UFC Ongoing Thread - Page 42

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I'm in the mood to try something different today.

I've set up some UFC 88 predictions polls which you can find here

You can vote in as many or as few of them as you want, they're pretty straight forward and all votes are kept hidden and I'll reveal the results during my UFC 88 report Saturday.

Re: UFC Ongoing Thread

Lesnar Vs. Couture is a 5-round fight. It will take place on 11/15 in Las Vegas. The winner will face the winner of Nogueira Vs. Mir sometime in 2009 to recombine the titles.

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this is awesome news. If Randy can take into the 4th and 5th rounds, I think he can take lesnars size advantage away and pull of a submission. I was reading a description of the call and Dana White said he will be shocked if Affliction is even around by the end of the year.

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It serves Dana's purpose to say Affliction won't be around. It diminishes the brand of the competition. However, it's pretty common knowledge that they are struggling financially (as is EliteXC). Still, the UFC struggled financially and managed to come out of it. There's nothing to say others can't as well.

Couture back in the UFC. That just seems right to me. It's such a shame that he lost so much time at a time in his life where he really couldn't afford to do so. Anyway, much is made of the size issue, and it certainly may come into play, but the whole point of the UFC back in the beginning was the skill can trump size. Mir proved it. So can Randy. Regardless of how it turns out, I have to admit I definitely want to see it.

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Dana is probably right about Affliction though it may last longer than the end of this year.

That company has messed up priorities. They say they can't spend the money they did on the first show and expect to survive and then they contract Ozzy Osbourne to appear which isn't going to generate 1 extra PPV order. Wasted money. They wasted more money on a Nascar sponsorship this past weekend.

Now, at the end of show one they teased Emelianenko and Couture and the only way that fight is going to happen now is if it happens in the UFC, and they were hoping they could do that fight sort of to put them on the map. Payroll for show two isn't going to be cheap but at least they don't have Fedor's $3 million plus to deal with but then I also expect a drop in buys for show 2 so not paying him isn't going to bring all that much relief.

Combine that with the fact that they don't have a TV partner and aren't even close. If you are going to make a successful mark on MMA a TV partnership is not a luxury it is mandatory. It also has to be a good partnership, the MyNetworkTVs and HDNets and Fox Sports of the world aren't going to get it done. Even being on Showtime or HBO on its own isn't necessarily going to cut it, I mean a deal with Showtime isn't keeping EliteXC from losing some $30 million or so since the company opened.

So I'm thinking that if things don't change and Affliction doesn't quit wasting money on things like Rock legends who aren't going to cause one single person to buy this show, we may be able to do some renaming of events. We might be able to rename Affliction: Banned to Affliction: Alpha and Affliction: Day of Reckoning to Affliction: Omega and we'll have the beginning and the end.

In one year from now we could be looking at a world with no EliteXC, no Affliction, no Dream and a UFC monopoly that while successful is over-extended bigtime.
Now for the ironic part of all of this. I'm probably going to order Affliction Omeg...I mean Day of Reckoning.

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I haven't been able to convince my wife to let me get a UFC PPV just yet, but the Lesnar vs. Couture fight is obviously quite appealing. If they add some more good fights there it might just push me into getting it.

So, Couture signed a 3 fight deal apparently. Does that include the 1 that was left on his previous contract, or is it really 4 fights? Either way, two are potentially already taken care of (if he beats Lesnar). That means if he is signed for only 3 fights, it could be the last fight of his contract before they could possibly get a Fedor fight, and wasn't that part of the reason people speculated Dana didn't do more to make that happen already?

As for the Lesnar fight, I still think I have to give Randy the edge. He is the most dangerous opponent Brock has faced so far, and while he has had a long break and is not young, he is no Ken Shamrock. Actually, this brings up a Lesnar question. I had read that he was down to the last fight on his contract. What if he manages to beat Randy? I know there really isn't anyplace else to go that is solid and established, but it would be a messy situation for the UFC if he does win but then does not go against either Mir or Nogueira.

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James, UFC 91 will also include Kenny Florian Vs. Joe Stevenson which could be amazing.

I don't think Brock is on the last fight on his contract in fact, I'm sure of it. The fact is that UFC doesn't offer championship fights to guys with only one fight remaining on their deals. Plus, (and this was a point of contention in the Couture-UFC legal battle) the UFC has something called a champions clause in its contract wherein basically if you are the champion when your contract expires it automatically is renewed another year under the same terms. It is done that way to keep champions from departing the company.

