Bobby Lashley

("Hug me or I'll kill your entire family.")

According to an MMA Junkie report, Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos may not be available to defend her 145-pound title at Strikeforce's November 7th "Fedor vs. Rogers" event because of an injury, apparently suffered during her participation in the 2009 ADCC tournament in Barcelona. Said her manager, Richard Wilner: "It's unlikely that Cris will be fighting on [Nov. 7] but still possible. I'm awaiting her return from Spain to get her assessed by a doctor here. Out of respect to Strikeforce, CBS and Cris' potential opponent, we alerted them to this issue early so as not to interfere with pre-production, preparation, etc." When Santos does make her return, her first opponent is expected to be Dutch submission specialist Marloes Coenen. In other Strikeforce news...

("Mostly-natural, baby!" Photo courtesy of MMA Mania.)

Bad news for MMA fans — and disastrous news for Affliction's MMA promotion. Sherdog is reporting that the California State Athletic Commission will not license Josh Barnett for his fight against Fedor Emelianenko at next Saturday's Affliction: Trilogy event due to a "positive test result." We're assuming that means steroids and not Hep B or something, though the CSAC promises to release a detailed statement today. Barnett, who was stripped of his UFC heavyweight title in 2002 for anabolic steroid use, was surprised by the news: 

(Props: FightLaunch via nyhcloyalty. Language NSFW.)

FightLaunch has just updated their YouTube page with about 20 different videos of Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal talking shit to each other in a van on the way to an autograph signing at last weekend's UFC Fan Expo. I don't expect anybody to sift through all of this stuff so I'll just start with the first one I came across (see above), which gives you a decent sense of what the feud is about.

Basically, Rampage said he was the best fighter in the world, and King Mo implied that it was in fact he who was the best fighter in the world — both completely valid points of view, by the way. Anyway, this angered Rampage, who points out that Mo hasn't fought anybody of note. Mo says that Rampage used to bump gums when he was an up-and-comer too, and Rampage denies that he ever bumped gums to this extent. Rampage observes that "King Mo" is a fitting nickname, as royal families tend to be inbred. Then this Caucasian in the backseat starts singing "Kumbaya" like an idiot, and Rampage tells him to shut his white ass up. The white guy says something about being in the hood, and Rampage replies: "Yeah, your ass probably been in a hood, ya fuckin' KKK-lookin' motherfucka." Meanwhile, Bobby Lashley is sitting there smiling politely, just itching to get away from these psychos.

After the jump: King Mo first enters the van, and gets insulted about 30 times in 60 seconds. If you want to see more, go for it.

(Bobby Lashley vs. Bob Sapp. Props to MMA Scraps.)

We were promised a train-wreck -- what we got was slower and far less dramatic. (An ice-cream truck crashing into a tree, maybe?) Bobby Lashley got down to business right away in his main event fight with Bob Sapp at last night's "Ultimate Chaos" show in Biloxi, taking the Beast down immediately and working some steady ground-and-pound in half-guard for a couple minutes, until Sapp tapped from the abuse. Unfortunately the ref didn't see it, so Lashley was forced to beat on the helpless 322-pounder some more until a second tap finally caught the ref's attention. Lashley moves to 4-0 in his budding MMA career, and plans to fight again in September.

The co-headlining fight looked like it was going to turn out the same way, with Pedro Rizzo quickly establishing top position on Gilbert Yvel and throwing down elbows. But Yvel stayed active, kicked Rizzo off and escaped to his feet. Back to his comfort zone, Yvel unleashed a striking assault that sent Rizzo to the mat, and knocked him out cold with strikes from the top. Yvel increased his record to 35-12, with 30 wins by KO/TKO; after the fight, he confirmed that he'll be facing Paul Buentello at Affliction: Trilogy on August 1st.

Sometimes I think that Bob Sapp was sent to earth by the gods to teach us all that being scary-looking and talking tough means very little in a real fight against a real opponent.  And since the gods also have a sense of humor they forced him to appear in “Frankenhood.”  Judging from the betting lines, it seems like we all know by now that Sapp has nothing with which to threaten any decent heavyweight, particularly after the first two minutes of a fight.  So why even bother pretending that Sapp vs. Bobby Lashley is anything but a circus match?