**The UFC has announced a middleweight bout between Tim Boestch and Luke Rockhold for the UFC 166 card on October 19th in Houston, Texas. Both are coming off losses with Rockhold dropping his UFC debut bout to Vitor Belfort in January while Boestch is coming off decision losses to Costa Philippou and Mark Munoz.

**Chael Sonnen announced on UFC Tonight last night that he has signed a new five-fight contract and following the bout with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua on August 17th he will be moving back down to the middleweight division. Sonnen stated he wants to fight both Vitor Belfort and Wanderlei Silva at 185-pounds.

**Joe Rogan will not be making the trip down to Brazil for UFC 163 on August 3rd as now retired fighter Brian Stann will step in to call the fights alongside Mike Goldberg.

**Sylvester Stallone tweeted on Tuesday night that UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey will be part of the cast of “The Expendables 3”, which is set to begin shooting next month. Rousey will join former UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture in the film, which will make for some fun advertising on UFC broadcasts as they promote one fighter and will go out of their way to ignore the other.

**UFC welterweight Sean Pierson has signed a new contract with the organization. Pierson had one fight remaining on his old deal and this new four-fight deal will replace the older one. Pierson is on a three-fight win streak with his most recent win coming over Kenny Robertson at UFC 161 in June.

**The UFC has signed Roy Nelson to a new contract after his deal expired following his loss to Stipe Miocic last month at UFC 161 in Winnipeg. Nelson will be fighting Daniel Cormier on October 19th at UFC 166 on the same card as Cormier’s teammate Cain Velasquez, who defends the heavyweight title in the main event of that show against Junior dos Santos.

**A lightweight bout between John Makdessi and Renee Forte has been added to the September 21st UFC 165 card in Toronto. Makdessi has won his last two fights with unanimous decision wins over Sam Stout and Daron Cruickshank while Forte is coming off a victory over Terry Etim by unanimous decision this past February.
**Bellator has announced that they have booked the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon for Friday September 27th for the kick off of their lightweight tournament. This is a departure from their traditional method of booking casinos and selling the shows that way and this will be the biggest venue they have ever run to date with the following opening round lightweight bouts announced for the show:
*Marcus Davis vs. Alexander “Tiger” Sarnavskiy
*John Alessio vs. Will Brooks
*Martin Stapleton vs. Saad Awad
*Rich Clementi vs. Rob Sinclair

Rampage vs. Ortiz in November on Bellator's first PPV card. That would've been a good fight like 5-6 years ago.

**Here are the main card results from the Bellator 97 card in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Wednesday night:
*Patricio “Pitbull” Freire over Jared Downing by TKO at 0:54 of Round 3
*Vitaly Minakov over Ryan Martinez by TKO at 4:02 of Round 3 to win the heavyweight tournament
*Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal over Jacob Noe by verbal submission at 2:51 of Round 3 to win the light heavyweight tournament
*Ben Askren over Andrey Koreshkov by TKO at 2:58 of Round 4 to retain the welterweight title
*Michael Chandler over David Rickels by KO at 0:44 of Round 1 to retain the lightweight title

**The major news coming out of the show was the announcement of Quinton Jackson vs. Tito Ortiz for Bellator’s first pay-per-view event on November 2nd in Long Beach, California. Bellator flew in Roy Jones Jr. and posted pictures of him on Twitter, showed him on camera leading up to the announcement before delivering the swerve in the cage with Jackson welcoming out his real opponent as Tito Ortiz came out to his trademark song “Mosh” by Eminem and the two had a staredown. Obviously reaction is mixed to say the least with the argument that if you’re running a pay-per-view this was the biggest fight Bellator could probably put together with name brand stars as Bellator hasn’t created one home grown star that could be put in that position to carry a show. The cost of these two to Bellator will tell the tale and makes you question if this will even be profitable for the company. I really hope they can work out a settlement with Eddie Alvarez and put together Michael Chandler vs. Eddie Alvarez as the co-main event on the card but that’s going to be a tough bridge to repair. I’m not super optimistic about this show doing well but I want to see how it’s promoted and what the ceiling is for a non-UFC pay-per-view as there isn’t a high demand for outside product.

