(Note to Anthony: ‘Super Hulk’ isn’t a real weight-division.)

Anthony “Rumble” Johnson has gone from being awesome and stringing together some great knockout wins in the UFC, to washing out because of his inability to make weight. He missed weight three times in the UFC, most epically in his last bout against Vitor Belfort, and now it appears he’s done it again. MMA Fighting’s Mike Chiappetta has the details:

“Another fight, another weight issue for Anthony Johnson. A Friday night bout that will mark his first since his UFC release has been reset at a 195-pound catch weight despite numerous previous announcements it would be contested at 185.

The Titan Fighting 22 bout was originally advertised as a middleweight bout, but on Thursday’s edition of Bloody Elbow Radio, promoter Joe Kelly said that Johnson and opponent Dave Branch had signed catch weight contracts instead. Johnson weighed in at 194.2 while Branch was 189.2.

I’m not touching this one. *Innocently whistles* *Walks Away* Props to reader Johnnyozone22 for the tip.

This doesn’t look good, folks. Initially reported by TMZ.com and confirmed by Josh Gross, UFC Light-Heavyweight champion Jon Jones has been arrested in Binghamton, New York on DUI charges after totaling his Bentley. From TMZ:

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … Jones was involved in an accident at around 5:00 AM in Binghamton, NY. We’re told the car — which Jones crashed into a pole — was totaled and cops arrested Jones on the scene for DUI.

According to our sources, Jones was taken into custody by Broome County Sheriff and bailed out a few hours later … by his mom. Jones is from nearby Ithaca.

Fortunately for Jones, it appears that he only suffered minor injuries, and it does not appear that anyone else was injured from this accident. It is unclear whether or not there were any passengers in the car at the time of the accident.

By Elias Cepeda

We’ve got two quarter final match ups today so let’s jump right in. From Coach Dominick Cruz’ team we have Vinc Pichel taking on Coach Urijah Faber’s Chris Saunders. After that, Team Faber teammates Al Iaquinta and Andy Ogle lock up. At the end of the episode, injured Cruz’ replacement to face Faber at UFC 148 for the interim bantamweight title will also be announced.

UFC welterweight Nick Diaz recently filed suit against the Nevada State Athletic Commission, asking for an injunction against their summary suspension of the fighter for his February failed drug test. Yesterday, a district court judge in Clark County denied Diaz’s request for the injunction.

Diaz’s attorney Ross Goodman previously claimed that the NSAC had breached statutes and his right to due process, arguing that the NSAC no longer had jurisdiction over his situation. Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto then tried to publicly debunk the argument. Now that Diaz’s injunction has been denied, he can appear before the NSAC in a hearing set by the athletic commission on May 21st. (Check out MMAFighting’s report for more details.)

(The quiet confidence that comes from knowing that, even if you lost at the polls, you could still easily beat your opponent up if you needed to. | Photo via Lytle For Indiana)

Retired UFC star Chris Lytle turned to politics a month after his final fight — a submission win over former #1 contender Dan Hardy — and last night that dream, as Jon Anik might say, ended. Lytle came in second in the three-candidate Republican Primary race for Indiana’s 28th Senate District.

Mike Crider earned the nomination with 41% of the vote, to Lytle’s 30%. Last night Lytle tweeted his concession,“Almost. I finished 2nd. It was a good fight.”

For a first-time political candidate, it absolutely was. And even if the self-described “constitutional conservative,” never attains elected office, at least he can say he tapped out someone that the greatest welterweight in history couldn’t finish, at the end of a wildly entertaining fight career that saw him earn more end-of-of-night bonuses than anybody in UFC history. Also, we got to see him a suit, so there’s that.

Since 1999, we’ve seen Lytle as a world-class fighter, a fireman, and a political hopeful. (This guy raises his beer to you, buddy.) We wish Lights Out the best in whatever he puts his hands to next.

-Elias Cepeda

“Whoooooaaaa…says here this thing is a ‘Rousimar Palhares’. We’re already legally dead.”

Yesterday, while you were making terrible Star Wars jokes and/or mourning the death of MCA, lawmakers in “The Green Mountain State” were busy passing a bill to regulate the sport of mixed martial arts. Vermont is now the 46th state in the United States to regulate our sport.

My initial reaction to this news was probably the same as yours: “That’s nice.” Our second reactions were probably also pretty similiar: Damn, New York. You let the state known for its organic-granola crunching, Birkenstock wearing hippies regulate MMA before you did. Get your shit together. For real this time.

