(Thai glamour shot via Michelle Waterson’s Facebook page.)

Not that we don’t appreciate the UFC’s generous one-female-fight-every-couple-months schedule, but in terms of competitive matchups and depth of talent, Invicta FC is still the premiere promotion for women’s MMA. And as long as they can avoid more technical foul-ups this time, Invicta’s fifth card looks like a real corker.

As announced yesterday via press-release, Invicta FC 5 will go down Friday, April 5th at the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, featuring two title fights and 12 more bouts featuring a deep roster of well-known contenders. Check out some of the matchup highlights below, and the full event lineup at the end of this post…

Jessica Penne (10-1) vs. Michelle Waterson (10-3), for atomweight championship: Penne won Invicta’s inaugural 105-pound title last October at Invicta 3 with her submission victory over Naho Sugiyama. The Karate Hottie won her Invicta debut at the same event, defeating Lacey Schuckman by split-decision and increasing her total win streak to four.

Barb Honchak (7-2) vs. Vanessa Porto (13-5), for inaugural flyweight championship: Honchak is on a roll with six straight wins — including a decision over Felice Herrig and a submission of Roxanne Modafferi — and has gone 2-0 under the Invicta banner. Porto is coming off her decision win over Tara LaRosa at Invicta FC 3, which followed a loss to Sarah D’Alelio.

Zoila Frausto Gurgel (12-2) vs. Jennifer Maia (6-2): With her Bellator career now in the rear-view mirror, Zoila Gurgel will make her Invicta FC debut in a flyweight bout against Chute Boxe-bred newcomer Jennifer Maia.

What a difference two years can make. Back in 2010, Megumi Fujii was basically being labeled as the Fedor Emelianenko (circa 2007) of Women’s MMA — a mysterious, unstoppable killing machine who would easily run through all American opposition whenever she decided to make the move stateside. And indeed, her first three Bellator performances cemented her status as the top dog at 115 pounds, ending in two armbar stoppages and one TKO finish. Scratch that, her first four performances lived up to the hype she had built in Japan, the only difference in her fourth performance at Bellator 34 being that she let the fight go to decision and was therefore screwed out of a title for reasons unknown. Fujii’s opponent in that fight, Zoila Gurgel, would honor this gift decision by never defending said belt again, while Fujii would fight just once more in America, losing a unanimous decision to Jessica Aguilar at Bellator 69 in May of this year.

Shame decision aside, Fujii returned to action on Christmas Eve to square off against Mei Yamaguchi at Vale Tudo Japan 2012 and walked away with a clear cut unanimous decision victory, the video of which is above. Rumors circulated before the event that this would be Fujii’s final WMMA fight, and although she has yet to officially retire, the general consensus seems to be that the rumors are true.

We will hold off on the video tribute until an official announcement is made, but join us after the jump for a wicked highlight of Fujii’s reign of terror.

(I don’t know, this song seems oddly appropriate.) 

Let me ask you something, Potato Nation; after the unstoppable killing machine that is the 2012 injury curse claimed Tim Means via sauna room KO yesterday, did you think there was any possible way it could get worse? I may not know what your answer is, but I’m going to go ahead and declare you DEAD F*CKING WRONG. Last night’s Bellator 83 main event was supposed to determine the winner of the Season Seven Featherweight Tournament, pitting Shahbulat Shamhalaev against Rad Martinez. But oh, if only life were so simple. Not content with claiming fighters in the days before a fight, the injury curse struck down Shamhalaev with food poisoning during the God damn broadcast last night, forcing the bout to be shuffled to next week’s Bellator 84 card, where one of these two will probably obliterate the testicles of their opponent with a low kick and we can start this tragic experiment all over again.

Now without a main event, the co-main event matchup between former Bellator bantamweight champion Zach Mackovsky and Anthony Leone was bumped up to top billing. But I don’t want to talk about that fight (which Leone out-grappled the undersized Mackovsky en route to a SD victory). I want to talk about the flyweight matchup between Jessica Eye and Bellator 115 pound champ Zoila Gurgel, which despite lasting less than a minute was easily the highlight of a night filled with decisions.

Video and full results after the jump. 

When I managed to speak to Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney after Bellator 69 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he spoke very highly of welterweight prospect Andrey Koreshkov, who had just improved to 10-0 that evening.  The twenty-two year old Russian fighter earned a spot in this season’s welterweight tournament, where he would quietly improve to 11-0 at Bellator 74 with a unanimous decision over Jordan Smith. At last night’s Bellator 78, Koreshkov looked to make a name for himself against Marius Zaromskis in the tournament semifinals.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s talk about the main event of the evening. Former Bellator welterweight champion Lyman Good took the next step towards earning the title back with a second round TKO over Michail Tsarev, although he arguably could not have picked up a more unimpressive victory. This isn’t to say that Good looked bad up until that point -he didn’t – but because the stoppage was, frankly, cheap. Good accidentally poked Tsarev in the eye in the middle of the second round, causing Tsarev to turn to the referee looking for time out. It looked like the referee was about to call for a break in the action, but Lyman Good pounced on “The Lonely Wolf.” The TKO victory was awarded to Good shortly afterwards.

Video of the main event, as well as Koreshkov’s victory, is after the jump

Zoila Frausto Gurgel is the goddamn champion of the world, and don’t you forget it. PicProps:  Zoila’s FaceBook, because we’re down like that.