**The UFC’s multi-country press tour went through New York today with Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos, Jon Jones, Alexander Gustafsson, Georges St-Pierre, Johny Hendricks, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and UFC president Dana White in attendance and holding a press conference at the Beacon Theatre in New York.


**Ariel Helwani reported on UFC Tonight Tuesday that Vitor Belfort would be interested in fighting Chael Sonnen at a catchweight bout in his next fight rather than fight Tim Kennedy, who Dana White stated they were working on putting together last week. Sonnen responded on the show that he would like to fight Belfort as well and threw out of the option of fighting at UFC 168 on December 28th on the loaded event featuring Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva and Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate. Sonnen’s stipulation is that Belfort put his #1 contendership for the middleweight title on the line (although Belfort has been promised nothing and would be putting up a hypothetical title fight although if Belfort beats Sonnen he would have to be the next logical contender and for some already is the next challenger for the winner of Weidman vs. Silva rematch).

**The UFC has added a middleweight bout between Costa Philippou and Francis Carmont for the UFC 165 card on September 21st in Toronto. Philippou has won five straight and was scheduled to fight Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza this past May but was injured and had to pull out of the fight. Carmont has won his last ten fights and is currently 5-0 in the UFC with his last win coming against Lorenz Larkin in April by unanimous decision.

Precisely. They'll both gas out by the 2nd round.

Machida vs.Davis....wtf was that??

yeesh

bellator should be embarrassed after saying they werent going to be an organization of ufc castoffs. and they dont have to be w/ people like chandler, askren, pitbull, newton, king mo, etc. this is a terrible fight for their first main event.

aldo looked awesome as usual, but i thought the ending was kinda shitty. that was nuts to watch KZ put his shoulder back in place in the middle of the fight. i also read aldo broke his foot in the first round, which would explain the takedowns in favor of leg kicks.

i thought machida/davis could have been a draw, but machida has been on the winning side of so many of these lame, close fights im glad he lost. id like to see davis fight glover texiera next.

**The UFC has announced a lightweight bout between Melvin Guillard and Ross Pearson for the October 26th card in Manchester, England underneath the main event of Michael Bisping vs. Mark Munoz.

**Former UFC and Strikeforce fighter Paul Daley has signed a new one-year, three-fight contract with the U.K. based BAMMA organization and is an exclusive deal.

**Sara McMann has suffered an injury and is off of the August 28th UFC card in Indianapolis, Indiana where she was to fight Sarah Kaufman. The UFC is looking for a replacement to fight Kaufman on short notice. That card is headlined by Carlos Condit vs. Martin Kampann in a rematch from their 2009 bout.

**Bellator held a press conference monday with Quinton Jackson, Tito Ortiz and Bjorn Rebney to promote the November 2nd pay-per-view. Ortiz noted that he is healthy, in the right mental space with no relationship to drag him down and noted that no matter what he and Rampage are friends.

**In addition to Chan Sung Jung dislocating his shoulder in the main event of UFC 163, Jose Aldo also suffered a broken foot in the opening two-minutes of the fight according to his manager Andre Pederneiras, who spoke to Guilherme Cruz of MMAFighting.com.

**World Series of Fighting presents their fourth card this Saturday night from Ontario, California headlined by Tyrone Spong meeting Angel DeAnda along with company president Ray Sefo fighting Dave Huckaba and the promotional debut of Nick Newell, who will be taking on Keon Caldwell on the main card.

**The UFC has decided not to renew the contract of Roger Gracie after only one fight inside of the organization. Gracie dropped a decision to Tim Kennedy last month at UFC 162 after coming over from the Strikeforce organization.

**The UFC has added a bantamweight fight between Alex Caceres and Roland Delorme for the September 21st UFC 165 card in Toronto next month.

**A bantamweight bout between George Roop and Francisco Rivera has been added to UFC 166 on October 19th in Houston, Texas.

