(*sniffle*…and then…and then the bad man told me that i would never amount to anything, and that I had a big, stupid face…*begins bawling hysterically*) 

Tito Ortiz is to conspiracy theories what Wilmer Valderrama is to “Yo Momma” jokes. A fun fact: After slipping on a patch of ice in his driveway and bruising his tailbone as a child, Tito Ortiz convinced himself that the residual water was left behind by an opposing wrestling team in an effort to take him out of the competition. Twenty-some odd years later…crab people. The HAARP Machine? Started by Ortiz to explain his loss to Frank Shamrock at UFC 22. Zeitgeist? A Tito Ortiz production attempting to write off his performance at UFC 44. And don’t even get Tito started on that completely flawed Magic Loogie theory.

Anyways, we haven’t heard much from Tito since he dropped a close decision to longtime rival Forrest Griffin in his retirement fight at UFC 148. Unfortunately, Ortiz recently emerged from hiding to take one final dump on the promotion that made him the man he is today (and a boatload of cash to boot), throwing everyone from Joe Rogan to Dana White under the bus along the way.

Video after the jump. 

(Little did Stitch know that the worst was yet to come…)

When I was growing up, I was one fearless son of a bitch. This ignorance of one’s mortality that is present in most adolescent boys, combined with a rubbery yet somehow fragile bone structure, led to horrifying injury after horrifying injury. When I was ten, my older brother shattered my collarbone reenacting The People’s Elbow that he had just seen on TV, an injury that has limited my ability to enjoy any Dwayne Johnson vehicle to this day. Two years before that, while reenacting the ending of King Kong vs. Godzilla, my skull was split open by a rock that my younger brother threw just a little too low. Add in more than a half dozen soccer-related broken toes, a dislocated knee and shoulder, and torn hamstring/broken ankle combination that made me yelp like a little bitch with every single step I took in the weeks afterward, and you have a shortened but accurate profile of the kind of damage my body has been through in the short 23 years I have been on this earth.

I’ve seen some injuries is what I’m saying.

But clearly, the various afflictions I have suffered pale in comparison to the twenty or so fighters who were scheduled to compete this summer, only to be struck down by an injury curse the likes of which this sport has yet to see. One of the men who actually managed to compete this summer was former Strikeforce middleweight champion Cung Le, whose nose alone has seen rougher times than most multiple war veterans. After picking up his first UFC win over Patrick Cote at UFC 148, Le apparently injured his foot during some training-related exercise, and decided to videotape himself undergoing an ancient Chinese process (no, not Calgon) in order to help mend his wounded foot.

Video after the jump. For real this time. 

(On the count of three, I want everyone who is not pulling a fast one to raise their hand.) 

If there are two things that we would be willing to bet the house on in light of recent events, it’s that half of the scheduled fights for the next few months will be cancelled due to injury, and the few participants who remain standing after the smoke clears will only be doing so as a result of testosterone replacement therapy. So goes the story for TUF 1 winner and former light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin, the most recent UFC behemoth  fighter who both filed for and was successful in receiving a therapeutic use exemption for TRT over the past couple months.

Griffin joins the ranks of such puny weaklings as Frank Mir and Chael Sonnen that will never be able to produce testosterone naturally again, leading us to wonder how that will effect his chances of survival once the whole apocalypse thing he has been talking about actually hits. Tip #147: TRT is for girly men; always go au naturale.

(Try as he might, Chael just couldn’t figure what dish to bring to a Brazilian BBQ.)

By Jason Moles

Once again, the curtain was pulled back and we saw that he was just as human as you or I, despite his best attempts to convince us otherwise. Once again we witnessed his mystique fade into oblivion with every gloved fist to the face. For a moment, it appeared as if he had been fooling us this whole time. He had to have been. I mean, how can a guy be so unbelievably amazing in the Octagon and do what no other before him has ever come close to doing, and still come up short again?

Now that the cameras have stopped rolling, Chael P. Sonnen finds himself at a crossroads in life, a time when decisions like changing weight classes or changing careers — decisions of great consequence — have to be made,  or so it would seem. Some have tossed around the idea of retirement for the thirty-five year old southpaw. Need I remind you that Sonnen is the one that said, “You cannot ‘retire’ from a sport unless you win a world championship. You only quit.”? Even after two title shots against UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, Sonnen is still a lot like my second favorite type of bra: strapless. Add that to the poetic role reversal of Silva making a quip about having his wife fix him a steak after the fight — that twist of the knife, delivered with a champion’s smile — and you can better see how dejected the American Gangster is feeling after his performance at UFC 148.