Granted, everything I know about Vermont I’ve learned from pints of Ben & Jerry’s. So let’s read the press release that the UFC issued:

“Vermont’s legislation of the sport of MMA is further evidence of the continued growth and success of our sport in this country,” said UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta. “We are pleased that fans in Vermont will now have the opportunity to watch a live UFC event in their own backyard, and look forward to making that happen.”

(Sadly, the fight between Penn and Jon Fitch was ruled a draw and the puppy was left without a home)

UFC President Dana White continues to say that future hall of famer BJ Penn will indeed return to the Octagon, despite Penn’s coyness. But Thursday, White provided more details to MMA Junkie on what weight the pound for pound great will fight at, and revealed that Penn declined a bout with Strikeforce champ Gilbert Melendez.

“I tried to do [Melendez vs. Penn], but it was at the time when B.J. was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not fighting for a while,’” White told Junkie.

Apparently, he didn’t say if that match up would have meant Penn going to Strikeforce or Melendez going to the UFC.

(Come at me, NSAC!)

UFC welterweight contender Nick Diaz has sued the Nevada State Athletic Commission for allegedly violating his right to due process and for alleged violations of statutory law. Diaz’s suit petitions the court to stay the summary suspension given to Diaz by the NSAC and to prohibit the NSAC from going forward with additional disciplinary proceedings.

And, oh yeah, Diaz says he is ready to fight “immediately,” should the court rule in his favor, in a sworn affidavit released by his attorney. “On February 7th, 2012, the UFC’s President publicly announced that Mr. Condit agreed to an immediate rematch against me. It is my understanding that the winner of that rematch will be offered a contest against Georges St-Pierre, the current UFC welterweight champion,” Diaz said.

Top 10 beard-for-beard MMA reporter Luke Thomas has more details, many of which will fly over your head if you’re not a law student:

Radio show host Jim Rome had the dubious honor yesterday of informing UFC President Dana White of the Nevada State Athletic Commission‘s denial of a license for heavyweight Alistair Overeem and their ruling that he would not be allowed to reapply for nine months. White responded by saying he assumed Overeem would have gotten a more severe punishment and that he is unsure if Alistair will still have a job with the UFC.

“I thought he would get a year. Easily a year,” White said. “I’m not a fan at all. You’re not going to hear me today on your radio show defending Alistair Overeem. Believe me.”

Luckily for Alistair, White has brought back plenty of guys who have failed drug tests or otherwise violated the law. Hell, Alistair has already failed a drug test so he might be a felony away from receiving a title shot when and if he returns. But for Overeem to blow it so epically when so much was on the line? That might be unforgivable.

“I know he lied to me,” White told Rome. “I don’t like it…if they’ll sit in front of you and lie to your face, [they're] not the kind of guys I want to do business with.”

Check out audio from Rome’s interview with Uncle Dana after the jump.

(We know Liddell has been training hard with other top talent, but a comeback probably wouldn’t be prudent)

It would be easy to call Chuck Liddell nuts for thinking he has a chance at beating current light heavyweight king Jon Jones at this point in his life, as he implies in a recent interview with Fuel TV (video after the jump). Simply going by “MMA math” alone, the former 205-pound ruler finished his career losing five out his last six fights, and three of those losses came against guys (Shogun, Rashad and Rampage) who were easily handled by Bones in subsequent matches.

“The only thing that would make me even think about coming back is if they gave me a shot at the title,” Liddell told Ariel Helwani. “So, we’ll see.” Well, hopefully we won’t see. You don’t have to be a neurologist to understand that a comeback fight against the world’s top-ranked light-heavyweight would put Chuck’s long-suffering brain in grave danger.

That said, we won’t mock retired fighters for retaining some of the same qualities that we loved about them when they were active. Over the course of Liddell’s 12-year career, the former college wrestler probably faced only three guys that he would not have been able to out-wrestle and win in safe, if boring fashion. Yet, the Iceman had so much guts, bravado, and love for the battle itself that he instead chose to slug it out almost all of the time. As a result, MMA fans got to witness some of the most exciting knockouts in the sport’s history — first with Liddell on the winning end, and then with him in the more painful role of victim.

By Elias Cepeda

Following a hearing held earlier today, the Nevada State Athletic Commission denied UFC #1 heavyweight contender Alistair Overeem‘s request to be licensed to compete in the state. Overeem will not be allowed to reapply for a license in Nevada for nine months.