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Casey, Im curious to hear why you think the UFC is over extended? If anything, I dont think they have ENOUGH shows. Look, we went almost a month between 86 and 87. Yes, there was a Fight Night in there but that was only in response to the Affliction show.

Then there is a month between 87 and 88. Later this year, we have 3 weeks to 4 weeks between some shows. Perhaps you are referring to something else but I think the UFC should get out there just a touch more, or not have some events 1 week after another and make it 2 weeks.




James-Yeah, the PPV's do get spendy but try to find a buddy to split the costs. Im lucky, I have a couple buddies who split the costs with me.

We will most likely get the next Affliction PPV but outside of the Arlovski/Barnett fight, there isnt much there that I would WANT to pay for. But since I will be splitting at least one other way and MMA is a social gathering for me and my friends, we will get it.

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Josh, since you asked...and be prepared, this will take a bit of explanation.

First of all, you overlooked one small thing when asking me that question and it is an important one. The phrase "One year from now".

We'll get to why that's so important in a little bit, but lets deal with the UFC now.

True, there is a break between UFC 87 and UFC 88 of roughly one month. You can't say there was one month between 86 and 87 because last minute or not, Fight Night 14 did take place.


Lets go back to May. UFC 84 was on May 24. WEC 34 (you'll see why I count this in a bit) was on June 1. UFC 85 was on June 8 the TUF 6 Finale was on June 21 and UFC 86 was on July 5 and Fight Night 14 was on July 19. That's 5 or 6 shows in less than 8 weeks.


In October you get UFC 89 and UFC 90 back-to-back on Oct. 18 and Oct. 25. UFC 91 is on Nov. 15. That's 3 shows in 5 weeks 2 of which you're expected to pay for. In December alone, you're for sure getting 3 shows 2 UFC and 1 WEC scheduled and are probably getting 3 UFC shows and one from the WEC.

But it is a mistake to just look at the number of shows you're getting when you consider whether something is over-extended.

Lets say that in December we do get our 3 UFC shows, the TUF 8 Finale, UFC 92 and the other special SpikeTV wants and again the WEC 37 show as well.

Figure each show for 10 fights each, sometimes it is more sometimes less but 10 is a good number as a rule of thumb. That is 40 fighters that have to be found, booked in matches and that's not even including the possibility of finding replacements if guys get injured and that could take the number to 43 to 44 guys or more. It might not seem like that's a lot of guys but it really is and if you start to add shows to the point where you've got 26 a year (one every 2 weeks) that's a lot of spots to fill and given that fighters don't fight every month and can go for months at a time between fights and you've got depth issues fast.

Remember that until the Couture thing came up the UFC 91 main event was going to be Brock Lesnar vs. Cheick Kongo which doesn't exactly send people diving for their wallets or remote controls to punch in PPV orders and even that match wasn't a lock because of a shoulder injury to Kongo. Even if you put on 1 PPV a month and surround them with free shows, you still need main events for those PPV's which will draw interest and there are only a certain number of bankable stars.

Here's why a strategy of one PPV a month surrounded by free shows is a bad idea. You want the PPV shows to seem special as Andres noted, you can tell Andres has a background as a pro wrestling fan from that comment because wrestling fans have been down this road before. But, if you give too much of your product away for free on TV, then people will eventually just skip the PPV's all together because they know they can get their fight fix in 2 weeks for free on SpikeTV. Plus, even those free shows need names people are familiar with, if the first 2 weeks of just random people fighting on season 7 of TUF taught us nothing else, they taught us that people need a reason to care or they're going to tune out. Simply putting together a card like a ShoXC event under a UFC banner wouldn't be enough to guarantee a rating. Plus, and this relates to the pool of available talent being thinned out with the more shows you have, the more shows you put on, the more likely you are to end up with a bad show which is never good for the brand.



So now we get to another aspect of over-extension and this is where the WEC figures in to the picture. The UFC office staff is surprisingly small. I don't know the exact number of employees but the office staff has in the recent past been described as few and over-worked. A lot (but not all) of those staff also do work on the WEC shows as well. Things like making travel arrangements for all of the fighters on a given show, setting up publicity appearances leading up to a given event making sure everything is negotiated with venues and making sure everything is approved by the state athletic commissions is all work that has to be done for every show and is work that doesn't really get noticed by the average viewer because they don't think about it. Things like assembling the video packages that lead up to each fight and doing the graphics for the show would also fall in to those categories. So, the more shows you have, especially without adding a lot of support staff, the more you spread your resources thin.