Maybe you, like many others, think the former politician should change weight classes or go take his shtick to WWE. It’s absurd to think he would move down to 170lbs. given the reported 20+ pounds he had to cut the day before the weigh-ins. Similarly, a move to the 205lb. division isn’t exactly any less of a career suicide than propositioning Dana White to ‘Free CagePotato’ in a hotel lobby. But that WWE idea seems totally legit, right? WWE thinks so too, even if there are others who would advise against it.

Upon seeing Anderson Silva’s weigh-in shoulder strike, Keith Kizer had a Dana White moment.

Even though it doesn’t appear that Anderson Silva will be punished for striking Chael Sonnen with his shoulder at the UFC 148 weigh-in, Nevada State Athletic Commission Head Keith Kizer made it clear that he is very disappointed with the UFC middleweight champion. In fact, he’s so disappointed that he told “The Spider” that another such incident would get him banned from competing in Nevada. According to MMAJunkie.com, these were Kizer’s exact words to Anderson Silva:

“Look, if you ever, despite your previous record with us as a good licensee, if you ever do anything like this again, that’s it for you in Nevada. You’ll be fighting your fights elsewhere.”

So if the NSAC is so upset with Silva, then why isn’t he getting fined for his actions? Ironically – or perhaps fittingly – it was Chael Sonnen playing The Voice of Reason.

(Then again, it seems to be working out pretty well for Clay Guida so far.) 

Hell must have frozen over, because for once, we are in agreement with Dana White.

We’re not going to waste your time by recounting all of the endless press the issue of testosterone replacement therapy has received as of late, which would take us no less than twenty pages to complete. But needless to say, guys like Frank Mir are proving that damn near anyone can receive a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for TRT if they are willing to fill out the proper paperwork, and we’ve only begun to see the amount of fighters who will likely begin to hop on that bandwagon as time goes on.

But with his win at UFC 148, Anderson Silva basically proved that a vicious knee trumps TRT nearly 100 percent of the time, a notion that the UFC President really wishes he could drive home in one way or another. White recently sat down with ESPN’s Todd Grisham to discuss everything from fighter pay rates to the absolute sack of horseshit that was the Manny Pacquiao/Timothy Bradley decision. Being the polarizing subject that TRT is, Grisham brought up the possibility of the UFC having two fighters currently using testosterone as champions, were Chael Sonnen to defeat Silva and Dan Henderson to defeat Jon Jones, and what White would think of that. And we gotta say, we were rather impressed with Dana’s level-headed response. It was almost as if he had considered both sides of the story, rather than lashing out with personal attacks at the first person to speak up about a slightly sensitive issue. Like we said, the sky must be falling.

A full video interview is below. 

(Chael Sonnen, seen here learning a lesson that Judd Nelson taught the rest of us back in the 80′s. All props be to Fightlinker for the find.) 

At this point, we’ve moved past the “illegal” knee, the shorts grabbing, and the vaseline that may or may not have marred Anderson Silva’s destruction of Chael Sonnen at UFC 148. We are not going to convince anyone to change their minds in regards to the gravity (or lack thereof) of Silva’s actions and whether or not they affected the outcome of the fight, and neither will you, because, as Ollie Weeks once said, “You can’t convince some people there’s a fire even when their hair is burning. Denial is a powerful thing.” And before you lash out at our use of the term “destruction” to describe the fight, first consider that that was the term used by Sonnen himself to describe Silva’s tenacity in the second round. According to Dana White, that is:

This is what Chael Sonnen said to me after the fight. He didn’t say it at the press conference, but he said it to me. He said, ‘I have so much respect for this guy, Dana. I’ve been competing in combat sports since I was seven years old. In that first round, when I was on top of him, hittin’ him with those big elbows, I felt him break. I broke him in that first round. He came back in the second round and destroyed me. I’ve never seen anybody do that, ever.

So now that we’ve all put aside our differences, we’d like to focus for a moment on the monumental mistake that was Sonnen’s spinning backfist, which has already begun to take on a life of its own as evident by the header gif. In fact, Sonnen’s mental error has become so popular over the past few days that his good friend and pro wrassler CM Punk decided to reenact the end of the fight on last night’s episode of WWE: Monday Night Raw. Although the result was as to be expected (a major whiff), Punk’s spinning backfist was arguably thrown with better technique.

Video after the jump. 

…and we specifically asked for AquaDeco to go with those brown M&Ms!

Well, that didn’t take long.