**Here are the results from the World Series of Fighting 4 card from Saturday night in Ontario, California that aired on the NBC Sports Network and online worldwide:
*Victor Valenzuela over Isaac Gutierrez by rear-naked choke at 2:41 of Round 2
*Jared Papazian over John Robles by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
*Lewis Gonzales over Antonio McKee by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Gerald Harris over Jorge Santiago by unanimous decision (29-27 all)
*J.Z. Cavalcante over Tyson Griffin by TKO at 1:37 of Round 3
*Dave Huckaba over Ray Sefo by TKO at 4:32 of Round 2
*Nick Newell over Keon Caldwell by guillotine choke at 2:07 of Round 1
*Marlon Moraes over Brandon Hempleman by unanimous decision (30-27 all)
*Tyrone Spong over Angel DeAnda by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)

**The next WSOF card will be on September 14th will be going head to head with the massive Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Saul Alvarez fight will be headlined by Andrei Arlovski (replacing an injured Anthony Johnson) fighting Mike Kyle.

**The UFC has signed flyweight Darrell Montague, who has been a standout for Taichi Palace Fights out of Lemoore, California. Montague will debut for the promotion at UFC 166 on October 19th when he meets John Dodson, who hasn’t fought since challenging Demetrious Johnson for the flyweight title this past January on FOX.

**Ariel Helwani at MMAFighting.com is reporting that Jimi Manuwa will meet Ryan Jimmo on October 26th in Manchester, England that will air on FOX Sports 2 (the soon to be rebranded FUEL TV) on the same card where Michael Bisping takes on Mark Munoz. Helwani also reports that a flyweight bout between John Lineker and Phil Harris has also been added to that same card.

**Bellator announced on Tuesday that they had come to terms on a settlement with Eddie Alvarez and with the new deal he will be challenging lightweight champion Michael Chandler on November 2nd as the co-feature on the promotion’s first pay-per-view event alongside Tito Ortiz and Quinton Jackson. The reality was that Alvarez was not even going to get a court date against Bellator until September of 2014 (meaning it would be 23-months from his last fight and getting a court date) and very easily could wind up having to fight Bellator and lose a ton of time fighting the company. The deal will see Alvarez get a back end of the pay-per-view and is a rematch of the best fight in company history from November 18th 2011 where Chandler won the title with the show going head to head with UFC 139 and they peaked with 343,000 viewers.

**After dismal numbers over the past few weeks Spike TV is moving Fight Master to Thursday nights at 11pm EST for the remaining three shows (it wraps up August 29th) so it can benefit from the huge lead in that Impact Wrestling will give it. The show has failed to hit 700,000 for any of the weeks, which is the prime time average for Spike. The network does own 50% of the promotion and might view it as a loss leader to keep the show going but I would be stunned if they produce a second season as this show has had zero impact, isn’t a cheap show to produce and drags down their average. The numbers will certainly go up with the Impact lead in and if they are significant gains it might be the saving grace for the show.

**Bellator has also announced a new system for determining title challengers if a tournament winner gets injured and cannot fight and boy does this one sound simplistic:

Step #1:

Bellator will refer to the most recent completed tournament (in the instance of a 4-man tournament being the most recent tournament, we would expand this to be the most recent two tournaments), and tabulate tournament points based on the following criteria with fighters that are still under contract with Bellator:
- For every decision victory, fighter will record one (1) point
- For every KO/TKO/submission win in the third round, fighter will record two (2) points
- For every KO/TKO/submission win in the second round, fighter will record three (3) points
- For every KO/TKO/submission in the first round, fighter will record four (4) points
- From the above list, the top three (3) point earners in the applicable weight class in which a replacement title challenger must be determined will be chosen. Bellator MMA executives may also include a fourth (4th) fighter on the ballot as well. This list of four will comprise the list of available fighters for the title shot.

Once the list has been established, three (3) different groups, each holding 33% voting power, will vote on who rightfully deserves a shot at the Bellator World Title:

1) Current Bellator MMA World Champions (including the Champion in the division under consideration)
2) Current Bellator MMA Tournament winners
3) Bellator Executives including CEO Bjorn Rebney, President Tim Danaher & the top two executives on Bellator’s Talent Development Team including Sam Caplan and Zach Light. After the voting results are in, a final challenger will be determined and revealed. The chosen fighter will replace the injured tournament winner and receive a world title shot.

