(Video courtesy PureFight)

When it was announced that Alan Belcher was forced to pull out of his headlining September 15 UFC Fight Night bout with Demian Maia due to a detached retina he suffered in training, the news was met with a collective, "That sucks. Hopefully when he heals up, the UFC will match them up again."

According to Belcher, he may never get the opportunity to fight Maia again, or anyone else for that matter.

In an interview he did with  PureFight this week, the 26-year-old Biloxi, Mississippi fighter who revealed that he suffered irreparable vision loss as a result of the freak injury said that there is a chance he may never fight again.

Belcher says that he won’t know the extent of the injury or the success of the surgery for at least a couple of months and only then will he be able to assess whether or not continuing to fight will be an option for him or if he will have to walk away from the sport he loves.

(Welcome to Kenny Florian’s den of debauchery. Enter with an open mind, and leave your innocence at the door. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

After a successful weekend that saw your old pal the Enabler totally nail his official parlay pick, it’s time to reload for Wednesday’s “Florian vs. Gomi” Fight Night event live from the (not really) historic Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Let’s look at some lines, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Kenny Florian (-275) vs. Takanori Gomi (+275)
Roy Nelson (-290) vs. Stefan Struve (+270)
Ross Pearson (-200) vs. Dennis Siver (+183)
Nate Quarry (-245) vs. Jorge Rivera (+220)
Andre Winner (-169) vs. Rafaello Oliveira (+150)
Jacob Volkmann (+220) vs. Ronnys Torres (-231)
Rob Emerson (+113) vs. Nik Lentz (-140)
Caol Uno (+251) vs. Gleison Tibau (-265)
Yushin Okami (-500) vs. Lucio Linhares (+450)
Gerald Harris (-155) vs. Mario Miranda (+130)
Charlie Brenneman (+150) vs. Jason High (-180)

The breakdown…

(Via Nate Diaz’s Twitter)

Say you lost a decision in a close fight that you feel you deserved to win.  You really have only two possible ways to respond: 1) Shrug, say you did your best, and remind everyone that this is why you don’t leave it in the hands of the judges, or 2) make a video of yourself in the parking lot of a 24-Hour Fitness showing off the remarkable lack of facial damage that you sustained in the fight, proving unequivocally that you got straight-up screwed, homey.

If you know anything at all about Nate Diaz, you know which option he decided to go with.  Nate posted this video to his Twitter today, following an earlier message stating that he’s watched the fight three times since Monday and has come to the conclusion that he won — get this — all three rounds.  Added Diaz: "fuck the haters…"

(Believe it or not, Nate’s biceps are the pride of the 209. They don’t have that much to be proud of.)

Ah, the post-defeat talk of changing weight classes. Or, as we like to call it, the fighter’s false friend. Usually, unless a guy is getting on in years, his answer to a difficult patch in his career is to go down in weight, maybe fight some of those pipsqueaks in the division below his. Nate Diaz however, has a different idea. According to post on GracieFighter.com in which he apologized for fighting “like garbage” and suggested that Gray Maynard’s face was too bloody to really deserve the decision, Diaz outlined a plan to go up to welterweight, explaining:

“I really don’t think I’m going to stay at 155lbs. I don’t make enough money to have to drop this much weight so I’d like to fight at 170 and only go to 55′s every once in awhile.”

Forgetting for the moment that his reasoning is completely flawed (seriously? you acknowledge that you can cut the weight, but don’t get paid enough to do it?), here’s why that’s a terrible idea:

(Photo courtesy of FightMagazine.com)

This morning I woke up, fed the dog his usual breakfast of Golden Grahams and uncooked bacon, made myself some coffee, and then sat down to watch the Tom Lawlor-Aaron Simpson fight once again, this time without furiously typing as it was happening.  I didn’t do this because I necessarily felt that it was a horrible decision.  You let a fight stay that close while also gassing out down the stretch, it’s like running your ancient space heater next to your collection of oily rags — sympathy is going to be hard to come by when something bad happens.

I went back and watched the fight again only because I wanted to see if my initial assessment of the first frame as a 10-8 round for Lawlor held up under closer scrutiny.  The verdict?  Absolutely.  Which is why it might be worth having a discussion about what a 10-8 round really looks like.