After appearing genuinely humbled after losing the second round his middleweight title fight against Anderson Silva at UFC 148, none of us were buying the idea that Chael Sonnen had been humbled by the loss and accepted the outcome. For starters, we literally saw the exact same thing happen after UFC 117. On top of that, since Saturday night there have been countless debates both on and offline over vaseline, shorts-grabbing and ‘illegal’ knees that potentially cost Chael P. Sonnen a victory against Anderson Silva. In other words, if Chael Sonnen could come up with excuses to justify his “victory” over Anderson Silva at UFC 117, it was obvious that he would have an excuse for his loss in the rematch now that there’s actually some kind of controversy surrounding the fight.

Earlier today, it was reported that Chael Sonnen’s camp filed an appeal with the Nevada Athletic Commission to overturn the result of the his bout against Anderson Silva at UFC 148 to a no-contest. As first reported by Jonathan Snowden on The MMA Show:

“Scott McQuarry, the head coach of Chael Sonnen, says they’ve started the process to file an appeal with Keith Kizer and the Nevada Athletic Commission. They believe the knee Anderson Silva threw was illegal, that the intent was to knee the face, that it did it in fact strike Chael in the face, that he got eight stitches and that he bit his tongue. They also say Anderson grabbed the cage at the point of impact. They are intending to appeal and have the fight ruled a no contest.”

(He may not have invited him to the BBQ afterward, but Anderson was going to make sure that Griffin squealed like a pig one way or another.)

The salaries for UFC 148′s twenty-two fighters were released earlier today, and it appears that Chael Sonnen earned exactly one dollar for every insult he aimed at the people of Brazil, which is 50% higher than the UFC’s current average compensatory rate for drawing the ire of an entire nation, a.k.a the Josh Koscheck clause, so a tip of the hat is in order for The Orgeonian in that regard. It will surely by him all of the medium rare steak sandwiches he could ever hope to have.

In other news, despite getting rocked on more than one occasion in his fight with the now retired Tito Ortiz and sprinting out of the cage like he was reliving his fight with Anderson Silva before the decision was even read, Forrest Griffin managed to walk away with the W and a cool $275,000 to boot. Actually, when you add in his $75,000 FOTN bonus, the total comes to…a much higher number. It would be impossible for us to crunch those kinds of numbers and still get this article together in just 8 hours, so take it for what it is and shut up.

The full list of salaries, along with our thoughts (read:complaints), is after the jump.

(Sonnen tries to remain calm while scanning for the nearest exit at the UFC 148 pre-fight press conference.) 

How the high and mighty have fallen, Potato Nation.

Just a few days after coming up short (again) against Anderson Silva at UFC 148, the rumors and speculations of what lies in store for middleweight contender Chael Sonnen have already begun to take on a life of its own. And at the forefront of those rumors, is the possibility that we may never see perhaps the greatest fight-hyper in the biz in the octagon again. Now, we aren’t normally quick to buy into retirement rumors that come in the immediate aftermath of a fight, even when they are coming from the fighters themselves. Because, as was the case for B.J. Penn and Jamie Varner, these supposed “retirements” were more or less a way of coping with the frustration that comes with of a string of losses (or in Sonnen’s case, a particularly hard loss to swallow), and were over before most of us compile a “Best of” list for either man. The jury is still out on how long Nick Diaz will hold out, but we’re guessing it will likely coincide with his recent suspension.

But regardless of the semi-thesis statement we’ve just laid before you, the head grappling coach at Xtreme Couture, Neil Melanson, feels that we may have seen the last of Sonnen for now. Melanson took over Sonnen’s UFC 148 training camp after Scott McQuary, Sonnen’s longtime head coach, suffered a heart attack a couple months back, and recently sat down with the ironically-titled Verbal Submission Radio to discuss Sonnen’s future in the sport:

Any time you’re a part of training camp or you’re friends with somebody and they lose, you just worry about them like, how are they gonna handle it mentally? Are they gonna come back from this? You know, I don’t know what Chael’s plans are, but I got a feeling he’s done fighting. I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling he’s done. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he was serious when he said, ‘If you beat me, I will leave forever,’ and there’s a very good chance of that.

