(Kerry’s muay thai fight in Thailand for the Oxygen network’s "Fight Girls" show.  Check out Brandon being all supportive.  Awww.)

As we told you earlier, Kerry Vera, the wife of UFC fighter Brandon Vera, is making her MMA debut at tonight’s Bellator event.  We decided to find out if this is just some Kim Couture situation or if Vera is really serious about kicking ass and possibly even taking names.  Here’s how the conversation went.

This is your first MMA fight, but you’ve done some kickboxing in the past.  What made you decide to do MMA now?

I just wanted to do something more.  I figured, I’m probably not going to be fighting for too much longer so I wanted to try MMA and see what would happen.  It’s fun.  It’s a whole new challenge for me.

What do you know about your opponent?  I hear she’s undefeated.

I don’t know much.  I know she’s from Colorado (laughs).  That, and she’s had a few MMA fights.  That’s all I really know.

(Tate vs. Elaina Maxwell on her previous Strikeforce appearance.)

A few weeks ago Miesha Tate thought she’d be facing Kim Couture at the Strikeforce Challengers event on Showtime this Friday night.  But when Couture pulled out due to “personal reasons” and Tate posted a MySpace bulletin informing fans that “Sugar Free’s” impending divorce from former UFC champ Randy Couture was to blame, things got sticky in a hurry.  

Now instead of facing the 1-1 Couture, she’s facing the 8-0 (all by KO or TKO) Sarah Kaufman, and the fight has grown considerably in magnitude.  Here she talks about the change of opponents, her path to MMA, and what it’s like trying to make it as a female MMA fighter.

This seems like significant change in opponents, and on fairly late notice.  How did that affect your preparation for this fight and what the fight means for you?

It was kind of strange at first, the idea of going from Kim Couture to Sarah Kaufman.  Obviously it’s quite a jump.  I think I have a lot more to gain from this fight.  She’s a very tough and worthy opponent.  I have the opportunity to beat someone who has an established, undefeated record.

Do you think the only reason Kim Couture got this fight in the first place was because of her last name?

(This pose yielded very different results during the Robbie Lawler shoot.)

Gina Carano and Ariel Helwani continued their star-crossed romance in an interview for MMA Fanhouse, mixing friendly banter with actual questions about when the hell we’ll see Carano fight someone.  Long story short, it’s going to be in Strikeforce, eventually, but they’re still working out the details.  One would assume that the major detail in question is money.  Carano was working extremely cheap for Elite XC, and now she has the chance to hold Scott Coker over the coals and really stack that paper, son.  Only Carano claims – get this – that money is not a big deal to her:

Frankly, I am absolutely unmotivated by money. And I know that maybe people take that and don’t understand what that means, but I am just not. What I am interested in is people that have respect. Not only respect for me, but people who have respect for women in MMA. So, the better that I can do for myself and the better I represent myself – which I have to work on all of this, by the way – the better it is for the sport.

Now I’m no business mastermind, but if I were to write a book about how to negotiate a contract the first chapter would be entitled: “Don’t Publicly Claim That You Aren’t Interested In Being Paid Lots of Money.”  The second chapter would be called: "The Power of Blackmail," so now you know why I’m not writing that book. 

But even if you’re willing to believe that Carano is the kind of idealist who doesn’t want to get paid as much as she possibly can for doing a dangerous and difficult job that has a very limited window of opportunity, then you have to find a way to reconcile that Gina Carano with this Gina Carano:

(Welcome to the WEC, fellas.)

From a new press release on WEC.tv:

So that’s it — Condit and Larson are gone, and they’ve taken the 170-pound division with them. And it’s only a matter of time before the WEC completes its differentiation from the UFC, axes the lightweight class, and sends Jamie Varner and Donald Cerrone up to the big leagues. But while it’s good to see the WEC adding divisions to make up for the ones they cut, you’d think a women’s division (or two) would come before a horse-jockey division. It kind of bothers me when women’s MMA is roadblocked due to a perceived lack of depth, then Zuffa installs a new men’s division where the #1-ranked fighter doesn’t even have ten wins yet, and the #8 fighter has won four of his ten fights. (And of course, how many American MMA fans out of 100 would be able to pick them out of a lineup?) Does this make any sense from a marketing perspective?

And the idea of 125-pound men fighting — doesn’t that seem kind of, I don’t know, unnatural to you? All your talk about their speed and endless gas tanks will seem beside the point when Frank Mir enters the cage and asks them to take us through the fight. Either the flyweights are going to have to stand on a step-ladder to reach the mic, or Mir is going to talk to these boys on his knees…

The UFC’s reluctance to put on female fights became a topic for discussion on Tuesday’s Elite XC conference call. Shayna Baszler and Christiane Cyborg, who will square off on the CBS portion of the card, each had different though equally telling responses:

QUESTION: When asked if he has any interest in setting up any female divisions in the UFC, Dana White politely questioned the depth of talent. What is your response to that?

Shayna Baszler: I don’t care what Dana White has to say. If he wants to question the depth of talent; that is just going to give companies like EliteXC one more thing to tap into that he’s not. He wants to question the depth of the female division, but every fight, every female fight that ProElite has put on has been a showcase of women’s talent and has been “fight of the night” type material. If he wants to give that avenue to others to pursue, then, fine. The more the merrier. I don’t care. I just want to fight the best. I don’t know, if he wants to question that, then I’d question the talent of his heavyweight division.

Cristiane Cyborg: I’d love to fight Dana White to show him how tough women are.

Oh, snap! Ok, not really. He never questioned their toughness, which makes me think Cyborg misunderstood the question, and there is probably just as much reason to question the depth of women’s MMA as there is to question the depth of the UFC’s current heavyweight division, so we’ll rule that one a tie for the moment.

(From Inside MMA via Xtreme Couture)

…in which “Sugar Free” defeats Jessica Cruz via ground-and-pound TKO in round three, landing some stiff jabs along the way and narrowly avoiding being Shonie’d at the 1:15 mark. We can only hope that one day Randy and Kim have children who rebel against them by devoting their lives to poetry and visual arts.