(Shogun’s audition for Pride’s ill-fated production of "West Side Story" didn’t lack spirit, but Gilbert Yvel later proved to have more jazz-tap experience.)

It used to be that we all had a lot of fun listening to Anderson Silva’s next opponent wax optimistic about the one thing everyone else had missed that he had finally figured out when it came to devising a strategy to beat “The Spider.”   That is so 2008.  As we all know, Lyoto Machida is the new Silva, so now everyone gets to take their turn claiming to have figured him out.  Next up is “Shogun” Rua, who says you got to be patient, but not too patient:

“Most of the guys that fought Lyoto… found a problem with patience, with finding the right moment to attack, or to counter-strike him.  Some guys try to rush it too much; some guys try to stay too patient, (and) they start to get nervous because of that.  …I think the key is the timing of the fight, to get the feeling of when to engage and when to counter-strike him. This is likely the key, to find the pace and the rhythm, mostly the timing of the strikes to be able to connect and to make it a fight. For sure, I’m going to concentrate on that and develop a good strategy.”

Cut the bullshit, Shogun.  You have no idea what you’re going to do against this guy, do you?

Joe Stevenson began his UFC career on the second season of “The Ultimate Fighter.”  On Saturday night he returns to fight another TUF alum, Nate Diaz, on the season nine finale in what might prove to be a make-or-break outing for him.  In our exclusive talk with him, Joe “Daddy” tells us why he changed training camps after his decision loss to Diego Sanchez, whether he’s worried about being cut, and why he might be hesitant to appear on a new season of TUF if he were coming up through the ranks today.

CagePotato.com: So you’ve been in New Mexico with Greg Jackson’s team preparing for this fight.  What made you decide that it was time for a change of training camps?

JS: Honestly, I’ve been here for going on seven weeks now and it’s been great.  I was feeling a little stagnant and I knew that if I didn’t try something different I would regret it.  If you don’t try all your avenues you’re going to end up when your fifty wishing you’d done something different and I don’t want to be that person.  On top of that, there’s great coaching here, great strategy, and they’ve given me a different outlook on the way I fight.  I’m just excited to let people see it now.

You mentioned strategy and that’s something a lot of people talk about when it comes to Greg Jackson.  How is his way of strategizing for a fight different from what you’ve been exposed to in the past?

(Yep, that’s how bad it was.)

Yeah, I know that he was technically ineligible to receive a Submission of the Night bonus at UFC 98.  And the fight wasn’t competitive enough (read: at all) to garner consideration for Fight of the Night.  But when you beat ass with the kind of dominating, precise beauty that Lyoto Machida did last night, knocking out Rashad Evans and looking like a perfect fighting machine sent back in time by a futuristic Karate-centric society to teach us all a valuable lesson, it really seems like they ought to create a new bonus category to honor you.

(Does it even matter why this picture was taken?)

- Everyone is just trying to help Chuck Liddell. (Fightlinker)

- UFC Undisputed is a solid hit. (MMA Payout)

- Machida talks urine drinking. (Ask Men)

- The pros pick Evans vs. Machida. (Sherdog)

- Check out the final Bellator tournament schedule. (Fighters Only)

- Rashad Evans talks Machida, being the underdog. (Ask Men)

- Video of Machida vs. Bonnar. (MMA TKO)

- Top 3 most frustrating teams to watch in baseball. (Scores Report)

- The celebrity gender switch experiment. (Holy Taco)

- 10 great war movie quotes. (Screen Junkies)

- 56 insanely hot Indy car grid girls. (All Left Turns)

- Fat kid ATV jousting nut shot. (Nothing Toxic)

(Kampmann does some of his best thinking on the streets, right around dusk, wearing his UFC sweatshirt.  You wouldn’t understand, man.)

You have to love it when an MMA fighter explains why he turned down a fight that the UFC offered him and begins with the phrase, ‘No disrespect to [name of fighter he is disrespecting], but…’  It’s as smooth a move as saying, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ right before you say something that you know will be taken the wrong way.  That’s basically what Martin Kampmann is doing while explaining to Versus.com why he turned down a fight with T.J. Grant that has been all over the internets the last couple days as if were totally official:

“No disrespect to T.J. Grant, but I don’t think it’s a fight that makes any sense for me at the moment,” Kampmann said. “I want to fight some higher ranked guys. I never even knew who the guy was, and he’s probably a tough guy. But I want to fight guys who make sense for me and who can escalate me up the ladder more, so I didn’t accept that fight. I don’t know what happened, but apparently some miscommunication somewhere because I saw it all over the internet.”

Sean Sherk’s last two fights against B.J. Penn and Tyson Griffin respectively have seen him trying to reinvent himself as more of a boxer than the one-dimensional wrestler we’ve come to know and tolerate.  But will he really stick with that approach against Frankie Edgar who, as you can see, has some decent hands of his own?  Current Vegas odds have Sherk as slightly better than a 2-1 favorite, which makes sense if you think about the way he’s outwrestled opponents like Hermes Franca and Kenny Florian, and then compare it to the way Edgar was flat out dominated on the mat by Gray Maynard.  