(Props: fueltv)

After spending the night screaming himself hoarse, an “amped-up” (read: sweaty and half-drunk) Michael Bisping spent a few minutes with Ariel Helwani lobbying for a fight against Anderson Silva, on the grounds that he’d do a lot better against Silva than Chael Sonnen did on Saturday night. Why? Because he can wrestle and strike. And that’s pretty much it. The secret to beating Anderson Silva is basic well-roundedness, I guess. But Bisping’s greater motivation is simply to see how he’d stack up against the best in the world. Here’s how the Count broke down Silva vs. Sonnen 2, and his hopes for a future meeting with the Spider:

“Chael is an amazing wrestler, you know, he went to the Olympics I think. Not everybody can do that. I’m not that level of wrestler. I can wrestle a little bit, but I’m not like Chael Sonnen. But, I can kickbox a damn sight better than Chael Sonnen can. I won’t get knocked out in the second round like Chael Sonnen did. That’s a fact. [Silva] got wrestled to death in the first round, it was a massively dominant round for Chael Sonnen in the first round. But [Silva] does it every time, he proves why he’s the best. It doesn’t matter what happens in round one. It’s how the fight ends. And Anderson Silva, he pulled it off again. You’re a fool to bet against Anderson. He’s amazing.

“And for me, personally, I want to fight the guy because I want to see how I can do against him. I’ve beat a lot of guys, but I want to fight that guy. I think I can do better. And I’m never going to know that until I get in there with him. Yes, I want to fight him. Yes, I want to get paid for a title shot. I want the main event, I want all that. But for me, personally, for my mind and soul, I want to fight the guy to know how I would do. Because I think I can do better than Chael Sonnen did. In fact, I know I can do better than what Chael Sonnen did.”

Props: MMAfanmade.tumblr.com

Let’s get one thing straight: Last night’s co-main event was by no means a legacy-cementing fight. The legacies of both fighters had been cemented well before last night, with both Forrest Griffin and Tito Ortiz being very influential in the UFC’s push towards the mainstream, being involved in unforgettable fights and holding the light-heavyweight championship. While winning the trilogy would be a nice way to cap off an otherwise lackluster rivalry, it would be nothing more than another “W” in the grand scheme of things. Especially for Tito – while Forrest is arguably worthy of a Hall of Fame induction, Tito already has been inducted.

Which perhaps explained why Tito Ortiz seemed more aggressive throughout the fight: Forrest had little to lose, Tito had nothing to lose. While the aggression of “The People’s Champion” seemed to have Forrest Griffin on the verge of defeat a few times during the fight, in the end it wasn’t enough. For the majority of the fight, Griffin managed to outstrike Ortiz en route to the unanimous decision victory.

Really, there is little more to be said for the actual fight. Two aging veterans entered the cage and performed like aging veterans. Both men looked slow, both men gassed out early, and if it weren’t for the names involved, this fight would have had zero chance of taking home the $75k Fight of the Night honors. If you want to watch the fight again, watch the fight again - if you missed it, you didn’t miss much.

Vindication. (Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE)

Love him or hate him, Chael Sonnen did what few other men in the sport have been able to accomplish: he made you believe he could take out Anderson Silva. Whether it was his pre-fight promises to dump the champion on his ‘prissy little ass’ or the ease with which he did so in the opening round, for the first time in a long time you doubted Silva’s invincibility. In a time when injuries and injunctions have quashed the UFC’s most emotionally-charged and meaningful fights, ‘The American Gangster’ would not shut his mouth until you were convinced that his fight mattered. To be fair, he never shut his mouth; it was shut for him.

For those who think he’s bad for the sport, you should have checked your pulse when he worked his way to mount. It raced. You should check the ticket sales for this event. It’s a new US record. You should think back to so many of Anderson’s other battles marred by inaction in the cage and indifference in the champ. They sucked. You don’t have to root for the bad guy, but someone has to lose these fights, and it may as well be a loud-mouthed son of a bitch who refers to himself in the third person.

Anderson may not be flying home with the pocket full of Sonnen’s teeth that he desired, but he will be toting an extra twelve pounds of gold. Though he may be slightly disappointed, he’ll have a much easier time getting through airport security.

(Right before this picture was taken, Chael asked Anderson to smell his finger. And yes, it smelled like steak sauce. / Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle.com. For more from this set, click here.)

UFC 148 goes down this evening at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and the stakes have never been higher — either Anderson Silva‘s historic middleweight title reign comes to an abrupt end, or all of Chael Sonnen’s limbs and teeth are about to be broken. Either way, we’re in for an interesting night.

Also on the card: Tito Ortiz bids us farewell with a rubber-match against his old buddy Forrest Griffin, Demian Maia makes his welterweight debut against Dong Hyun Kim, and Cung Le tries to rebound against the returning Patrick Cote.

Live round-by-round results from the “Silva vs. Sonnen 2″ pay-per-view main card will be piling up after the jump beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT, courtesy of Elias Cepeda. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and please toss in your own two cents in the comments section.

