up!’ in Arabic. Despite losing Vitor Belfort to a shoulder injury, UFC 112 will still feature Anderson Silva fighting someone in the 185-pound range for a big hunk of shiny metal and leather. As Dana White recently told MMAFighting.com, Silva has not been pulled from the event just because his top challenger is out, and he’ll still be defending his belt (so abandon your hopes for a light heavyweight superfight, or a heavyweight super-superfight).

The question that has yet to be answered is, who will this opportunistic middleweight be?

Vitor Belfort, Renzo Gracie, BJ Penn, Frankie Edgar, and Anderson Silva pose for pictures in Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, while Ferrari World looms in the background. Photos courtesy of the UFC 112 Facebook page. More shots after the jump…