Because most states respect one another’s rulings and licenses — and because the UFC has a working practice of not circumventing U.S. athletic commission decisions by placing unlicensed or suspended fighters on foreign cards — Overeem will likely not be able to make a living fighting for the next nine months. He already lost out on his chance to challenge champion Junior Dos Santos May 26th because of his recent drug test, in which he came up positive for an dramatically elevated testosterone-to-epitestosterone level.

Overeem was represented at his hearing by well-known attorney David Chesnoff. Chesnoff attempted to make the case the Overeem’s elevated levels were the result not of an attempt to enhance Overeem’s performance but rather of anti-inflammatory injections administered and prescribed by a Dallas-area doctor to help Overeem heal from injuries incurred in training and re-aggravated while fighting that the fighter was not told also contained testosterone.

(Come on brah, would you give up this life to wrestle with a bunch of fence holders? | Photo via FIGHT!)

My good friend Karyn Bryant, host of MMA Heat, recently interviewed former welterweight and lightweight champion BJ Penn and asked him if he was still retired. Penn said he was grateful for the attention but that he doesn’t intend to fight right now.

“At the moment, I don’t have any plans to fight,” Penn said. “I have nothing scheduled, I’m just kind of taking it easy at this point in my life. As of right now, yeah, I’m not entering the Octagon anytime soon.”

Penn says that losing to Nick Diaz last fall was not the only reason he decided to stop competing. “The fight was a tough fight but I don’t think it was just that fight. I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he said.

Bryant revealed to Penn that she had spoken to his boxing coach Jason Parillo, and that Parillo said he recently held pads for BJ. So why would Penn be hitting pads if he was retired?

(Think cell phones are hard to operate now, Dana? Just wait until you try to use ones with Hindi and Mandarin keypads.)

On the heels of breaking into another new country and the ratings success of The Ultimate Fighter‘s first international version, UFC President Dana White is open to launching regional titles for the promotion. “The bottom line is as we start kicking off all these ‘Ultimate Fighters’ in other countries, it’s going to open up the floodgates for a lot more fighters, and guys are going to need a lot more experience,” MMA Junkie reports White as saying after Saturday’s event in Sweden.

“We talked about [regional champions],” he continued. “We talked about rankings — just like boxing, guys ranked in other countries. So you end up being ranked. I don’t know. You have UFC champions, and then you have guys that are ranked in different countries. It absolutely makes sense. In the big picture, long-term, it absolutely makes perfect sense.”

By Elias Cepeda

(U.N.’s revenge: Anderson Silva knew he shouldn’t have cozied up to John Bolton so publicly back in the late nineties)

Just over two months away from when it was supposed to happen, the year’s most anticipated MMA bout does not yet have a time and place locked in stone, according to UFC President Dana White. Middleweight champion Anderson Silva and #1 contender Chael Sonnen were supposed to square off in a rematch of their 2010 thriller at UFC 147 in Rio de Janiero on June 23rd but at Saturday’s post UFC in Sweden event press conference White revealed that a conference of the United Nations scheduled in Rio the same week may force the fight promotion to move their event.

“The problem down in Rio right now is they’re having a big United Nations convention down there, so there’s some stuff going on. We’re working through it trying to figure this whole thing out,” White said to the assembled media.

The U.N. conference was announced after the UFC first announced their intentions to hold an event in Rio on June 23rd, and will draw tens of thousands of visitors to the city, in addition to heads of state. White says that he’s essentially being told that Rio ain’t big enough for the both of the UFC and U.N.

By Elias Cepeda

(I have seen the future of Swedish MMA and it is pale, polite and packs a nasty uppercut)

No one really disappointed in the UFC’s first ever event in Sweden Saturday. Swedish headliner Alexander Gustafsson won an entertaining and technical stand-up striking battle against Thiago Silva. For his part, Silva was coming off of a one-year suspension from a failed drug test and was a late replacement for Antonio Rogerio Nogueira but found success in spots throughout the fight and never stopped pushing the pace and coming forward, no matter how much damage he took.

It’s always fun to see what crowds in new UFC territory are like and the Swedish fans proved to be a pleasing combination. Think the soccer chants of British and Brazilian fans with the polite appreciation of Japanese fans (but slightly louder). When one of their own won, they roared. When one of theirs lost, they applauded the victor for their honest effort. Old dad was on the scene last week and did a great job writing about Swedish attitudes.