(The time for talk is over…but we still bugged Chael for one last quote before he rematches Anderson)

Anderson Silva can deny it all he wants, but Chael P. Sonnen has gotten inside his head. After years of Sonnen antagonizing the middleweight champion, Silva has appeared to snap emotionally.

First, “The Spider” lashed out at the challenger with threats during a recent conference call promoting their UFC 148 rematch taking place Saturday night, and then on Friday he got in Sonnen’s face at the weigh ins in Las Vegas and hit him on the chin with a shoulder strike.

“Chael no respect nothing. Chael no respect [the] UFC, Chael no respect my country,” a fired up Silva told Joe Rogan moments after weighing in and striking Chael on stage. “Tomorrow, I go to fight.”

Sonnen appeared unmoved on stage after Silva’s surprise shoulder strike, leaving his hands up and standing stone-faced. We spoke with Sonnen a couple hours after the weigh in and asked him if he’d expected Silva to do something like that after all his trash talk, and if the shoulder bump had revved him up even more to fight his nemesis.

Sonnen had received an IV to help him rehydrate and begin recovering from his twenty pound water weight loss in just twenty four hours at that point and said he that he was done talking – But not without one last golden nugget of hype before going to war tomorrow…

(Video: YouTube.com/UFC)

More so than any of the punches ‘The American Gangster’ landed on the champion during their first encounter, it’s been his incessant jabs since that evening that have caused the most damage. It may have taken a couple of years of unrelenting taunts, but Chael Sonnen has finally gotten under Anderson Silva’s skin. Never underestimate the heart of a pretend champion.

Two weeks ago we saw Anderson’s cool demeanor begin to fade with promises of extreme violence against Sonnen. Things escalated on Tuesday with the champion violating Sonnen’s personal space, a press conference faux pas if ever there was one. Last night, however, the uncannily smooth Brazilian officially lost his cool, popping Sonnen with a shoulder to the face as the two squared off at the weigh-ins. I’m not sure if Brazil has area codes, but if so it’s safe to say which one Silva’s repping.

If you aren’t pumped for this fight, you’re dead inside. Actually, if you read this site, you’re probably already dead inside. So…just enjoy the fight, alright?

Full weigh-in results after the jump.

(This time around, the UFC’s marketing department is looking to drive home the notion that sex sells once and for all.) 

By Dan “Get off Me” George

In the immortal words of Bruce Buffer, “It’s Time!”

On the eve of perhaps the most anticipated UFC rematch in history, I hope to bring my fellow CP readers some insight on how to save your kneecaps from the bookies and perhaps even make a buck or two by trying to follow my logic with regards to potential winners and losers for UFC 148.

For the sake of brevity, I’d like to focus on the dogs. The real money is made betting on the underdogs, and besides, there is nothing more exciting than watching a guy like Alan Belcher twist and turn his way out of certain demise en route to cashing out at three times the amount you originally placed on him (Ed note: Way to rub it in, Dan).

All of our betting odds for this week’s enabler come courtesy of BestFightOdds, so let’s get it on!

Undercard:

Shane Roller (-195) vs. John Alessio (+180)

I like Roller here, the price is fair and I do not see Alessio being able to do much but play defense in this fight. Look for Roller to pull out a decision while Alessio finds himself on the bottom or defending takedowns for the majority of the contest, not unlike his most recent decision loss to Mark Bocek at UFC 145. Simple.

Constantinos Philippou (-175) vs. Riki Fukuda (+165)

This line has moved in favor of Fukuda slightly over the past 24hrs, showing that the public likes Fukuda more and more as the small underdog. I like Philippou if for nothing more than his performance against Court McGee, a fighter similar to Fukuda who likes to move forward and press the action. Philippou has ever-improving takedown defense and better striking than Fukuda, specifically with his hands, and I like him to stop Fukuda’s takedowns and make him pay with his fists.

(Props: FilmDrunk)

I know what you’ve all been thinking this week. You’ve been thinking “This whole pissed off and angry Anderson Silva is a frightening change of pace, and the press conference was fun I guess, but damn it, I need to know how Steven Seagal will take credit for all of this!” Well don’t worry, person who doesn’t exist – you won’t have to wait until after the fight to find that out.

Ariel Helwani caught up with Cockpuncher to discuss Anderson Silva’s upcoming rematch with Chael Sonnen. After appearing reluctant to give the mere mortal an interview, Seagal explained how Silva’s intense new attitude is entirely his doing. And those concerns you may be having over The Spider’s emotions affecting his performance? Don’t worry, Seagal has an answer for that, too.