(Is it me, or did it just get way too real in here? Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

What happens when you get one fighter who has the nickname "The Bully" and another fighter who simply has the attitude of one together in the same building at the same time?  It becomes a very bad night to be a geek and/or a poser in Fairfax, Virginia.  That’s what.  Nate Diaz and Gray Maynard are set to go at it in the main event of UFC Fight Night 20 tonight, and we’ll be bringing you all the live results and priceless commentary you can stand.  Some of it will be spelled right, and at least 50% of the subjects and verbs will be in agreement, but other than that there’s really no telling what might happen. 

Will we accidentally hit upon a brilliant idea for a screenplay?  Will we suffer a crisis of conscience midway through an inappropriate joke about Mike Goldberg’s sister?  Only one way to find out, and it’s by joining us after the jump and hitting refresh often.  Things will get under way at around 9 p.m. EST, and it will be a laugh a minute after that. But only if you read very, very slowly.  And are very, very easily amused.

As much fun as we’ve been having with our wild speculation about what Tom Lawlor‘s entrance will look like on tonight’s UFC Fight Night 20 event, we didn’t actually want to know ahead of time.  Sure, we grilled Tom about it and tossed out our own ideas, but that’s like shaking the presents under the Christmas tree to find out which ones might be something good and which ones are crappy jigsaw puzzles from your aunt.  It’s all part of building the suspense. 

Apparently, nobody ever told Seth Petruzelli that.  The Kimbo-slayer took to Twitter this afternoon to let the world know that Lawlor is planning a Hulk Hogan-esque entrance tonight.  Lawlor has previously bandied about the idea of coming out to Hogan’s "Real American," but Petruzelli seems to be setting us up for a full Hulkamania entrance.  Or…is this all a bit of misdirection?  Is Petruzelli purposely deceiving us to make it even more awesome when Lawlor actually comes down to the Octagon Ultimate Warrior style?

We should have our answer soon enough.  Make sure to keep it locked on Cage Potato tonight at 9 p.m. EST for all the liveblogging fun.  Whatever happens, you’re going to want to share the moment with your internet BFF’s.  And no, we’re not talking about those nice Nigerians you keep wiring money to.  They don’t really like you.  Same goes for the people on that dating site.

A bonus, just to get us all pumped for tonight, is after the jump.

(Blackburn vs. Jay Hieron, 6/1/07)

Brad Blackburn is 3-0 in the UFC and hasn’t lost a fight since 2007, and yet he still doesn’t feel he’s getting the recognition – or the accompanying paycheck – that he deserves. The fame he could take or leave, he says, but the money is a different story. In this exclusive interview, “Bad” Brad tells us exactly what he’s hoping to accomplish when he faces Amir Sadollah (who, as we already know, is expecting things to be pretty terrible) at tonight’s UFC Fight Night 20, and why he has every reason to think he’ll be successful.

CagePotato.com: You’ve been in the sport for a while now, but it seems like a lot of casual fans, people who are only UFC fans, still have no idea who you are.

Blackburn: Yeah, that’s true. UFC fans. Which is the bulk of the fans.

Do you feel like the fight with Amir, who a lot of them probably know, is a chance to change that?

That’s exactly how I feel. Actually, that’s why I took the fight. If he didn’t have a big name it wouldn’t be worth the risk since he hasn’t really done a lot. He’s only had a couple fights. He’s a game fighter and he had a couple good wins, but he hasn’t done a lot in the sport. The value in it for me is his name. People know who he is.

(It’s such a thin line between a genuine mean-mug and a pouty little kid on the verge of a tantrum-mug. Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

UFC Fight Night 20, which we’ll be liveblogging, is coming at you on Spike TV from Fairfax, Virginia tonight.  It’s free MMA and you’re not one to pass that up, obviously, but you don’t want to go in cold, do you?  Best to cover all your bases by reading our half-ass predictions and petty bickering first.  This is Ben vs. Ben. 

Nate Diaz is a sizable betting underdog in his fight against Gray Maynard, due to the problems he’s had with wrestlers in the past. Are you giving Nate any chance to submit Gray like he did during TUF 5, or is this a guaranteed smothering?

BG: All signs point to smothering. Both guys have improved a great deal since their time on TUF 5, but it’s worth noting that Maynard was a green 2-0 coming into the show, and simply didn’t have enough experience to deal with a sharp submission game like Diaz’s. Three years later, submission defense is no longer a visible hole in Gray’s armor; seasoned grapplers like Jim Miller and Rich Clementi were absolutely helpless from their backs during their fights against him. Arguably, Diaz’s jiu-jitsu is on a higher level than Miller and Clementi’s, but after those losses to Clay Guida and Joe Stevenson last year, do we really need any more proof that wrestlers are Nate’s kryptonite?