As he wrote, Silva was initially one of the few people to get booed in Sweden. But that had more to do with his assumed steroid use than his nationality. And by the end of his strong-willed battle against Gustafsson, the Swedish fans cheered Silva for his aggression.

By Elias Cepeda

This week’s matchup between Joe Proctor and Chris Tickle seems to be a study in contrast. Proctor has been quiet thus far, with his nose to the grindstone in training. Tickle has been loud, full of bravado, while annoying his coaches by finding ways not to train during practices.

Similarly, both sides seem to agree that Proctor is the more technical fighter, with the ability to finish on the ground while Tickle is a powerful brawler that needs to avoid the ground. But before we can get to that fight, Tickle showed up drunk to last week’s.

After his teammate loses and he is selected to fight Proctor, we see Tickle giggling, talking smack and pushing his coach Dominick Cruz over the edge. We are told, and its not hard to believe, that Tickle got crunk prior to the bout.

Coach Cruz is in no mood for jokes after losing his second straight in the locker room and tells Tickle to “shut up. Shut up.” “What are you doing?” Cruz asks Tickle.

“Nothing,” Tickle replies. “I’m being me.”

Coach Cruz, and perhaps the viewing nation, simply replies, “why?”

Last week’s episode ended with Tickle getting in Urijah Faber and Proctor’s face when the match up was announced. Proctor teammate Al Iaqunita, fresh off his own win, believes that Tickle’s courage is liquid-based.

By Elias Cepeda

After the normal celebrating and gloating from last week’s winning Faber team, attention is turned to this week’s matchup of Team Cruz’ Jeremy Larsen and Team Faber’s Mike Chiesa. Remember when a few weeks back Mike’s father died just after seeing him fight and win on national television, and we learned that Mike and Sam Sicilia are best friends and training partners back home.

Well, on this year’s TUF, the two lightweights have found themselves on opposing teams, but are trying to find a balance between not betraying their team and not betraying one another. They call themselves “Team purple,” as in a combination of Faber’s blue team and Cruz’ red team. That’s adorable. Really.

(Props: youtube.com/fueltv)

Chael Sonnen is back with more surreal statements in his latest Chael’s Corner segment for Fuel’s UFC Tonight. Here a sampling of Sonnen’s sincere and deep thoughts:

“Fighters have recently seen it as their quasi-job to continually put out misinformation.”

Recently? Naw that’s nothing new, Chael. Fighters have never had a problem, say, screaming in pain and tapping out to a submission, and then claiming that they did not. Heck, some guys have even gone on pr campaigns questioning the professionalism of refs who save fighters who ask for fights to be stopped. Maybe it doesn’t count as misinformation if the obvious truth is caught on live national television.

“[Some fighters] just refuse to answer a question, head on.”

True. Like, for example, answering questions with non-sequitor quotes ripped off from western movies and pro wrestling promos.

“There’s a tremendous difference between what fighters say vs. what fighters mean.”

(Bellator’s charmingly “WTF?” fight-finishes are coming to a reality show near you.)

Though Bellator Fighting Championships has been putting on high-quality fights for three years now, the organization and CEO Bjorn Rebney have been careful to not wage war with the UFC. However, it was announced today that Bellator will step just a little bit closer to direct-competitor status, with a reality show to air on the same cable network that gave the UFC its big break by airing The Ultimate Fighter — Spike TV.

After the UFC and Spike could not come to terms on continuing their partnership, Spike’s parent company Viacom bought Bellator, announcing that the new organization would begin airing programming on Spike in 2013. We now know that part of that will be a reality show featuring Bellator fighters and produced by The Amazing Race producer, Bertram van Munster.

“Some of the most physically-gifted and fascinating athletes in the world fight in Bellator, and I believe that they make ideal subjects for an innovative non-scripted series,” van Munster said in a statement released by Spike today.

(Try as they might, Coleman’s corner simply was not equipped to stop the swelling around his eye between rounds)

None of us who watched it could ever forget when former UFC and Pride champion Mark Coleman embraced his sobbing daughters in the ring after losing to Fedor Emelianenko in 2006 and reassured them that “daddy was alright.” Turns out, neither have his daughters. But, according to one of them, it wasn’t nearly the terrifying experience that we all assumed it to be.

“It was so fun out there…I don’t regret it at all,” Coleman’s daughter said during an interview for an HDNet Fights segment on her dad, which you can check out after the jump.