Now we get back to the key phrase "a year from now". You might not think the UFC is running enough events now but in 2009 they plan to add a lot more shows and really open up the floodgates to international markets. I've heard something like 3 international shows in the first 3 months of 2009 in edition to Fight Nights and PPVs. They maybe able to find the 50 or 60 guys that they'll need to stock these shows but how many of them are going to be quality fighters that actually belong on the biggest stage MMA has to offer?

I said this about the WEC 3 months ago. Their schedule is pretty much perfect because after Sept. 10 you're not getting a WEC show again until December. So by the time WEC 37 rolls around, people are going to be excited to see it just because they haven't gotten one in 3 months. Plus by running only 6 shows a year (8 next year) the WEC can decrease the likelyhood of one of those shows being a dud. So even though I grouped the 2 promotions together in explaining why the UFC is over-extended or going to be, the WEC still isn't because for now the rules aren't the same for that group because they're not even running monthly and haven't done a PPV.

Thus ends my HTF UFC discussion thread exclusive column on why the UFC is over-extended with the prospect of becoming even moreso.

Any follow-up questions?

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On a different subject, aside from the UFC 88 predictions polls I linked in a prior post, in the sidebar on our website we've got a poll asking about Couture Vs. Lesnar. Right now, Lesnar has nearly twice the number of votes that Randy has. I don't think it means much of anything because the sample size is still pretty small but I do find it a bit interesting.

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very good post Casey! A lot of things I havent thought about. A few things I disagree with.

The WEC is great with their schedule but lets remember that the depth is simply not there. Their guys do put on great fights but typically outside of the title bouts, its 50/50 if I have ever even heard of the guys. I think the UFC markets their fighters better, we get to know them either through more exposure or shows like TUF. It invests you more emotionally. For example, outside of the Faber/Pulver fight, I have ever never got the adreneline rush that I do watching a WEC title bout like I do with the UFC title bouts.


The UFC has so much depth that they can put on a lot of shows. From 87, 88, the Fight Night, 89 and 90 all have 4-5 several good to great fights on paper and most of them even more. If they went down to 1 per month, all we would ever see is the top tier guys. Which of course would be great match ups but we would NEVER get to see the guys below them who turn into the future stars.

I dont think going from September to December is a good thing. So the WEC puts on a great show, great, we have to wait 3 months. Total momentum killer.


I think one reason that the UFC has got so big is due to the free shows. If you never let the casual fan, see the product, they will never go out and order a PPV. For example, if a casual fan is on the fence about ordering UFC 90, they get to watch UFC 89. Assume 89 is a pretty solid show, they promote A Silva, then the fan thinks, "hey maybe I should order the PPV next week."

The cost does get high...for the HD for me is $55. I split it with 2 friends, with my wife and their significant others, 6 people get 3 hours of entertainment. Thats cheaper than going to see a movie for 6 people. Add in probably $20 for snacks and youre at $75, plus, you can pause and you can converse more than at a movie theater.

If youre ordering it by yourself, it gets spendy for sure. But then you can just order the shows you REALLY REALLY want. then you get the free UFC's, Fight NIghts and TUF. So you probably get 8 shows plus 20+ episodes on TUF.


A few of the shows, like the proposed 91 card before Lesnar/Couture looked a little week but lets remember they never really announced the card and who was going to be on it, so there is a chance it might have not even got to the serious planning stages. With 5 weight classes, we will just about get a championship bout every card. then no title fights on an occasional card. Even this weekend, no title bout but Liddell/Evans has HUGE implications, Liddell wins he most likely gets a title shot. Plus there are several other great fights on the card.

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Josh, you made some good points that I want to respond to so here goes.

1. This is the most important. Don't confuse depth with name recognition. There is a difference between the 2. The WEC has talent depth that doesn't have name recognition. Affliction has name recognition but not a lot of depth, and the UFC has a fair amount of both for what they're doing now.

