By CagePotato contributer Andreas Hale

The World Series of Fighting held their first event at the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, NV. Although the main card appeared to be stuffed with squash matches, it was a pretty good night of fights and I was there to get a good gauge on the atmosphere and if WSoF could become a player in the MMA world that Dana White rules with an iron fist.

First things first, it wasn’t the sellout they promised as word is that they only sold 1500 tickets and comped double that to ensure a nice fight atmosphere. Nevertheless, it was a good evening of fights that the crowd was receptive to. Oh yeah, ring girls. Lots of ring girls. They were like a platoon that switched in and out. I didn’t know ring girls needed breaks but whatever. It’s enough variety to keep fans engaged between rounds. I mean, Brittany Palmer and Arianny Celeste are great but six beats two every single gotdamn time. Right? But I digress…

Media sat on a stage that put us eye level with the cage and we could damn near touch it (or slap a cameraman) if we tried hard enough. We could actually feel some of the punches landed. Pretty good stuff. Oh yeah, and there were fights.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been all about the inaugural World Series of Fighting event around here lately. We’ve snagged interviews with former UFC welterweight Josh Burkman, who is taking on fellow UFC vet Gerald Harris on the undercard, and world renowned badass/WSOF President Ray Sefo. In the meantime, we’ve been doing our best to undermine the legitimacy of the UFC, in turn allowing the WSOF to rise to MMA supremacy and grant us exclusive press passes for all future events.

And regardless of whether or not our preposterous pipe dream ever becomes a reality, we will be tuning in on Saturday to catch all the action. Sherdog will be hosting a live stream of the undercard starting at 8 pm. EST and the NBC Sports Network will be picking up the main card at 10 p.m. EST, so none of you should really have any excuse to miss this. On the off chance you still do, however, here are five of our attempts to convince you otherwise.

1. Shit is Stacked

At first glance, the above event poster looks like some kind of sick joke. You’ve got three UFC veterans — two of which are former UFC/WEC champions — in Andrei Arlovski, Miguel Torres, and Anthony Johnson, taking on three completely unknowns in Cole, Moraes, and Linderman. On the other hand, squash matches are the new black, so if it’s good enough for the UFC, why not WSOF?

(Photo via Sherdog.)

By Andreas Hale

It only made sense for Ray Sefo to start his own MMA promotion. Well, it only made sense once the stars aligned in a unique way that told him he’d better start an MMA promotion or else. You see, back when K-1 was falling apart, Sefo happened to do an interview where he discussed how much money the promotion owed him and the possibility of starting his own company. The thought ran through his mind heavy after the call. After all, he has put on a successful K-1 event in New Zealand, and he had a pretty good idea how to handle the business. So he decided to sleep on it.

The next morning, a wealthy friend of his named Sig Rogich gave him a call out of the blue and invited Sefo to breakfast so they could discuss something. Mind you, Rogich had never heard the interview from the night before.

“(Sig) said ‘What do you think about starting an MMA fighting league?’” Sefo says when reflecting on the origins of World Series of Fighting. “I looked at him and said ‘Are you kidding me? That’s exactly what I was going to talk to you about on Monday!’ It was just meant to be. The stars aligned for us and this was meant to happen.”

Plans were laid out, business was taken care of, and fighters were signed. November 3rd marks the inaugural fight night, which will emanate from the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and air on NBC Sports (formally Versus). It’s not your average rinky-dink startup operation, as WSoF 1 features a loaded card that includes the likes of Andrei Arlovski, Anthony Johnson, and Miguel Torres on the main card. While newer promotions may struggle to land talent, WSoF has had many of its fighters fall right into their lap. In particular, guys like Johnson and Torres had been cut by the UFC this year for weight issues but are still marquee names in the sport. Inking with WSoF made perfect sense for them, partly because of Sefo’s own background

“Many of them were up for it right away because of my involvement and with the understanding that I am a fighter becoming a promoter,” Sefo explains. “I understand what a fighter goes through to prepare for a fight. That appealed to a lot of the guys.”

By Jared Jones

Unless you’ve been a close follower of the Utah MMA scene over the past few years, chances are that you’ve probably forgotten all about TUF 2 alum Josh Burkman. After a three fight skid saw him ousted from the UFC back in 2008, Burkman took over a year and a half off to recover from several injuries that could have ended any lesser man’s career, injuries Burkman admits in hindsight that he should have addressed much earlier. But if you were to ask Josh how the past few years have treated him, you’d think he was on top of the world.

I called Josh at approximately 5:15 p.m. EST yesterday. He was just stepping into his house after a long day of training for his November 3rd match against fellow UFC veteran Gerald Harris on the inaugural card of the Ray Sefo-run World Series of Fighting promotion. It’s a win that could very well propel “The People’s Warrior” back into the octagon for the first time in over four years, yet he doesn’t appear to be showing any signs of the pressure getting to him. I ask him how he’s doing. “Life is good,” he tells me, making sure to kiss his ten day old son as soon as he enters the house. From the get-go, I can tell that Josh is a much more open and laid back guy than some of the fighters I’ve dealt with in the past. But little did I know that before our conversation was over, we would discuss everything from his career comeback and newly found lease on life to his infamous in and out of the ring brawls with Jeremy Horn and Phil Baroni.

(Photo via Kat’s ModelMayhem page. Full gallery is after the jump.)

There are some moments in life where the only logical response is hnnnng. Discovering Kat Kelley was one of those moments. The Las Vegas-based model was recently tapped to be a ring girl for the World Series of Fighting promotion, and will be in action during its inaugural event in Las Vegas, which will air live on the NBC Sports Network at 10:30 p.m. on November 3rd. Follow Kat’s life on Twitter and Facebook, and check out a whole mess of our favorite Kat Kelley photos in the gallery below. You’re very welcome.

(Now that Anthony Johnson competes at light-heavyweight, we can all stop freaking out about this photo.)

You don’t call yourself the “World Series of Fighting” without lofty aspirations. The upstart MMA promotion launched by former K-1 star Ray Sefo (!) will be hosting its first event on November 3rd at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, and has already inked a deal to air its first card live on the NBC Sports Network (?!?).

And to give viewers a reason to tune in, the WSOF has been hard at work snatching up as many big name ex-UFC fighters as possible, and putting them in surprisingly competitive fights. Here’s a little taste of what the matchmakers have planned for World Series of Fighting 1…

- In the night’s main event, Andrei Arlovski will be returning from his no-contest/moral victory against Tim Sylvia to face Strikeforce vet Devin Cole, who won unanimous decisions over Shawn Jordan and Gabriel Salinas-Jones in his last two appearances.

- Anthony Johnson, now 2-0 as a light-heavyweight, will look to make it three in a row against 14-3 moneyweight DJ Linderman, who holds the Cage Warriors heavyweight title and was a semi-finalist in Bellator’s season 4 light-heavyweight tournament last year.

(“And that was the first time I went full stanky leg.”) 

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton’s third law of motion seems to apply to the world of kickboxing this week, as just a few days after it was announced that Swedish kickboxing legend Jorgen Kruth would be departing from the world of MMA, it has been reported that Dutch kickboxing powerhouse Tyrone Spong will be making the transition to it. Spong, who’s has hinted at a move to MMA for some time now, is best known for his battles with such legends of the sport as Peter Aerts, Ray Sefo, and Melvin Manhoef, and currently holds a 68-6-1 with 1 NC record to his credit.

While it was rumored that Spong would be making his debut under the Titan Fighting Championships banner, it appears that the heavyweight slugger will be debuting under upstart promotion World Series of Fighting, alongside UFC rape joke-castaway Miguel Torres and many more.