Coleman was also interviewed, and teared up when talking about the moment and the criticism that he received for it. The idea that he had in some way traumatized his daughters by bringing them to the fight — then introducing them to the man who beat him up — is still hard for Coleman to swallow. “Being a dad was the most important thing to me in the world,” he said.

(“Don’t you ever dismiss Katy Perry as an empty vessel for pop drivel again! ‘Teenage Dream’ is this generation’s ‘Sounds of Silence’!”)

TMZ is usually just good for catching Quinton “Rampage” Jackson monster truck racing police, Chuck Liddell drunk off his ass, or Dan Henderson corralling comely young ladies into cars. But recently their camera-creeps ran into the very well-behaved and incredibly friendly UFC heavyweight champ, Junior Dos Santos. As you’ll see, Dos Santos is becoming the new Wanderlei Silva — nightmare-inducing inside the ring but completely disarming and approachable outside of it.

Somehow, the amicable Dos Santos was able to turn the asinine pestering questions from the TMZ crew into an adorable video of him signing pop songs, and putting the sport of MMA in a favorable light. Check out the video after the jump of Dos Santos “singing” Adele and professing his love for Katy Perry.

(Has Lesnar decided to return to the quiet and dignified life of professional wrestling?)

Earlier this weekend there were rumors that former UFC heavyweight champion — and before that, former WWE champion — Brock Lesnar had signed a new deal with the WWE and would be making an appearance at their annual pay-per-view centerpiece WrestleMania yesterday. Lesnar never actually showed up on the broadcast, and the rumors of his re-signing with the WWE are still just that, but they come from about as reliable a rumor-mill as there is in the business, Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer (via MMAMania):

“Brock Lesnar has arrived in Miami and arrived with security and a large group of people shielding him from everyone. This is the going story, but not confirmed, that Lesnar has signed a one year deal and will work a more than Undertaker and less than Goldberg type of schedule.”

What they mean is that Lesnar would not be driving all over the country in a rental car five days a week, working show after show like most people on the WWE roster. That’s good, since Lesnar first left the WWE because he didn’t want to have to maintain the brutal grind of a pro wrestler’s life, no matter how well it paid.

By Elias Cepeda

Episode four opens with Team Cruz’ Myles Jury and Team Faber’s Al Iaqunita walking into the training center for their fight, set to take place in 42. Cruz chose this matchup, putting Jury, who he had trained with in San Diego, against Faber’s first pick, Al Iaqunita.

Cruz looks to be using a strategy of trying to take out some of Faber’s toughest guys early in the competition.

“There’s a strategy to everything that I’m doing,” he says. “I want to go straight for the jugular on these guys, take out every guy that could give them hope.”

That he says it in his typical little boy voice makes Cruz’ ruthlessness even more eerie.

Faber , for his part, seems to like the match up as well. “Thank you! Yes,” he says of Cruz’ matchup.

We’ve discussed this season’s new format of live fights and related changes, but the season’s new theme music might be the best change of all. Invoking a lil Stevie Wonder and Red Hot Chili Peppers with their rendition of “Higher Ground,” is a step up from typical MMA-related music and also hits the right thematic note for a bunch of fighters trying to reach the next level.

By Elias Cepeda

Jon Anik’s silky voice talks us in to episode two of The Ultimate Fighter 15, telling us we’re less than an hour away from tonight’s live fight. We’re about to see what happened this past week in TUFlandia but right now there are two hooded fighters warming up with their backs to the camera in their respective lock rooms.

Could it be? Yes…those two (at present) nameless and faceless fighters will fight each other tonight but we will have to wait and see who they are. Cheesy, but kinda cool. Another new element of this debuting hybrid taped/live TUF format. Also, there’s a fight clock on the bottom right hand of the screen, ticking down.

The 16 winning fighters from last week’s elimination round pull up to the TUF mansion and once again we see a new crop of young fighters enthusiastically explore their new digs with the type of giddiness that can only lead us to believe that they’ve never watched past seasons and thus don’t realize how completely miserable it can be to be locked in that house. Happens every season.

Source: @Rampage4real

Looks like Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is back on the energy drinks.

When he took to his Twitter page earlier this week to blast the UFC, many of us assumed he was just venting after a difficult loss to Ryan Bader at UFC 144. Well, Rampage is still venting, except now he’s asking for his release from the UFC. In a bizarre twist to an already strange situation, Rampage blames the UFC for the reason he’s lost his desire to fight. And he implies that the desire to keep fighting will somehow come back to him once he walks away from the biggest stage in MMA.