2. On depth of the WEC. It is a mistake to compare the WEC to the UFC when it comes to determining depth. The UFC has been on PPV since 1993, it has been under Zuffa control since 2001 and has been on SpikeTV since 2005. The WEC has never been on PPV, has been under Zuffa control since December of 2006 and has been on Versus (a much lower profile network) since June of 2007. So all things considered I think what that promotion has been able to accomplish in really a short amount of time is remarkable. I think comparing it to the UFC which has had a head start and far better resources is comparing apples to oranges. A more fitting though still not perfect comparison would be comparing the WEC to EliteXC. EliteXC has 2 bankable stars in Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano and Kimbo's star is pretty much only viable if he keeps winning.

3. A lot of your arguments are valid from your point of view. The trouble is that when I wrote my original post explaining why the UFC is in serious danger of over-extending itself and watering down the market with shows, I didn't really consider your feelings on the subject. Please don't take that the wrong way, the fact is that I didn't really consider my feelings on the subject either.

We are not the people who are going to determine when enough is too much, to steal the words of Yogi Bear.

You are a knowledgeable fan. You read about what is happening in MMA online, and you come here and talk about it (and maybe other places as well) and you probably have a good idea of every match that is on Saturday's UFC show even if you couldn't list them all off the top of your head. I'm obviously in that same category at worst and realistically a category or 2 beyond that devoting much of my time to combat sports and a website on the subject.

But most of the people who will watch UFC 88 this weekend aren't going to know any of the fights on the show outside of the main event and any other that the UFC may happen to mention in a commercial for the show. As an example, I am looking forward to Martin Kampmann Vs. Nate Marquardt on Saturday, I think it will be a good fight and I'm turning in to a real fan of Kampmann. I'm also annoyed that Jason Lambert Vs. Jason MacDonald and Thiago Tavares Vs. Kurt Pellegrino are dark fights not guaranteed to make the air.

But for a vast majority of people who will watch that show on Saturday they have no idea those 3 fights are even going to take place, they won't know about the Kampmann Vs. Marquardt fight until they see it in the graphic or until the guys head to the Octagon and they'll have no idea on the other 2 fights unless they air.

The fact is, for most people it is main event or bust. The main event sells the show, it gets them interested and all of the other stuff all the other fights are things they have to sit through until GSP or Chuck Liddell show up.

So as the UFC 91 card became available, you and I might have said things like Florian Vs. Stevenson are going to put on a show, Gabriel Gonzaga is usually pretty interesting and on down the line. But if most people had looked at the headline fight and saw Brock Lesnar Vs. Cheick Kongo that would have been the end of that right there. So you telling me that you're impressed with the depth of the UFC shows now doesn't mean much because you know too much. In that sense, your knowledge works against you and again, I mean that as a compliment.


Let me try it another way. Do you remember how excited we all were when Fight Night 13 was being put together earlier this year for April 2? Remember how there was an outcry for the show to be 3 hours long because of all the good fights that wouldn't be able to air if it were only 2? Well, all of that talk meant nothing as the show did a 1.1 rating with an average audience of 1.3 million viewers (I looked it up because I couldn't remember off hand) and that is on the low end of what the SpikeTV specials have done, in fact I don't recall another UFC card doing a worse rating than that. So for all the depth we thought that show had and for all of the name fighters it supposedly contained, the rating was nothing special as compared to other cards. The hardcore ravings didn't mean much to the general public.

Here are the UFC's bankable stars, the guys who have a proven track record of moving business in the eyes of the casual fans: Chuck Liddell, Georges St. Pierre, Forrest Griffin, Quinton Jackson, B.J. Penn, Matt Hughes, Randy Couture, Rich Franklin and Brock Lesnar. Wanderlei Silva hasn't had to prove he's in that group yet as his fight against Jardine was the third most high-profile fight at UFC 84 and he fought Chuck Liddell on a show headlined by Hughes and GSP so how much he means is not clear. Anderson Silva isn't in this group yet, his March fight against Dan Henderson did one of the lowest buyrates of the year and if you take out the shows from England it did the lowest. Being on Spike helped his cause somewhat but we won't know to what extent until after numbers for the Cote fight come in.

So for the vast majority of the UFC audience the fact that they get to watch UFC 89 for free on Spike isn't going to make them any more likely to order UFC 90 the next week. In fact, it will probably satisfy them enough that they feel like they can skip UFC 90 and save their money for UFC 91 just a few weeks later. Even though I think UFC 90 will have a pretty good and entertaining card when all is said and done, it being sandwiched between a free show and a show with a huge main event is going to hurt the buyrate because most people are going to pick and choose and with a main event featuring Patrick Cote who may be a good fighter but means nothing to most people, that's the one that will get left out.