**Bellator has announced they have released female fighters Jessica Eye, Jessica Aguilar and Felice Herrig with Herrig already signing a deal with Invicta FC. These were the last three women on their roster and Bellator deciding not to focus on any women’s divisions for the foreseeable future.

**Invicta FC featherweight champion Cris “Cyborg” Justino is going to be taking a Muay Thai bout on September 20th against Martina Jindrova in Las Vegas and airing on AXS TV.

**On the UFC conference call Monday Dana White said they might be hesitant to return to Massachusetts in the near future due to the problems they have dealt with involving the commission including the Chael Sonnen hearing last week following a complaint lodged by a chapter of the Culinary Union.

What happened to Uriah Hall? He was mowing people down in TUF, he kind of sucks fighting real UFC fighters.

Funny you should ask.

The Sudden Rise and Fall of Uriah Hall

By Andreas Hale | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Mon, Aug 19, 2013 2:33 PM EDT

COMMENTARY | Once upon a time there was this guy on the Ultimate Fighter that UFC president Dana White described as "terrifying" to the rest of the TUF 17 cast before the season even began.


"We have a guy on this season of The Ultimate Fighter, every fight he's in, someone goes to the hospital," White said during a media luncheon. "The whole house is terrified of this guy."


Most were skeptical until we tuned in and watched Uriah Hall do exactly what White said. A devastating spinning hook-kick separated Adam Cella's body from his spirit in the third episode, and the legend was born.


The hype train gained more steam when Hall broke Bubba McDaniel's face in three places with one punch. And then Hall punctuated his dominance with a vicious ground-and-pound beating over Dylan Andrews to make his way into the TUF Finale. Chael Sonnen declared him as the next top contender in the middleweight division. The media drank the Kool Aid as well as it wondered what would happen if Hall faced Anderson Silva. As if every other middleweight was little more than a stepping stone or potential highlight reel.


And then the big lights came on and everything changed.


It was a foregone conclusion that Hall would steamroll Kevin Gastelum en route to claiming the TUF 17 crown and begin his march toward the middleweight championship. But something about the bright lights of the UFC made Hall a different fighter. Inside of the TUF center, Hall was a savage that ransacked fighter's faces. But the bright lights of an arena proved to be Hall's kryptonite.


Hall changed from grim reaper to the officer friendly against Gastelum and allowed his undersized and lesser talented opponent to earn the split decision victory. Hall admitted that liking Gastelum from their time at the TUF house got to him and affected his performance. The hype train had officially slowed down. But at UFC on Fox Sports 1, not only did the train come to a grinding halt, but it also flew off of the tracks, careened into a brick wall and exploded.


Against John Howard -- whose previous stint in the UFC saw him drop three fights in a row before making his way back into the organization -- Hall again looked as if his mythical powers had betrayed him. But not only that, he seemed more interested in making friends than making highlight reels.


After surprising everyone with a takedown in the opening seconds, Hall looked like he made a conscious effort to not hurt Howard. His strikes didn't have the steam that sent his TUF opponents into the hospital nor did he ever look as if he wanted to win. Something was off about Hall as he was facing an opponent who was a sizable underdog. At any given moment, Hall could have exploded with a salvo of strikes. Instead, he exploded with smiles and high-fives whenever Howard landed a leg kick.


It was very weird. Like Howard figured out how to diffuse the bomb with kindness. During the last 20 seconds, with the fight hanging in the balance, Hall and Howard nodded to each other like they scripted the performance. It was a nod to say "let's give them a show," but Howard already knew that he stole the fight from under Hall's nose. A duped Hall feigned a goofy smile and played along with the charade. The final bell sounded, they embraced (again) and Hall listened as Bruce Buffer announced Howard as the split decision winner. However, just like the Gastelum fight, Hall didn't look the slightest bit disappointed. Usually, when a fighter loses a split decision, their heads explode. Not Uriah Hall.


Nearly eight months have passed since White sang Hall's praises. After his performance at UFC on Fox Sports' inaugural event, White's tune had changed quite a bit.