And if you thought that that was strange, consider his next two tweets, both of which in response to fans’ reactions to his initial announcement:

(Looks like Viacom is putting its cash behind its latest investment.)

Divorces can be so bitter, can’t they?

SPIKE is really rubbing in how much more they like their new wife’s kids than they do the ones they helped make. It must be hard for the UFC to  see them spending so much time with Bellator buying them ice cream and cotton candy, when they don’t even call them on their birthday or pay any child support.

They rubbed salt into the fresh wound this week when they announced their latest family outing: a new Bellator video game developed by their newly-formed SPIKE Games family.

Funny, they won’t even give their own kids their old home movies, yet they start a new company to help their stepkids prosper. That’s cold.

Kung-Fu Games, the group responsible for creating the somewhat underwhelming Supremacy MMA title, are helping with the project. They also worked on on the new Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat and Ugly Americans games released by 345 Games — the Viacom-owned collective made up of Spike Games and Comedy Central Games.

According to the release, the game, dubbed Bellator: Onslaught, should be out this summer.

Check out a sneak peek of the game after the jump.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/RootsofFight)

If you were to ask 100 MMA fans to define mixed martial arts in a word, their responses would differ greatly. If you asked the same census group to define the sport in a name, nearly all would give you the same answer: Gracie.

While some would likely say that Rorian and Royce — having respectively founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship and won three of its first four tournaments in decisive fashion — were the impetus behind their answer, most would likely point to Gracie jiu-jitsu originators Helio and Carlos Gracie as the reason for their response.

Carlos and Helio were innovators, who, although they didn’t invent the art of jujitsu, or it’s “successor,” judo,  they did arguably revolutionize the hybrid fighting art, making it more effective than both, especially when used by smaller combatants against larger opponents.

To the brothers, their variation of the centuries old  Japanese martial art form, now known universally as “Brazilian” or “Gracie” jiu-jitsu, was not just simply efficacious in competition; it was equally as useful in self-defense and street fighting scenarios — a point they have stressed since introducing it to the masses more than 80 years ago.

Decades before Rorian and Royce made history with the UFC, their father Helio represented the Gracie name and defended its honor in scores of challenge matches designed to prove that GJJ — an offshoot of Kodokan judo, which was taught to them by Japanese immigrant and judo master Mitsuyo Maeda, was more effective than any other form of martial art.

(Porier before his UFC debut)

With the recent run of awesome mixed martial arts documentaries we’ve been treated to the past few years like Renzo Gracie: Legacy, The Reem, Driven, Once I was a Champion and Like Water, there’s a pretty good chance that we’re in for a drought, especially if you consider that there was a six-plus-year span between the current block of flicks and The Smashing Machine.

Before we enter into our next six years of obscure docs loosely-related to MMA like Joe Son’s Prison Diaries and Gus Johnson at LeCage, we still have one fantastic looking one to look forward to: Fightville.

The film, which is set for limited theatrical release and for On Demand viewing by select cable and satellite providers April 20, follows the lives of a number of Louisiana-based fighters, most notably fast-rising UFC featherweight Dustin Poirier and his coach and mentor, TUF 7 and UFC vet Tim Credeur.

Check out the trailer after the jump.

(“Does it matter that I’m no longer an MMA fighter? I can still analyticate what went down on the show, can’t I?”)

SPIKE TV announced today that it has hired UFC washout, and arguably the promotion’s biggest fringe draw next to Brock Lesnar, Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson, to host its new weekly Friday night TUF repeat show, “The Ultimate Fighter Fridays.”

(Video courtesy of YouTube/CagePotato)

The three-hour premiere episode will air March 9, which, not coincidentally is opposite  episode 1 of FX’s The Ultimate Fighter Live, at 9:00 pm ET on SPIKE, and will feature Slice’s recollections from his six weeks in the fighter house.

(The future is wide open for “The Flash.”)

Bibiano Fernandes contacted us today via email to clear up any controversy that may have arisen from a mistranslated quote from TATAME that we reported on this morning.

According to the Brazilian website,  the DREAM bantamweight champ allegedly revealed during a recent interview that he had turned down the UFC in favor of re-signing with the struggling Japanese promotion after his contract expired following his 2011 DREAM Bantamweight tournament final win over Antonio Banuelos on New Year’s Eve.