Portland

Demian Maia’s camp may have been expecting a middleweight title shot in August, but instead they’re getting what can only be considered a number one contender match with Nate Marquardt.  Maia confirmed the news on his official website, saying the fight is on for UFC 102 in Portland, Oregon.  Obviously it’s one hell of an interesting bout on paper, but the timing of this announcement begs the question, did Anderson Silva screw Maia out of a title shot with his performance against Thales Leites at UFC 97?

(Dana White does the hard sell on TUF 9.  Props: Cage Writer)

- Forrest Griffin and Thiago Silva are expected to get back in action against one another at the still officially unannounced UFC 101 event in August that will feature a Randy Couture/Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira main event.  With both Griffin and Silva coming off losses this is one of those wonderful situations where somebody has to turn things around while someone else has to drop two straight and then reevaluate his life and career.  All signs point to the event taking place in Portland, OR. – also known as the town with best strip clubs in America.  Count us in.

- Since he apparently thinks he’s a boxer now, I suppose it’s only fitting that Gray Maynard inked a sponsorship deal with Everlast MMA.  Maynard’s pounded-flat mug is even going to be the focal point for an ad campaign, so I guess it pays to abandon all your wrestling training and beat guys up on the feet.  Does it pay to make a decision-machine like Maynard your poster boy?  Everlast will find out, possibly the hard way.

- Sean Sherk thinks he’s in line for the next lightweight title shot if he beats Frankie Edgar at UFC 98, and he expects that the belt will still be around B.J. Penn’s waist after he faces Kenny Florian.  Drawing on his experience fighting both men, Sherk says Penn “has pretty much every advantage” in a bout with Florian.  That might be whitewashing Penn’s conditioning issues a little too much, but what do you expect from Sherk, who just assumes everybody is out there doing caveman training every day.

(Randy attends a costume party dressed as Samuel L. Jackson.)

As exciting as the prospect of Randy Couture returning to the UFC might be, we were a little skeptical when rumors started flying earlier this week. But now it sounds like talks between the UFC and "The Natural" are for real, and it's looking more and more possible that Couture might return to action in front of his former-hometown crowd in Portland to face Brock Lesnar on November 15.

And if that's not completely crazy enough for you, the UFC is said to be seriously considering an offer from M-1 to co-promote a Randy Couture-Fedor Emelianenko bout down the road. Suddenly we go from a tangled court battle to a couple of blockbuster fights that also have the added advantage of helping the UFC screw Affliction. All just like that. Is your mind blown yet?

If all goes smoothly (and what are the chances of that?) the "Couture Compromise" -- as we're going to go ahead and call it -- could be announced as early as Tuesday. As with any story this huge, we'll believe it when we hear it out of Dana White's mouth, which will no doubt be formed into an I-told-you-so smirk for the next three months.

Couture is said to be training full-time right now, getting ready to get his glorious return on, so it seems like all systems could genuinely be go for this. What a crazy, wonderful world.

(Coming atcha, Portland)

So, okay, former UFC light heavyweight champ Quinton "Rampage" Jackson may have some legal troubles. He may have been charged with two felonies and a couple few misdemeanors resulting from his little driving mishap, and he may even be looking at potential jail time. Big deal. Does that mean he shouldn't take a fight in November? Maybe. Probably. But so what. He's doing it anyway.

According to Yahoo! Sports, Dana White is actively trying to set Jackson up with a fight for UFC 91 on November 15 in Portland, Ore.:

“Of course he’ll fight,” White said. “If he was doing drugs, if he had been drunk, if he had gone out there and done what he did because he was pissed off at someone, that would be a completely different story. But he was ill. And in this company, we support our friends and anyone who works for us when they’re ill and have problems. He was ill, the incident occurred, and now he’s fine.

“Rampage feels awful about the woman’s baby, but he had nothing to do with it. And the (traffic incident) occurred because he was very ill and not with him in control of his faculties.”

All right, I understand the argument that because he was "ill" it shouldn't be looked at in the same way as someone with a drug or alcohol problem. That makes a certain degree of sense. Until you consider that this "illness" was entirely self-imposed. Rampage decided not to eat, sleep, or drink anything other than energy drinks after his last fight. That's not like coming down with the chicken pox. It's more like coming down with the crazy-energy-drink pox, which is almost as bad as the cocaine pox, except not as expensive.