"If I could take Brad Pickett's brain and heart and put it inside Uriah Hall's body, holy (expletive) there would be some damage done," White said during the post-fight media scrum. "Because Uriah Hall has all the physical attributes to be amazing. He's got speed, he's got power, he's unbelievable. He doesn't have what it mentally takes to fight here."


It's always been clear that Hall had the tools, but what good are the tools if the athlete refuses to put them to use? It is one of those frustrating things that is far worse than a fighter without the unique gifts that Hall possesses. Hall has the goods, but simply cannot pull the trigger. Maybe he's remorseful that he sent those opponents to the hospital. Without somebody bullying him (he said he got into fighting because he was sick of being bullied) or talking about his mother, Hall cannot summon the power to take his opponent out. It's certainly a mental thing.

"He was this killer on TUF, and then he comes into the big show where it really matters and this is going to make your livelihood and everything else, and he turns into this different person. This super nice guy," White said. "He was telling me after the Kelvin fight 'I really like him, he's a really nice guy. OK, well that really nice guy just took everything you wanted. Do you get what I'm saying, does that make sense to you? I guess it doesn't make sense to him."

What would make sense is getting Hall a psychiatrist to teach him how to unlock his mystical powers. Until then, Superman will forever be just another Clark Kent.

**The UFC’s debut on FS 1 Saturday night was a home run ratings wise with the show doing a 1.38 rating and averaging 1,780,000 viewers and doing a higher rating than all of the live FX cards did dating back to January 2012. It wouldn’t be the largest audience of all the FX shows but it must be acknowledged that FS 1 was available in more homes than FS 1 was on launch day. The fact that this show debuted on a brand new network on the first day and so many people found it is one thing but even bigger is the fact that FS 1 was win the night in their key demographics including beating ESPN programming as a huge feather in the cap of FS 1 with UFC being the product that drew the audience.

**Ben Fowlkes has a great piece on MMA Junkie with a rare set of interviews with UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby and discussing their roles and whole process of making fights for 400 contracted fighters at http://www.mmajunkie.com/news/2013/08/p ... ean-shelby.

**To no one’s surprise Reza Madadi has been released from the UFC following his conviction for aggravated burglary and has been sentenced to 18-months in prison after breaking into a designer hand bag store and stealing merchandise. Madadi had a 2-1 record in the UFC and lost fought in April where he defeated Michael Johnson.

**A clarification on the Muhammed Lawal vs. Emmanuel Newton light heavyweight bout for November 2nd is that it will be a five-round fight and will be for the interim light heavyweight title as champion Attila Vegh is out with a shoulder injury.

**A light heavyweight bout between Jimi Manuwa and Ryan Jimmo has been confirmed for the UFC Fight Night 30 on October 26th in Manchester, England. Manuwa is 2-0 in the UFC with wins over Kyle Kingsbury and most recently defeating Cyrille Diabate while Jimmo is coming off a decision nod over Igor Pokrajac at UFC 161 back in June.

**The UFC is about to embark on their craziest seven-day stretch in company history with three-shows between from August 28th – September 4th with the following cards:
*Fight Night 27 – August 28th in Indianapolis, Indiana (Carlos Condit vs. Martin Kampann)
*UFC 164 – August 31st in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Benson Henderson vs. Anthony Pettis for the lightweight title, Josh Barnett vs. Frank Mir)
*Fight Night 28 – September 4th in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Glover Teixeira vs. Ryan Bader, Yushin Okami vs. Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza)

**Sarah Kaufman is officially off of next Wednesday’s card in Indianapolis after UFC officials announced they would be booking her on a future card. Kaufman was originally set to fight Sara McMann on that card but McMann had to pull out of the fight a few weeks ago and no replacement could be inserted on short notice for Kaufman.

**The UFC has also confirmed Fight Night 29 for October 9th in Sao Paulo, Brazil and will be headlined by a welterweight bout between Demian Maia and Jake Shields and will also feature Dong Hyun Kim meeting Erick Silva on the same card. MMA Fighting has also confirmed that a welterweight bout between Rousimar Palhares and Mike Pierce has been added to that card with Palhares cutting down to 170-pounds for the first time.