Videos (Yes, multiple) after the jump.

(Guys, seriously, you gotta stop this or I’m gonna have a harder time hiding this erection than Jean-Claude Van Damme.) 

By George Shunick

This weekend, the MGM Grand Garden Arena will host the most highly anticipated fight this year when middleweight champion Anderson Silva faces off against, err, “middleweight champion” Chael P. Sonnen. As we all know, Sonnen was the man who almost took Silva’s title at UFC 117, dismantling the champion through punishing ground and pound and even rocking MMA’s greatest striker on the feet before succumbing to a triangle choke after winning the previous 23 minutes of the fight. Following the fight, it was revealed Silva fought with a badly injured rib and Sonnen had a testosterone to epitestosterone ratio of 16.9 to 1. Regardless, due to Sonnen’s trash talk and how close their last fight was, this fight has the potential to be one of the best fights of the summer.

However, will this be the “biggest rematch in the history of the business,” as Sonnen claims? Maybe, but I doubt it. You could argue Lesnar-Mir II is more likely to be successful financially, or that Liddell-Ortiz II or Liddell-Couture II/III were more culturally significant for a burgeoning sport, but virtually all lacked such a compelling narrative or contained the level of talent featured here. Moreover, in hindsight, they were rather one-sided matchups. Edgar-Maynard II and III were probably of a higher caliber that Silva-Sonnen II will be, simply by virtue of being two of the greatest fights in the history of the sport, but lacked the hype and context that this matchup possesses.

This matchup has the potential to rank alongside Fedor-Nogueira III, which saw the two greatest heavyweights in MMA history – and the two top-ranked heavyweights at that time – fight for the Pride heavyweight title; both fights possess a historic air about them, feature top level talent, and take place within the narrative framework of a rivalry. But I still think the gold standard for a rematch will remain Jackson-Silva II, which had every ingredient you could wish for in a rematch turned up to 11. It had two of the greatest fighters in MMA history, in one of the greatest rivalries in MMA history, in one of the greatest fights in MMA history, culminating in one of the greatest knockouts in MMA history. Suffice it to say, Sonnen-Silva II has a lot to accomplish to validate Sonnen’s comments.

(Its a trap.)

Some of Chael P. Sonnen’s recent statements in advance of UFC 148 this Saturday almost make sense. Almost. Speaking to the media about the rash of recent injuries and subsequent match-up shuffling in the UFC, Chael said that he believed any fighter that pulls out of a fight because of injury should have it counted as a loss on his or her professional record.

“I think there should be forfeiture,” he told MMA Junkie. ”It’s not realistic with the architecture that we have, but we’re the only sport where you can just not show up. Every event is set. The Super Bowl for 2015. The kickoff time, the venue — it’s set. If one team doesn’t want to show up, a Super Bowl champion will be crowned that day.”

On one hand, it’s worth examining if the recent wave of UFC injuries is the result of fighters pulling out of scheduled matches simply because they feel their health is less than 100%, and they might be more competitive at a later date. The reality is, everybody fights injured, and pulling out of a fight just because you’re a little banged up is a way of gaming the system, and screws the fans out of fights they already paid to see.

On the other hand, Sonnen’s analogy falls apart almost immediately. Athletes can and do pull out of competition due to injury in every single sport on the planet. This includes the aforementioned Super Bowl, where players on teams that have made it to the big game often miss out because of injuries they’ve sustained. And just as the Super Bowl still goes on when players get injured, UFC title bouts still happen when an opponent pulls out. It just might not be the title fight that was originally scheduled.

(Props: UFC)

At last, UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen pulls back the curtain to confirm that the “mean streets” of West Linn, Oregon, weren’t really that mean after all. LOL, etc., but can we take a moment to appreciate what a legitimately talented comedic actor Chael is? The pause at 0:27-0:33, the delivery of the “hundred grand” line at 1:27 — the man’s got a future in showbiz after Anderson Silva ends his MMA career this Saturday.

Seriously, TBS is giving away sitcoms to chuckleheads like Danny Masterson and Steve Byrne. Why not Chael Sonnen?

After the jump: A video response from the #1 dumbest broad on the Internet.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

Yes, Anderson Silva initiated contact. Yes, he appeared to lunge in for a kiss at the 1:05:35 mark. Yes, it took Dana White and two other dudes to hold him back. By comparison, Chael Sonnen was cool as a cucumber during the climactic staredown at today’s UFC 148 press conference. Congrats, buddy, you’re in his head. Now what?

