UFC 87

(A man who knows the value of the right to remain silent.)

Perhaps you've noticed that ever since he opened his yap to complain about the UFC and money to Fight! Magazine, Roger Huerta has practically disappeared. He lost his faux-number one contender bout to Kenny Florian at UFC 87, and subsequent rebroadcasts of that event on Spike TV have had that bout removed altogether. It's enough to make you wonder, did Roger Huerta really exist, or did we all just imagine him?

Okay, I checked on the internet and he really does exist, he's just vanished from the UFC's PR radar after taking his gripes public. Former foe and current WEC fighter Leonard Garcia tells MMA Rated that Huerta has no one but himself to blame:

"I think everybody writes their own ticket," Garcia said. "The only thing I can say is don't ever start to believe what people say about you. That's the number one thing for me. The simple fact of the matter is that we are getting paid to do what we love. Don't go out there and try to reach for the stars too soon.

(As if this wasn't humiliating enough.)

Did anybody watch the replay of UFC 87 on Spike last night? If you did, you might have noticed there was something missing. As the eternally vigilant Mike C. at MMAEruption explains:

The fight between Roger Huerta and Kenny Florian. Weird, huh? That was the third most-hyped fight at the event, and it does not make it onto the broadcast over stuff like Maia/Mcdonald and McFedries/Massenzio, the latter of which was actually from Ultimate Fight Night 15!

...

[N]othing pisses [Dana White] off more than when his fighters talk about money in public. And if you recall, shortly before UFC 87, Roger Huerta was interviewed by Fight! magazine, complaining quite a bit about the UFC's compensation policies and his contract. Plus, if we look back at the original UFC 87 broadcast, Roger's post-fight interview wasn't broadcast. And now, the match between Roger and Kenny doesn't even make it onto the replay? True, the fight wasn't exactly the barn burner it was expected to be, but come on! Kenny and Roger are big names for the UFC.

So we can stick the proverbial fork in Roger Huerta, because he's done. He is about to get the Andrei Arlovski treatment. Expect Roger's next fight to be on the undercard of an Ultimate Fight Night against a wrestler that will hold him down and make him look bad for three rounds.

UFC 87's three headlining fights (Huerta/Florian, Lesnar/Herring, GSP/Fitch) all went to decision, and while that may have created some time constraints for Spike, you can't see this as anything but an intentional insult for Huerta — especially when his match is replaced by some random bout from an Ultimate Fight Night. We'll keep you updated on when/where Huerta's next match will be, but it's looking like he's being made an example of right now. Cold-blooded, bro...

(The stuff you find under Tommy Speer's mattress.)

Former UFC welterweight champ Matt Hughes has been taking some heat for his remarks about the Georges St. Pierre-Jon Fitch bout, which he admitted to walking out on during UFC 87. But in a rare response to the media and the fans, Hughes updated his blog to address the criticism and set the record straight. Kind of:

I usually don’t do this, but I’m going to break my rule this time. There’s been so much talk about my last blog entry that it’s amazing. Some of it is legitimate thinking, some of it is just from idiots. I never said the GSP fight was boring, the reason I walked out was because I wanted to beat the crowd. I didn’t think Fitch was going to get back in the match and the fight wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. If you want, you can go look at my last blog entry and see that this is basically what I said. So people criticized me for leaving the fight early and said that was disrespectful to GSP, I disagree, I just wanted to get out of there.

Hughes also responded to a Yahoo! Sports blog entry by Steve Cofield that interpreted his 'GSP-looked-small' remarks to mean that Hughes was implying St. Pierre had been on steroids for previous bouts. While that might have been a little bit of a stretch, and Cofield admits as much, Hughes' attempts at backtracking on his 'boring' remarks are hindered by the wonders of modern technology.

His exact words to interviewers with PWB Podcast: "I gotta be real honest though, I was kinda bored with the match."

Woop. There it is.

As we told you earlier this week, Matt Hughes was not at all impressed with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 87. His blog post about how boring he found the GSP-Fitch fight seemed laced with no small amount of jealousy. That's somewhat understandable. A guy beats your ass twice, you may have some ill feelings towards him. But now Hughes is trying to claim that after GSP's fight with Fitch (which Hughes walked out of halfway through) he does not deserve to be mentioned in the pound-for-pound debate. Has anyone told Hughes yet that GSP actually won that fight?

The hilarious thing is that Hughes also says B.J. Penn deserves to be considered among the best pound-for-pound. As in, the same B.J. Penn who Hughes (and GSP) beat. But GSP, who beat Hughes twice, convincingly, gets knocked out of the running for beating a guy who is ranked above Hughes in just about every welterweight top ten list in existence. You following this?

If only Hughes could bring himself to admit that, while he is a legend of the sport who was great in his time, that time is now over and St. Pierre is on top. Is that so hard? Probably, yeah. Especially for a guy like Hughes, whose stubborn unwillingness to believe that anyone could possibly be better than him has served him well in the past. Still, he's got to let it go. Watching a former champ snipe at the guy who supplanted him is just sad. If Hughes really thought that GSP wasn't any good, you know what he'd probably do? Beat him. I guess when that's out of the question you settle for insults.

(Props: Yahoo's Steve Cofield)

This video of BJ Penn's experience at UFC 87 (courtesy of BJPenn.com, via Yahoo!) confirms a few things that I've long suspected: 1) BJ Penn has more fun than I do, 2) Jesse Ventura (seen sitting stone-faced next to Penn at one point) does not, and 3) everyone in the world -- including "Rampage" Jackson -- thinks they do a good Hulk Hogan impression, but most of them are wrong.

Where things really start to get interesting here is when Penn enters the Octagon to confront Georges St. Pierre about their superfight. You can hear Dana White asking Penn to let GSP "have his moment here real quick," and you can also hear the boos from the crowd when Penn steps up to the mic. No matter, Nick Swardson thinks he's the best fighter in the world, and that's enough for me.

Below, check out BJ hitting the town with Bruce Buffer, who declares Jon Fitch to be "a tough son of a bitch." You gotta love the Buff.

Find more videos like this on BJPENN.COM