**Doug Marshall has broken his hand and is out of his middleweight title fight with Alexander Shlemenko on September 7th at Bellator 98. Marshall won the last Bellator middleweight tournament and will be replaced in the fight by Brett Cooper, who lost to Marshall in the finals of that tournament. The new title fight is a rematch from May 2011 where Shlemenko defeated Cooper.

**Below is the big promo that Wanderlei Silva cut on Chael Sonnen from earlier this week and is one of the best promos in any industry in a long time and has close to 1-million views already:



**The left knee injury to UFC featherweight Conor McGregor is significantly worse than originally thought. UFC president Dana White revealed on Fox Sports Live last night that McGregor has suffered a torn ACL, a MCL strain and a meniscal tear of the posterior horn. The expected time he is said to be out for is 10-months, which sounds like a conservative estimate for such a serious injury and that may only be the time table until he can start training.

**A welterweight bout between Josh Koscheck and Tyron Woodley has been added to UFC 167 on November 16th in Las Vegas. Koscheck was stopped by Robbie Lawler this past February at UFC 157 and then was forced to pull out of a fight with Demian Maia earlier this summer while Woodley knocked out Jay Hieron this past February and then dropped a decision to Jake Shields at UFC 161 in June.

**The UFC has added a middleweight bout between Lorenz Larkin and Chris Camozzi to the November 6th Fight for the Troops 3 event along with another middleweight fight between Yoel Romero and Ronny Markes. That show will be headlined by Lyoto Machida vs. Tim Kennedy in a five-round middleweight bout.

**Authentic Sports Management, who represent Eddie Alvarez sent out the following statement regarding speculation of the details involved in Alvarez’s settlement with Bellator:

Recently there has been speculation in the media regarding my settlement with Bellator. The settlement is involved and complicated and contains many contingencies. The terms of the settlement are confidential and neither I, nor my representatives, are going to release these terms to anyone. The speculations, which have been printed, are just that, speculations, and could not possibly be completely accurate as the settlement is over forty (40) pages long. I would suggest that these speculations are helping no one, and respectfully request that they cease immediately. All I want to do is fight.

**Bellator has announced the opening round fights for their next eight-man lightweight tournament that kicks off September 27th in Portland, Oregon and airing on Spike TV with the following opening round bouts:
*Rob Sinclair vs. Rich Clementi
*Saad Awad vs. Martin Stapleton
*Will Brooks vs. John Alessio
*Tiger Sarnavskiy vs. Marcus Davis

**Former WWE Tough Enough contestant Jeremiah Riggs will fight on the undercard of that Bellator show in Portland against Peter Aspinwall.

**Here are the results from UFC 164 Sat night in front of 9,178 and a gate of $907,116 at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:
*Magnus Cedenblad over Jared Hamman by guillotine choke at 0:57 of Round 1
*Al Iaquinta over Ryan Couture by unanimous decision (30-27 all)
*Soa Palelei over Nikita Krylov by TKO at 1:34 of Round 3
*Chico Camus over Kyung Ho Kang by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
*Hyun Gyu Lim over Pascal Krauss by TKO at 3:58 of Round 1
*Tim Elliott over Louis Gaudinot by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-26, 30-26)
*Gleison Tibau over Jamie Varner by split decision (29-28, 27-29, 29-28)
*Dustin Poirier over Erik Koch by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-27)
*Ben Rothwell over Brandon Vera by TKO at 1:54 of Round 3
*Chad Mendes over Clay Guida by TKO at 0:30 of Round 3
*Josh Barnett over Frank Mir by TKO at 1:56 of Round 1
*Anthony Pettis over Benson Henderson by armbar at 4:31 of Round 1 to win the UFC lightweight title

**Below are the recipients of the $50,000 bonuses handed out after the card:
*Fight of the Night – Hyun Gyu Kim vs. Pascal Krauss
*Knockout of the Night – Chad Mendes
*Submission of the Night – Anthony Pettis

**There was concern after the card that Anthony Pettis had injured his good knee as he may have popped the knee while checking a kick during the fight. Pettis was downplaying the injury at the post fight press conference but stated it was not the same knee he hurt prior to the Jose Aldo fight that Pettis had to pull out of.