Bellator 66 went down in Cleveland, Ohio last night, and I assume someone here will recap it for you, because it was the usual entertaining show from Bellator.  We saw some great tournament action at lightweight and middleweight, plus the Alvarez-Aoki rematch that I’ve been waiting for, and all I had to do was watch MTV2.  Remember when MTV2 was started as the station for music 24/7? **sigh**

Something you didn’t see on the broadcast last night was an interview with reigning women’s 115 champion Zoila Frausto Gurgel.  You didn’t see it, because it didn’t happen.  It didn’t happen, because everyone would rather pretend that the entire women’s tournament didn’t happen.  Everyone, that is, except for Zoila Frausto Gurgel herself.  Zoila Frausto Gurgel wants you to remember it, and give her a high-five when you see her, too.  And if you don’t, Zoila Frausto Gurgel will go on social media and complain about it.

CagePotato Roundtable is our new recurring column in which the CP writing staff and some of our friends all get together to debate an MMA-related topic. Joining us this week is former CagePotato staff writer Chad Dundas, who now writes for an up-and-coming blog called ESPN. If you have a suggestion for a future Roundtable column, send it to tips@cagepotato.com.

CagePotato reader Alexander W. writes: “The Demetrious Johnson vs. Ian McCall fight inspired my suggestion: Greatest robberies in MMA history. I’d be curious to hear the variety of opinions out there. Surely that fight was a top ten.”

Chad Dundas

There are a lot of things about Pride Total Elimination 2003 that don’t make sense when viewed with modern MMA sensibilities. How to even comprehend a world where a skinny, haired-up, suit jacket-wearing Dana White could bet Pride bigwigs $250,000 that Chuck Liddell was going to win that company’s 2003 middleweight grand prix? Or comprehend that a bizarrely dangerous and clearly-enunciating Liddell showed up in the first round of said tournament and KTFOed an impossibly svelte Alistair Overeem? Or that Overeem had an old dude in a robe and shriners hat accompany him to the ring while carrying a big foam hammer? Or that on this night somebody got tapped out with a sleeve choke? Or that Wanderlei Silva fought Kazushi Sakuraba and it didn’t just make everybody feel sad and empty?

No sense at all.

What does still sort of make sense is this: After watching Liddell sleep Overeem, there was no way on God’s green Earth that Pride judges were going to let another UFC emissary walk out of Saitama Super Arena with a win*, so they conspired to pull off one of the greatest screwjobs in MMA history when they awarded Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira a unanimous decision over Ricco Rodriguez. The indisputable fact is, Ricco whipped Big Nog good that night, taking him down, brutalizing him, shaking off his feeble submission attempts and controlling pretty much the whole affair. At least, that’s how I remember it. Unfortunately, due to Zuffa’s ongoing war on Internet piracy it seems their bout will only be remembered by history and by the creepy old man who answers the queries you submit to the Sherdog Fight Finder.

(Zoila will likely be out of commission until early to mid 2012)

Bellator women’s strawweight champion Zoila Frausto-Gurgel announced today via Twitter that she has torn one of her anterior cruciate ligaments and has been forced to pull out of a scheduled November 12 title defense at Bellator 57 in Orillia, Ontario, Canada.

Zombinladen: The Axis Of Evil Trailer – Watch more horror

- Sonnen mellows ahead of UFC 136 (MMAFighting)

- The 20 most disturbing and shocking Muppet photos of all time (DoubleViking)

- LFL trash talk (Clutch.MTV)

- Hominick talks death of Tompkins, fatherhood and UFC 140 fight with Korean Zombie (CageWriter)

- The 25 most ridiculous hotels in the world (Complex)

- The Sultry side of The Playboy Club (ScreenJunkies)

-Zoila Gurgel ready for Carina Damm (Tatame)

- Paul Daley discusses desire to return to UFC  (BleacherReport)

- The reality of cougar-cub relationships (MadeMan)

- 11-year-old benched for being good at football (WithLeather)

- Mortal Kombat is koming bak to theatres (FilmDrunk)

- Holy Taco’s plot to cash in on Holly Madison’s newly-insured breasts (HolyTaco)

- 11 TV characters who flagrantly violated ‘the bro code’  (Guyism)

- UFC Live on Versus 6 weigh-in  photos (The Fight Nerd)

- Siyar Bahadurzada signs with UFC (Twitter)

(“Can you tell me what the scale says? I can’t see over my cheekbones.” Props: CombatLifestyle)

By Ben Goldstein

Tired of fad diets? As MMA fighters have proven for years, the best way to effectively take off pounds is to dehydrate yourself until you nearly die — a miraculous system known as “brutal weight cutting.” Here are some of the sport’s greatest success stories…

Sean McCorkle
Lost: 55 pounds in three months, before his submission win over Mark Hunt at UFC 119 (9/25/10)

After charming his way into a UFC contract, Indiana-based super-heavyweight Sean McCorkle was faced with a dilemma — making 265 pounds for the first time since middle school. “Big Sexy” had 12 weeks to come down from his walking weight of 320, which forced him to get very familiar with chicken breast, apples, and oatmeal.

By weigh-in day, it seemed like the world was conspiring against him. “The cut was an absolute nightmare, and the commission scales were off the morning of the weigh-in,” McCorkle explained. “I told them that and the commission said they weren’t. I said I couldn’t possibly be three pounds heavier [on the day of weigh-ins] than I was last night when I didn’t eat or drink anything. So I went to cut an extra three pounds that morning. It took me two hours to cut the weight. Then I weighed in at 263 pounds and I wanted to strangle somebody.” Compared to that, making Mark Hunt cry “uncle” with an armlock was the easy part.

Jake Shields
Lost: 20 pounds in one day before his split-decision win over Martin Kampmann at UFC 121 (10/23/10)