But if Sherk gets caught up trying to please the fans and placate the people who say he can’t finish fights and isn’t entertaining to watch, he’s rolling the dice.  So which Sherk will we see on Saturday — the boxer or the wrestler?  And will it matter?

In B.J. Penn’s latest video blog he answers some fan mail and discusses his ongoing case against Georges St. Pierre that the Nevada State Athletic Commission has basically decided to hear, but do absolutely nothing in response to.  Penn seems to be blaming the NSAC’s Keith Kizer, saying he “can’t be trusted” and insisting that he has “no interest in fighting in Nevada or Las Vegas ever again.”

Just to clarify, that’s the UFC’s home base that he’s talking about – the city where the majority of their events are held.  And here the UFC lightweight champ says he doesn’t want to fight there ever again because the commission is made up of a bunch of shady ne’er-do-wells.  This could be a problem.

(Always bringing his cock out at the most inappropriate moments.)

Here’s how badly Roy Jones Jr. wants to fight UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva: he’s willing to do it as an MMA bout, where his chances of losing are very, very good.  This, according to a new CBS Sports article in which UFC president Dana White admits that Jones has offered to fight Silva in the UFC Octagon under MMA rules, but White flatly refused:

"I could do it, make it huge, make money, but I could have done a fight like this when we were bleeding money [in the early 2000s]," White said. "The fight would make some money, but it hurts MMA in the long term. We don’t do that because we love the sport. That’s a Pride or K-1 matchup. It’s not what we do."

Honorable, right?  The UFC could make a ton of money on a Jones/Silva bout (regardless of what you think of Jones’ current appeal as a boxing pay-per-view draw, the sheer novelty of this fight alone would guarantee a better buy-rate than any other Anderson Silva bout in recent memory), but say they’re opting not to because it would be bad for the sport.  But how, exactly, does this hurt MMA as a whole?

(‘This? Just a karate tournament trophy I won in the seventh grade. I bring it to all my fights. Intimidated?’)

Undaunted by his decision loss to Denis Kang at UFC 97, Xavier Foupa-Pokam (“Professor X” to his friends) is doing the best thing a new UFC addition without a victory in the Octagon can do – he’s fighting again right away and on short notice.  A knee injury has reportedly forced James Irvin out of a bout with Drew McFedries at UFC 98 and Foupa-Pokam has stepped up to fight McFedries in his place, and why not?

I spoke to Kenny Florian last week for this SportsIllustrated.com article on the effects of the dreaded “Octagon jitters,” and naturally our conversation turned to his upcoming UFC lightweight title fight against B.J. Penn at UFC 101.  When I asked about Penn’s claims that Florian had warned him of potential “greasing” by Georges St. Pierre before their UFC 94 superfight, Florian did his best to downplay the dust-up.

“I’m not sure what that was.  Maybe it was a miscommunication, after what I had said about Roger Huerta.  Maybe it was head games on his part.  Maybe he genuinely believes that.  I don’t really know.  But I have a lot of respect for B.J.  I think he’s a proud champion.  I think he worked hard for that fight against Georges, and he just wasn’t able to deliver.  That can be hard to deal with.  I think that loss hurt him.”

(Silva keeps talking about the elusive "perfect fight" with "Inside MMA.")

You might think that Patrick Cote, of all people, would be somewhat sympathetic regarding the negative fan reaction after the five-round snoozer between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites at UFC 97.  You’d be wrong.  Despite being one half of a middleweight title fight that was unsatisfying for different reasons, Cote wasn’t afraid to come right out and blast Leites, telling FightHype.com the fight was “boring.”  Which, of course, we already knew.  But he didn’t stop there.

(Props: the UG)

Bruce Buffer may be the last sure thing left in the UFC.  Here’s footage of him introducing Anderson Silva at UFC 97 and making it into an event all its own.  Check out the hops on the Buff.  Who knew?  It used to be that Silva was guaranteed to give you your money’s worth.  With him not wanting to "risk" his belt, those days may be over.  At least Buffer still knows how to deliver.

After the jump, Ken Shamrock prepares to make his UFC comeback against an opponent who’s just his style.

(Just when you’re hypnotized by the look of peace and harmony in his eyes, he whips around and lops your head clean off.)

Rising UFC heavyweight prospect Shane Carwin chose a nickname for himself, no thanks to you people.  After hundreds of suggestions from you and from members of his official fan community, Carwin went with “The Engineer” as his official nickname.  It makes sense, since he is actually an engineer, which you would know if you’d read Neal Taflinger’s awesome cover story on him in Fight! Magazine.  But since we thought you people had some decent ideas we wanted to get Carwin’s reaction to some of our favorites, just to see where the Potato Nation went wrong.  Here’s what he had to say.