**Chad Mendes noted that for his last four fights he has had his father in his corner and has resulted in four consecutive stoppage victories. It was not lost on most people the fact that Ryan Couture (who fought on last night’s card as well) is 0-2 in his last two fights with his father being banned from cornering his son. Dana White took a shot at Randy Couture during the post fight media scrum saying he was impressed with Ryan’s chin and definitely didn’t get that chin from his father.

**All of the fighters made weight for tomorrow night’s UFC Fight Night 28 card from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We’ll have a preview of the fights in tomorrow’s update as well as picks for all of the fights. The top three fights have importance in their respective weight classes with Glover Teixeira vs. Ryan Bader, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza vs. Yushin Okami and Joseph Benavidez vs. Jussier da Silva. The debut of TUF 18 will immediately follow the live fight card on FS 1 in the U.S. and Sportsnet 360 in Canada.

**The UFC has announced that Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto is off of the UFC 165 card on September 21st and Wilson Reis will be stepping in to fight Ivan Menjivar on the card in Toronto.

**Guilherme Cruz of MMAFighting.com reports that the UFC is planning a Fight Night card in Australia for December 21st at a venue to be announced and that heavyweights Mark Hunt and Antonio Silva have verbally agreed to fight in a five-round main event. Both heavyweights last fought in losing efforts at UFC 160 in May with Hunt knocked out by Junior dos Santos and suffered a nasty case of staph infection following the bout while Silva was stopped by Cain Velasquez in the main event of that card.

**Former UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk announced his retirement on Monday at the age of 40. Sherk has not fought since September of 2010 where he won a controversial split decision over Evan Dunham at UFC 119. Sherk competed at welterweight before dropping down to lightweight and would win the UFC lightweight title at UFC 64 (on the same card where Anderson Silva defeated Rich Franklin to win the middleweight title). Sherk was stripped of that title following a July 2007 bout with Hermes Franca where both failed their post fight drug tests and Sherk came up positive for the steroid nandrolone and fought the California State Athletic Commission and eventually had his suspension reduced. Sherk retires with a record of 36-4-1.

**MMA Junkie reports that a verbal agreement has been reached between lightweights Gray Maynard and Nate Diaz to fight on the TUF 18 Finale card on November 30th in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two met on the fifth season of TUF in 2007 with Diaz submitting Maynard on the show to reach the finals and eventually win that season. The two then had a rematch in January of 2010 where Maynard won by split decision.

**Here are the main card results from Sat night’s Bellator 98 card from Uncasville, Connecticut:
*Derek Anderson over Patricky “Pitbull” Freire by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Perry Filkins over Jeremy Kimball by rear-naked choke at 4:18 of Round 3
*Brennan Ward over Justin Torrey by TKO at 3:28 of Round 2
*Jason Butcher over Giva Santana by TKO at 1:12 of Round 2
*Mikkel Parlo over Brian Rogers by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-26, 30-26)
*Alexander Shlemenko over Brett Cooper by unanimous decision (48-47 all) to keep the Bellator middleweight title

**Perry Filkins will meet Brennan Ward and Jason Butcher will fight Mikkel Parlo in the semi-finals of the middleweight tournament on October 4th. Following his loss last night the 41-year old Giva Santana announced his retirement to the crowd and retires with a professional record of 18-3.

**A non-tournament heavyweight bout between Cheick Kongo and Mark Godbeer has been added to the Bellator 101 card on September 27th in Portland, Oregon on the televised main card. This will be Kongo’s first fight for the promotion since his contract with the UFC ended earlier this year.

**The weigh-ins for UFC 165 will take place on Friday September 20th in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre at 4pm ET and are open to the public. Prior to the weigh-ins the UFC will be hosting a free Q&A sessions with middleweight champion Chris Weidman at 2pm ET.

**The debut episode of Ultimate Fighter on Wednesday night averaged 762,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1. The Fight Night 28 card that served as a lead in did 539,000 viewers.