Update: An edited version with audio is after the jump, courtesy of MMAFighting.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

If you’re a stats geek, this new UFC 148 promo clip will give you a raging nerd-boner. In dissecting the rivalry between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, we learn the following:

- Before his first fight with Sonnen at UFC 117, Anderson Silva had been hit a combined 166 times by his previous 11 UFC opponents. Sonnen landed on him 320 times. (Each of these must have counted as two.)

- Sonnen has actually out-landed all of his opponents in the UFC and WEC. Unfortunately, he’s also allowed 18 serious submission attempts during his UFC fights, which places him 3rd on the all-time list. We’re guessing he’ll never catch up to Melvin Guillard.

- Silva’s triangle/armbar submission of Sonnen 23:10 into their fight was the latest stoppage in UFC history.

- Sonnen’s 34 takedowns in the Octagon place him at #1 among middleweights.

- Sonnen is the “World’s Best Trash Talker,” which has been scientifically proven by the researchers at CompuTrash.

After the jump: Sonnen discusses the training camp support he gets from his mother/co-conspirator, and the full video of Sonnen’s UFC 136 smashing of Brian Stann.

Alright, so Cung Le‘s UFC debut against Wanderlei Silva last November didn’t turn out the way many of us thought it would. (Getting your ass kicked by King Mo on a daily basis isn’t the best way to prepare for a fight, it turns out.) Nevertheless, the former Strikeforce middleweight champ is returning to the Octagon for redemption at UFC 148 on July 7th, where he’ll be facing former contender Patrick Cote. In honor of the upcoming bout, here are 11 GIFs of Cung Le doing what he does best — throwing wild spinning shit and tossing people on their asses. Check ‘em out below, and let us know how you think Le vs. Cote will shake out…

(Who just called me a thief?! Was it you?! I am an undisclosed investment opportunist you son of a bitch, so get your shit straight!) 

If there’s one thing we know about Chael Sonnen, it’s that he can hurl insults at other fighters, reporters, and entire countries with the lyrical ostentation of an 18th century poet (we also hear he’s an OK fighter as well). His ability to string together an eight or nine word sentence without having “uh” or “you know” constitute at least three of those words puts him head and shoulders above a lot of his peers (Junior Dos Santos is trying, you guys, leave him alone), so much so that he can almost convince us that Big Nog once tried to feed a carrot to a bus without sounding like a sundowning centenarian in the midst of an LSD flashback while doing so. Almost.

That being the case, you’d imagine that Sonnen would be able to take a joke, or at least an awkward question in stride, because those who cast stones at other people should expect stones to be cast at them, or whatever it is that they say. I’m not looking it up. But more often than not, this is not the case for the shit-spewing, trash-talkers of the world. Such is the case with Mr. Sonnen, who has shown us in such memorable moments as “Amateur Hour with Michael Lansberg” that he can’t exactly take it as well as he can dish it out.

Sonnen recently appeared on the John Canzano-hosted “Portland’s 750 -The Game” to promote his upcoming rematch with Anderson Silva at UFC 148, and when the subject of his past legal troubles came up, let’s just say that Chael went from about 0-100 faster than a McLaren F1 with Memphis Raines behind the wheel. And don’t think for a second that we don’t see the irony in poking fun at Chael Sonnen while at the same time lambasting him for excessively poking fun at other fighters. The Internet gives us a Diplomatic Immunity to do so and not even Roger Murtaugh can revoke it.

A full audio recording of the exchange and transcription are after the jump. 

(FoGriff: A laid back guy in every sense of the word.) 

Watching Matt Serra and Forrest Griffin discuss anything from their past fights to the condition of Griffin’s car (which makes me feel a hell of a lot better about the condition of my own) is kind of like watching an Abbott and Costello movie, minus the mythological creatures and slapstick hijinks, of course. The two effortlessly riff off one another like a pair of old pals, which makes Serra’s recent trip to Vegas to film his ongoing series for the UFC, Fight Camp Insider, all the more entertaining.

Taking the typical “light on actual fight discussion, heavy on pizza discussion” approach that Serra has mastered in previous outings, the pair of former champions also make sure to discuss such topics as the shrinkage caused by an ice bath (which I can only assume must be insane), FoGriff’s Ted Bundy-esque mode of transportation, and the ability of Ray Longo to clear a house using only the power of his mighty deuces. Oh yeah, and they manage to find enough time to briefly hype Forrest’s upcoming trilogy match with Tito Ortiz at UFC 148.

Video after the jump. 

