(Let’s cut to the chase.  Is Fedor going to have to give back the belt or not?  Because his family already ate off the damn thing and it is a bitch to clean.)

A press release sent out this afternoon announced that former UFC champion Pat Miletich and Five Ounces of Pain founder Sam Caplan have both resigned from WAMMA in what Caplan described as “not an amicable parting.”  Said Miletich:

"Throughout my entire time with WAMMA, I’ve been sincere in my belief that the sport needs undisputed champions in every major weight class.  To this day, I still feel that way and still believe in WAMMA’s basic principles. However, I no longer believe that WAMMA’s execution is where it needs to be in order for it to meet its full potential. Based on that and a growing difference of opinion with WAMMA’s board of directors, I made the decision that it is time to move on."

(I’m sure it looks great on the wall next to Fedor’s prized "Wizard of Oz" commemorative plates.)

As you would have noticed if you weren’t so busy watching videos of midgets fighting on the internet, “MMA Live” has begun incorporating rankings from WAMMA recently.  This has the guys from Bloody Elbow in a twist because they just partnered with USA Today to feature their “meta-rankings,” and because they generally hate WAMMA.

I’m one of WAMMA’s rankings pollsters, so I can understand some frustration and confusion with some of WAMMA’s moves.  Naming Shinya Aoki champion, for instance?  I love the Man in Tights as much as anyone, but he’s not the world’s best lightweight and everbody knows it. 

WAMMA seems intent on giving out fairly meaningless titles to the best fighters not in the UFC, and that’s kind of dumb but it’s also not really hurting anybody.  And just because WAMMA’s executives make some stupid decisions and appear in hilarious photos from time to time, it’s not any reason to invalidate the actual rankings, which the executives have nothing to do with.

From the Houston Chronicle, Jared Barnes talks with Tim Sylvia about the state of his career and the potential for WAMMA’s legitimacy. Sylvia is under the impression that he’ll be fighting on the second Affliction show in October, but won’t say who he might face. He also says that he’d eventually like a rematch with Fedor, presumably because it’s a great way to get paid without having to be in the ring very long. He also manages to talk a little smack about Ricco Rodriguez. Just proves that no matter how low you’re feeling, there’s always someone down there for you to kick.

Maybe you’ve never really noticed the IFL‘s logo; that’s understandable. But it used to look like this:

And now, as announced in a press release sent out this morning, the IFL’s new logo for 2008 will look like this:

Exciting. IFL CEO Jay Larkin and Bas Rutten will be conducting a conference call on Wednesday to discuss this and other changes for the 2008 IFL season (wait, there’s more?!?). We’ll tele-commute to it and give you a full report afterwards.

Speaking of logos, remember that really, really, really lame watercolor abortion that LeRoy Neiman designed to be WAMMA’s official logo? It looks like more prudent heads prevailed, and they decided that steel plating and lightning was a more accurate reflection of the sport. Personally, we think a logo based on these would be even better.

So, big news — a group of fighters, journalists and promoters held a press conference yesterday to announce the creation of a new MMA sanctioning body called the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts (WAMMA), which would rank the top ten fighters in nine different weight divisions and arrange cross-promotional fights to recognize unified champions. Involved in this pipe dream noble undertaking are MMA guru Pat Miletich, UFC legend Don Frye, ex-wrestler/commentator Bill Goldberg, and ProElite.com/FiveOuncesofPain.com’s Sam Caplan, who will chair the rankings committee. WAMMA’s president and CEO will be Dave Szady, a former FBI assistant director with no MMA credentials; the guy doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Speaking of which, I’d include a link to WAMMA’s official website, but I couldn’t find it. WAMMA.com doesn’t work, and WAMMA.org really, really doesn’t work (trust me).

(Before we delve even further into this thing, I’d like to point out that the image at the top of this post is not there because of my own laziness; I didn’t do a google image search for “rainbow gloves unity six fingers” and take the first result. That’s the WAMMA’s actual, official logo, which was designed by LeRoy Neiman, who your grandfather might be familiar with. It’s a little lightweight, if you ask me, and not in a juiced-up Sean Sherk kind of way. At any rate, Neiman does have a Wikipedia page.)

Moving on…