(It was either this or another picture of Bader. Photos courtesy of twitpic.com/photos/ariannyceleste.)

— TUF 8 winner Ryan Bader may have suffered serious knee damage during his unanimous decision win over Carmelo Marrero on Wednesday. As Bader told MMA Weekly, "The doctor said I blew my MCL out and maybe the ACL…One of the first takedowns, I was passing from half-guard trying to pass to side control and I just heard my knee pop, which isn’t a big deal because they pop every once in a while. I stood back up and I felt that it was really, really loose. It didn’t really do too much as far as impeding me in the fight or anything like that, but it was starting to swell up a little bit. Hopefully the ACL is fine. I don’t really want to deal with that." In a worst-case scenario, the injury would require surgery and a long recovery period.

— Bader’s Arizona Combat Sports teammate Steve Steinbeiss was reportedly paid his to-show money as well as his win bonus for Wednesday’s event, even though his opponent Ryan Jensen was yanked from the fight following a positive test for Adderall.

— I think I got up to take a piss during this particular commercial break, but during a Burger King-sponsored/Amir Sadollah-hosted segment in the season premierewww.cagepotato.com/tuf-91-quick-recap-team-uk-gets-its-elite-8, TUF 9Forrest Griffin confirmed that he’ll be coming back to face Thiago Silva at UFC 101 (August 8th, Philadelphia). Griffin hasn’t fought since his UFC 92 title fight against Rashad Evans in December, in which he lost his belt and broke his hand. Sadollah also revealed that he’ll be making his first post-TUF appearance (as a welterweight) at the August event, though an opponent was not named.

(Carlos Condit vs. Martin Kampmann)

Last night’s "Condit vs. Kampmann" card brought in a live gate of $626,077, thanks to its 10,267 spectators — which made it the most well-attended Fight Night show in UFC history. $120,000 was re-distributed to the fighters in the form of $30,000 end-of-night bonuses. Taking home the extra cash were…

Fight of the Night: Tyson Griffin and Rafael Dos Anjos, as mentioned earlier. Don’t ask us why their sloppy slugfest got the nod over the technical back-and-forth battle of the main event.

Knockout of the Night: Aaron Simpson’s first-round stoppage of Tim McKenzie in the night’s opening bout turned out to be the only TKO on the card, so he scored the bonus by default.

Submission of the Night: Rob Kimmons earned the bump with his first-round guillotine choke victory over Joe Vedepo, which put Vedepo to sleep for the second time in his short UFC career. It was nice knowing you, buddy.

More videos from the main card after the jump…

(Ooh-rah! Proud Marine Luigi Fioravanti stomps the crap out of bark-eating hippie Luke Cummo. Photo courtesy of FightwireImages.)

MMA Mania is reporting that the UFC will hold a free SpikeTV event for the troops at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on December 10th. The event will be free for military personnel to attend and will likely feature former members of the armed services who are now fighters. It will be the first time the UFC has been in North Carolina since UFC 5 (Charlotte, 4/7/95), and just the second UFC event to be held on a military base (after UFC Fight Night 7 in December ’06).

The addition of this Fight Night card means that the UFC will be holding three events in December — the Ultimate Fighter 8 finale will take place just three days later on December 13th, and UFC 92 will go down two weeks after that on December 27th. Besides a WEC event rumored for 12/3, no other major MMA promotions have announced events for December yet, so the holiday season could be completely Zuffa-dominated.

CagePotato took part in the UFC press conference held today in advance of Wednesday’s UFC Fight Night. Headliners Mike “Quick” Swick and Josh “The People’s Warrior” Burkman answered questions from the press along with Patrick Cote and Drew McFedries.

A recap:

-Dana White “couldn’t make it”. Hangover or jet lag. Or both.

-Mike Swick was asked if he has concerns about dropping to welterweight: “Not really, I feel really good right now.” He hasn’t gotten down to this weight since 1997. His walk-around weight is 185. How’d he do it? Diet and exercise – who knew those two could help you lose weight?

-Patrick Cote has ADD.

-Game Day routine for Mike Swick: He starts focusing on the fight when he wakes up and really starts focusing on it when he leaves the locker room.

-Game Day routine for Patrick Cote: Sleeps late, hangs out and doesn’t get nervous. Secrets revealed!

-Game Day routine for Josh Burkman: Listens to his headphones and doesn’t think about the fight too much. Oh, and hanging out, of course.