(Props: UFCAndersonTheSpider via IronForgesIron)

Following up our presentation of Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen 1, here’s the other UFC fight where Anderson Silva looked less-than-invincible, at least momentarily. This was Silva’s third middleweight title defense, back at UFC 82 in March 2008, and Dan Henderson dominated the opening round, taking Silva down about two minutes into the fight and grinding down on him with punches for the rest of the frame. Henderson also puts a good deal of effort into covering Silva’s mouth and nose with his hand, a cheap breathing-obstruction trick that occasionally bleeds into gouging/fish-hooking territory. (Side note: Skip to the 14:07 mark, and you’ll see the rough draft of the front kick that Silva used to dummy up Vitor Belfort.)

Silva got even in the second round, brawling a bit with Hendo before letting his precision striking take over. At the 21:16 mark, Silva nails Henderson with a knee, kick, and punches that the challenger is never able to recover from. Silva gets on top of Henderson and works his jiu-jitsu until he sinks a particularly nasty rear-naked choke. After the fight, Silva takes a moment to explain that Henderson was good, but he’s no Rich Franklin. A real…class act? Anyway, the Ohio fans loved it.

After the jump: Silva’s UFC 134 title defense against Yushin Okami, which also ended violently in the second round.

(Props: sports.yahoo.com)

If you work in an office, you probably spend the first half-hour of your day drinking coffee, reading blogs, and lamenting the bad decisions you’ve made in your life that led you to this point. So make this morning a special one by watching the entire five-round battle between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen at UFC 117, which went down back in August 2010 in Oakland.

Sonnen may have a tendency to “talkee too muchee,” as the Brazilians might say, but you have to give him credit — he came to fight that night. Sonnen showed no signs that he was psyched out by the aura of the Spider, and aggressively pursued the champ for all five rounds. When it was all over, Sonnen had out-struck Silva by a stunning 320-64. Unfortunately, the judges were not well-versed in the Stockton scoring system, and awarded the fight to the guy who didn’t get choked out at the end. Still, it was a hell of a fight — can the sequel possibly live up to the original?

After the jump: A fan-made ‘Silva vs. Sonnen 2‘ hype video from Bruthamuzone, which is pretty killer despite the use of Limp Bizkit.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

According to master-pitchman Joe Rogan, the upcoming UFC 148 rematch between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen (July 7th, Las Vegas) is “more anticipated than any of the previous fights that we’ve called ‘the most highly-anticipated fight’.” It’s also a re-do of what was in my opinion the greatest comeback fight in MMA history, and the champion is promising an absurd level of punishment. But at this point, you’re either going to watch this thing or you’re not. I think we’ve passed the point of “anticipation,” and crossed over into “for God’s sake, can we get this thing over with already?”

UFC 148′s co-main event is the not-nearly-as-anticipated rubber match between Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin. “In this third one, there has to be a convincing winner,” Ortiz says, “and that’s gonna be me.” No matter what the outcome of the fight, July 7th will mark Ortiz’s transition from UFC star into retired Hall of Famer. So how will he perform in the last three rounds of his career? And if he manages to carve out a victory, what does that mean for Forrest Griffin?

(“Well, this little red-and-white number is my killing shirt, and if you see it, that usually means this is your last day on earth.”)

The UFC held a conference call today hyping UFC 148: Silva vs. Sonnen 2 (you can listen to the full audio here), and somebody replaced the normally composed and respectful Anderson Silva with a murderous, rage-fueled psychopath. Fed up with all of Chael Sonnen‘s bullshit over the last couple years, Silva unleashed a torrent of chilling threats during the call that went beyond the usual boundaries of trash-talk, and were totally out-of-character for the smooth Burger King pitchman. Here are the highlights:

“First of all, Chael is a criminal. He’s been convicted of crimes. He doesn’t deserve to be inside the Octagon. And when the time is right, I’m going to break his face and break every one of his teeth in his mouth.”

“The playtime is over. I’m gonna beat Chael like he’s never been beat before. There’s no more talking. I know he’s on the line listening, and the game’s over. I’m going to beat his ass out of the UFC. He’s never gonna want to fight again after I’m done with him.”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m on the bottom, the side, the top, it doesn’t matter. Chael Sonnen’s gonna get his ass kicked like he’s never gotten his ass kicked before. What I’m gonna do inside the Octagon is something that’s gonna change the image of the sport. I’m gonna beat his ass like he’s never been beaten before. I’m gonna make sure that every one of his teeth are broken, his arms are broke, his legs are broke. He’s not going to be able to walk out of the Octagon by himself. I can guarantee that. And I know that he’s listening. The game’s over. No more shit-talking. It’s on now.”