By Jonathan Shrager Jorge Masvidal‘s MMA career has taken him to Russia, Japan, Costa Rica, and the Playboy Mansion — not bad for a guy who got his start in bare-knuckle fights in his native Miami. Now riding back-to-back victories over Billy Evangelista and KJ Noons under the Strikeforce banner, Masvidal has been honored with a lightweight title shot…

So does the “FC” stand for “Financially Challenged,” “Financial Crisis” or “Fighters Cheated?”)  If you were one of the many people who had serious doubts that both of the upstart Impact Fighting Championships promotion’s two scheduled July MMA events would go off without a hitch and the issue would somehow relate back to Paulo Filho, you were right,…

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013′s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago….

Cecil Peoples, supposedly explained the rationale behind his scoring of the Machida/Rua fight at UFC 104 in a talk with CageReport.net.  He begins with the usual defense, pointing out that he has a different perspective on the fight than the fans do, and then launches into an explanation of why Machida’s strikes counted for more than Rua’s: “Mauricio…