clothing

('And to think, my parole officer said I'd never amount to anything.')

Affliction co-founder Todd Beard has added another restraining order to his impressive resume. MMA Payout reports that the convicted felon/pregnant woman-puncher/elderly person-swindler Beard got into it with the CEO of Silver Star Casting, Luke Burrett, who then went out and got the restraining order (which can be viewed here) to stop Beard’s “harassment.”

If you’re not familiar with Silver Star, they make clothes that are very similar in douchieness to Affliction’s, only slightly more ‘consumer-friendly punk rock meets mall food court’ and less ‘appropriated symbols from other cultures meets skulls and shit,’ which is Affliction’s domain.  Silver Star also sponsors several MMA fighters (check out their comparatively cheap Rashad Evans t-shirt, for instance), and used to work together with Affliction until the companies had a dispute that led to Silver Star trying to make nice with the UFC.

Things supposedly got worse after UFC 94, which featured the man sponsored by both Affliction and Silver Star, Georges St. Pierre, who had previously been given permission by Affliction to wear Silver Star into the Octagon.  Preliminary reports indicate that no one outside the two companies noticed or gave a damn.  But leave it to Todd Beard to make an issue of it.  

That guy seems to know only one solution to every problem, and it involves threatening someone.  Should we be surprised that this is the kind of mind partly responsible for spawning Affliction?  We should not.  But hey, wait a minute, didn’t Beard supposedly resign from Affliction?  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he’s now harassing the CEO of a company Affliction’s been having problems with lately.  Could be that was part of his normal, every day harassin’, and didn’t have anything to do with his business harassin’.  You gotta keep those separate, you know.

("Can we take that one over again? Andrei blinked and Rothwell wandered into the shot." Photo courtesy of CageToday.)

MMA Weekly reports that UFC and Affliction executives met late last month to build a formal partnership that would allow Affliction to return to the UFC as a major clothing sponsor and work with the UFC to create co-branded apparel. In exchange, Affliction would agree to cease operations as a fight promotion and allow the UFC to buy out several of their fighter contracts. Unfortunately, the détente began to fall apart after EliteXC's "Heat" show on October 4th, when Affliction's ads plugging Fedor's next fight made UFC executives feel that the deal wasn't being taken seriously.

On Monday, a conference call was held between UFC and Affliction execs in an attempt to resurrect the partnership. Details are sketchy, though MMA Weekly reports that the call quickly turned hostile, with Affliction co-founder Todd Beard at one point telling Lorenzo Fertitta "you've fucked with the wrong guy." So for now, it looks like Affliction is still shut out of the Octagon, and will continue to burn money as a fight promoter. Their next event, headlined by Fedor Emelianenko vs. Andrei Arlovski and co-promoted by Golden Boy, goes down January 24th at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

(This picture is just another part of TapouT's attempt to make you constantly feel like you are on mushrooms. That, and the paint and wigs and stuff.)

As much as we like to give the guys from TapouT a hard time about their TV show and their plans to make children's furniture, we have to admit that they know what they're doing with their off-the-wall personas and recognizable brand. And in an interview with USA Today's MMA blogger, Sergio Non, they open up about their business (they expect to do "upwards of $100 million this year"), their history, and most interestingly, their role in Diego Sanchez's victory on the first season of "The Ultimate Fighter":

There could be a fighter, like in (TUF season-one winner) Diego Sanchez's case — he was already primed and ready, but there was just that nobody that knew about him. Whereas we knew about him because we're scouring all those up-and-coming, lower shows.

So when Dana White came to me and was like, "Hey, this is who we've got going on there, is there anybody we missed..." I was like, "There's this kid, Diego Sanchez out of New Mexico, he's crazy and he's insane." And actually, this story is a true story, he ended up bumping one guy off The Ultimate Fighter that was slated to go on there, plugged Diego Sanchez in, Diego ends up winning it at the 185-pound mark, further cementing us as talent scouts.

Wow. I guess that guy who was bumped knows who to be pissed off at now. Also in this interview we learn (two of) their real names -- Charles Lewis Jr. (Mask) and Dan Caldwell (Punkass), while Skyskrape is apparently a mystery man who hails from parts unknown, much like The Ultimate Warrior -- and they also comment on the nature of their relationship with the UFC.