So even if you as a hardcore fan are willing to watch all of these shows even if guys from the above mentioned list are no where to be found, it doesn't mean much because there are more of the main event or bust types than there are of you.

Dave Meltzer has been chronicling the business side of MMA since the beginning of the UFC and also deals with the casual Vs. Hardcore question in both MMA and Pro Wrestling (MMA and Pro Wrestling are more similar than people who are fans of one, the other but not both would like to admit). here is a piece that Dave wrote looking at UFC's expansion plans for next year and the risks involved.

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whew, lots of good points again. I guess depth/name recognition go hand in hand,. I probably dont get vested in a fighter until I have seen him at least once, and it would have to be something crazy like Houston Alexander destroying Jardine to get a fighter for me, up that quickly.

To me, as a hard core fan and a person willing to spend $300-$500 on PPV shows a year, the more the better. Only a couple of times have I felt that cards were looking thin. two off the top of my head were 72 and 85. I didnt even bother with 72 and 85 I watched at a bar. Im sure there might be one or two others in there but for the most part, I have felt very satisfied going into a card. Usually when my expectations are at their lowest, it turns into a great night and vice versa.

One thing that I helps the UFC is that its a big party/buddy sport. People get together with friends often and watch it and it turns into a social event. At least in my circle and I think boxing was probably like that in its hey day.

Another thing helping the UFC is it has very devoted fans. When I went to the weigh ins at 87, I was amazed how many people seemed to be as obsessed as I am. Then the crowd at the event was rabid and knowledgeable about the sport.

I think the sport/UFC is going more and more mainstream and moving away from being an event every month or so to a more consistent. Hell, if baseball can have a teams play 6 nights a week for 6 months, MMA can go every 3 weeks.

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This has been an interesting and fun discussion. I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts.

The UFC is definitely a social gathering type of sport, I'm not sure if Boxing was back in the day but it was/to an extent still is for WWE. Actually, a lot of bars and stuff have stopped showing WWE events in favor of UFC events.

Want to know why?

It has nothing to do with being able to fill the venue or anything like that.

It is because people tend to buy more stuff (food and drinks) for UFC than WWE shows.

That has nothing to do with anything but is kind of amusing at least to me.

Depth and name recognition do go hand-in-hand but they are not so tied together that you can't have one without also having the other. If I sign Tito Ortiz, Frank Shamrock, Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano to my company and fill the rest of my promotion with people. I have name recognition but I don't necessarily have depth. If I take Urijah Faber, Jens pulver, Jose Aldo, Leonard Garcia, Mike Brown, Waggney Fabiano, Micah Miller and Josh Grispi, I have a featherweight division with a lot of depth even though to most people a majority of those fighters aren't well known. Making those fighters become names is part of the trick and that is one reason why I unlike many am in favor of the WEC cutting the Light Heavyweight and Middleweight classes out entirely.


Don't compare MMA to baseball. The baseball comparison (Dana White tries this one only he uses football instead which is even worse) falters because while Baseball teams do play 6 night's a week for 6 months or so (counting spring training to the post season it is March to October so probably 8 months) but after that it goes away for 4 straight months and you get nothing but news about transactions.
Plus, in baseball you're not being asked to plunk down $44.95 for a pay-per-view everytime you want to see Yankees-Red Sox or Cubs-Cardinals.

Look at the NFL draft. It does a big rating every year even though it involves no actual playing of football. Why? Because it comes 2 months after the last game was actually played and another 2 or 3 months before the next actual game is to be played. It stands out as a special event, if you move the draft to the week after the Super Bowl interest in it would take a serious, serious hit. Offseasons help build a longing for the next season, the NFL doesn't lose any momentum by taking February to August off.

The Olympics, think of how less important the Olympics would be if they all of a sudden decided to have them every year.

Ultimately, the laws of supply Vs. Demand can't be avoided. If you supply more than the market demands than the value of your product decreases. If you supply less than what the market demands then your product is worth more. Plus, as I said before when it comes to supplying a sport like MMA, the more talent you have to hire to fill out shows the more you have to reach to find talent. Not everyone can fight, and not everyone that can fight belongs in the UFC but as you expand the number of spots you need to fill you get guys that don't belong if for no other reason than that's all that's available. Get enough of the guys that don't belong and people will see it. And remember hardcore fans don't set the market because they're taken for granted as the group that is going to buy/watch no matter what. They wouldn't be hardcore fans if that weren't the case.

