Nate Quarry

(It was truly a great night for gashes. Image courtesy of MMA Mania.)

The UFC doled out $30,000 best-of-night bonuses to four fighters at last night's "Diaz vs. Guillard" event. The extra bread was awarded to...

Fight of the Night: Nate Quarry and Tim Credeur for their three-round slugfest, which Quarry took by unanimous decision. I would have given it to Carlos Condit and Jake Ellenberger, whose fight was much more technical and varied, but hey, the crowd loves a good brawl, and Quarry/Credeur was a great one.

Submission of the Night: Nate Diaz, who was responsible for one of the night's three guillotine-choke submissions. Amazingly, this is the fifth-straight fight in which Diaz has won an end-of-night bonus. Previously, he received Fight of the Night bonuses for his wars against Joe Stevenson, Clay Guida, and Josh Neer, and a Submission of the Night bonus against Kurt Pellegrino.

Knockout of the Night: Jeremy Stephens by default, since there were no other KOs/TKOs on the card. Stephens didn't actually knock Justin Buchholz out, but he was whaling on him pretty good until the fight was stopped in the first round due to the hatchet-wound shown above.

UFC Fight Night 19 drew 7,500 spectators for a reported live gate of $650,000.

(Nate Quarry [left] shows off the move that made him famous. Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle.com.)
 
The UFC returns to Montreal on April 18th for UFC 97, headlined by the shrug-worthy title fight between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites, and the somewhat more compelling light-heavyweight battle between fading legends Chuck Liddell and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. Here's some of the supporting bouts that we'll be seeing on the card...

— Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry (MW): MacDonald is coming off a first-round submission-via-strikes loss to Wilson Gouveia at last month's TUF 8 finale, and hasn't been able to put together two wins in a row since 2006. Quarry became Demian Maia's latest strangulation victim when he succumbed to a rear-naked choke at UFC 91 in November. The win-or-get-fired threat level on this one has been raised to Orange.

— Luis Cane vs. Steve Cantwell (LHW): Though Cane was originally rumored to face Keith Jardine in his next fight, the Dean of Mean was booked to headline UFC 96 (March 7th, Columbus) instead. Cane will instead be taking on reigning WEC light-heavyweight champ Steve Cantwell, who famously snapped Razak Al-Hassan's arm at last month's "UFC Fight for the Troops," then gloated about it afterwards. Cane is coming off of impressive TKO victories over Jason Lambert and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, while Cantwell is on a four-fight win streak, dating back to his time in the WEC.

(I'm going to guess...Moses the golfer?)

- Michael Wilbon is Kimbo Slice for Halloween. (MMA Fanhouse)

- Back on internet radio, along with Ariel Helwani and Steve Cofield. (MMA Rated)

- And 1 sponsors Nate Quarry. (NBC Sports)

- Anthony Johnson talks eye-pokes, rematch, and Steve Mazzagatti. (FightHype)

- A cartoon eulogy for Jared Shaw. (Fightlinker)

- Vinny Magalhaes tries to talk his way out of being Big Nog's enemy. (MMA Weekly)

- Nick Diaz files notice to get free of EliteXC. (Gracie Fighter)

- Best lines from the worst movie. (Holy Taco)

- Out of control stock traders. (Wall Street Fighter)

- 16 bad guys we'd rather see win. (Screen Junkies)

- Long-haired kid gets serious ass-kicking. (Nothing Toxic)

(It's funny the way a moment can haunt a man. Really funny.)

After the last time we saw Kalib Starnes in the Octagon, running in circles even as Nate Quarry mocked him, I naturally assumed that was it for him. The UFC dropped him almost immediately, as expected, and in my imagination he changed his name and went off to work at a public library somewhere, living in a studio apartment above a pawn shop and eating his microwaved dinners alone each night. Occasionally someone might come into the library and recognize him, asking, 'Hey, aren't you that long distance runner guy from the UFC?' Then Starnes would shake his head and tell them they have him confused for someone else before disappearing to cry in the reference section.

Turns out I'm totally wrong. Starnes is still a pro fighter and he's even got a fight coming up, against the very respectable "Kolohe" Hose in Hawaii's Destiny organization. It seems like no matter what he does, though, Starnes will always be remembered for the performance that got him dismissed from the UFC. As he told Sherdog recently, there are still plenty of people who haven't forgotten:

“People like to be on the side that’s winning, said Starnes. “They’re supportive when you’re winning and critical when you’re losing. I still get some sweet hate mails pretty regularly. There are some gyms with guys who begged me to come in there and train and do seminars before that fight and who wouldn’t return my calls or talk to me afterwards.”

That's just plain sad. Starnes is right about one thing: people do like to be on the side that's winning. But even he has got to know that the backlash wasn't about winning or losing, it was about how he chose to lose and the justification he offered for it afterwards. In case you forgot, he broke his foot early on against Quarry and then opted to avoid fighting for the rest of the bout, explaining that he wasn't getting paid enough to risk a knockout or more severe injury.

(Kimbo who?)

The UFC isn't going to let EliteXC put an event on network TV without screwing with them a little bit. Just as they aired UFC 84 for free on Spike while the second CBS "Saturday Night Fights" card was taking place on July 26th — effectively stealing away a lot of EliteXC's young male viewers — the UFC will be airing "UFC 86: Jackson vs. Griffin" on October 4th, opposite "EliteXC: Heat." (They'll also be showing "UFC 87: St-Pierre vs. Fitch" the following Saturday, on the night that Affliction was originally supposed to hold their "Day of Reckoning" card.) The UFC has previously tried to take the wind out of their competition's sails by airing an "Ultimate Iceman" special on Spike during the first CBS "Saturday Night Fights" card in May, and scheduling an Anderson Silva-headlined Ultimate Fight Night during Affliction's "Banned" card in July.

With Showtime lurking as a potential buyer for Pro Elite, a little less is riding on "Heat"'s performance — lackluster ratings wouldn't necessarily mean extinction if they have someone to bail them out. But the UFC could further devalue the EliteXC brand if they can prove that just as many people would tune in to see a UFC re-run as a new fight card from EliteXC. And if "Heat" is a bomb, maybe Showtime will think twice about the purchase.

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