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Weigh-in Results for UFC 88

The Parisyan Vs. Yoshida bout was canceled due to a late injury to Parisyan.

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WEC 36 has been postponed from Sept. 10 to Nov. 5 due to Hurricane Ike.

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Just in time for UFC 88, I have updated the Power Rankings. You can find all 5 divisions listed here and the specific columns here

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If you're interested my live UFC commentary is here

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I've set up a feedback poll on UFC 88 which you can find here

I was completely surprised by the end of the Liddell-Evans fight. Only Chuck was caught more off guard with the abrupt finish than me.

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The Liddell-Evans fight reiterated for me one of the many differences from Boxing. In Boxing, you get hit and go down, you have 10 seconds to recover from that. In MMA, you get hit, go down, and you have 205lbs of unleashed fury on top of you.

I can't say if I was greatly surprised, but it was definitely a "wow" ending.

I like Michael Bisping, but he looked way out of his league against Rich Franklin. Who knows why. Lack of skill? Jitterbugs?

I always enjoy seeing Dan Henderson, but the guy he was fight was built. His back muscles look like he could do 20 pull-ups straight. He also had interesting kicks, though they didn't do much damage here. I like guys who have that big lower base as opposed to having all the weight upper body, then scrawny legs.


My memory of Matt Brown is that he didn't live up to his hype on The Ultimate Fighter. He seems to have some skill, but also seems to leave a lot on the table. I heard them say how strong he is in escaping a standing guillotine, but at the same time, I see him do a lot of things that seem to indicate a lack of strength (he's quite easily taken down). Maybe it's not strength. Maybe it's balance. It may also be his fighter smarts. Again, I can't put my finger on it, but it seems he has a lot of opportunities in his fights to do x or y, but he waits until z presents itself, even if he loses the fight first. I could have also done without the homer audience boos which IMO supported Brown only because he's from the U.S. The guy who won deserved to win. Big Thumbs up to Joe Rogan for saying that he thought the guy won the decision. I've seen a lot of people have a lot negative to say about Rogan, but for my money, he's the best in the MMA business. He knows the fighters, knows the sport, and does a great job telling the audience what it needs to know.

Nate Marquardt is a beast. 'Nuff said.

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Micah, you need to go back and listen to Rogan again because he didn't say he thought Kim won the decision, he said he thought Matt Brown had won it.

Also, it was a bad night for Rogan because he also said that Rashad Evans knocked out Sean Sherk and he also forgot the day of the Brock Randy fight.

Andres, I wouldn't have given Rashad the next title shot based simply on him winning. Like if you told me before Saturday's fight that Rashad was going to win and get the next title shot, I wouldn't have agreed. But the way he won, may have helped his cause. I still think Machida and Jackson are probably ahead of him.

I wonder if it isn't time for Chuck to venture up to heavyweight. He's 38 years old, 39 in December. Cutting weight is never easy but I'm sure it gets harder with age.

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Right. Totally swapped names (but I had the right fighter).


I don't have it to go back and listen to, so I'll take your word on it. Going back probably wouldn't help anyway as I don't have perfect hearing. I did notice Rogan's error on the date, but IMO, that's a small error. I didn't really need him to tell me that anyway. What I more enjoy is his background on the fighters and his knowledge of MMA fighting.

Anyway, as it relates to Chuck, I have no problem saying his best days are behind him. Could he win another big fight? Sure. There's always a puncher's chance. But you don't see many boxers consistently excelling at Chuck's age for good reasons. Striking is Chuck's bread and butter.

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Andres, sometimes it isn't about who you beat to get a title shot. Machida is hated, Forrest is loved...money.

However, sometimes how you win is even more important than who you beat and even more important than if you're loved or hated.

That's why...Dana White announced at the press conference last night that it would indeed be Rashad who gets the next shot at Forrest. If he had decisioned Liddell, I don't think he would've gotten it ahead of Jackson or Machida but with a highlight reel KO, that's what happens.

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UFC 88 Salaries

Don't feel too bad for Liddell, he made more than the next 3 highest paid fighters combined.

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Evan Tanner, a former UFC Middleweight champion has been found dead at the age of 37.

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Affliction: Day of Reckoning = canceled

Apparently, the announcement that Ozzy Osbourne would be performing didn't increase ticket sales.