**UFC president Dana White provided the following statement to Ariel Helwani at MMAFighting.com regarding the numbers on Wednesday night:

We were #1 on all of cable with M18-34 and M18-49. We also beat the US Open and the Detroit vs Red Sox MLB game. This is all part of the building process. We’ve made a commitment to work with FOX to build this network. If you look at all of the other networks we’ve ever been on we consistently pull strong ratings. The first time we put our prelims on FX we pulled 880K viewers and it grew, depending on the fight, up to 1.9 million viewers for UFC 156. Also, the TUF season with Carwin and Big Country averaged 822K viewers then Jones vs Sonnen averaged 1.3 million viewers. We currently hold the top 4 most watched telecasts on FS1 since the network launched. To be honest, our Prelim and Fight Night numbers weren’t bad considering we started on the west coast at 2pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday. The most important thing is last night’s fights were awesome and this season of TUF is great. Yes, we didn’t pull the 1 million + but we will. But, we also fucked up last night by not starting the main event later so that we could get a live lead into TUF. The bottom line is FOX couldn’t be happier with the UFC and the ratings we’re pulling. And we couldn’t be happier with the way we’ve been treated by the network.

**The UFC 167 card on November 16th in Las Vegas is shaping up to be one of the best cards of the year with the addition of a heavyweight bout to the main card with Frank Mir vs. Alistair Overeem. The two are in “must win” situations as Mir is on a three-fight losing streak while Overeem has been stopped in his last two fights to Antonio Silva and Travis Browne. The UFC has also added a lightweight bout between Donald Cerrone and Evan Dunham to that card.

**A women’s bout between Liz Carmouche and Alexis Davis has been added to the November 6th Fight for the Troops 3 card in Fort Campbell, Kentucky on the same card with Tim Kennedy vs. Lyoto Machida in the main event.

Frankie Edgar and BJ Penn are the next coaches for TUF. I was hoping Penn would retire. He's turning into Roy Jones Jr.

**One of the stranger controversies in MMA took place Sat night at the World Series of Fighting card in Atlantic City, New Jersey where the fight between Elvis Mutapcic and Jesse Taylor was cancelled at the last minute when a commission official claimed she saw Mutapcic take a pill that was not cleared by the commission ahead of time. Mutapcic denied taking anything and claimed it was his manager, who is on a heart medication that took the pill. Mutapcic immediately went to a nearby medical facility and had a drug test taken and his tests came back negative for any foreign substances and sent the results out to the media. The New Jersey Athletic Control Board has not released a statement as of yet and there will certainly need to be a hearing to address this situation.

**T.J. Grant announced on Monday evening that he is still suffering from concussion problems and will be unable to fight Anthony Pettis in December, which is when the UFC was hoping to have Grant challenge for the lightweight title. Grant was originally scheduled to fight Benson Henderson this past August at UFC 164 but had to remove himself from the fight after suffering the concussion during training and Anthony Pettis stepped in to fight Henderson and won the title. The UFC was quick to announce that Josh “The Punk” Thomson will be getting the next lightweight title shot on December 14th in Sacramento in the main event of the UFC on FOX 9 event against Pettis. Thomson returned to the UFC this past spring with a victory over Nate Diaz, which also aired on FOX in April.

**The UFC has also added a featherweight bout between Chad Mendes and Nik Lentz to the FOX 9 card in Sacramento. Mendes has won four straight fights since his loss to Jose Aldo last January at UFC 142 and is coming off a stoppage win over Clay Guida at UFC 164. Lentz has gone 3-0 since cutting down 145-pounds. The announcement of this fight indicates that the next fighter to get a shot at Jose Aldo is down to Ricardo Lamas or Cub Swanon for early 2014 with Mendes out of the running.

**The UFC has added two more fights to the already loaded UFC 167 card on November 16th with the announcement that Ed Herman will be meeting Rafael Natal in a middleweight bout and a bantamweight fight between Erik Perez and Edwin Figueora has also been added to the card.

**The World Series of Fighting returns on October 26th and will be headlined by Josh Burkman taking on Steve Carl to crown the first WSOF welterweight champion. Jon Fitch will also be fighting on that card against the 15-6 Marcelo Alfaya in Fitch’s first fight since his submission loss to Burkman back in June in his WSOF debut.

**A middleweight bout between Derek Brunson and Antonio Brago Neto has been added to Fight for the Troops 3 card on November 6th in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The show is also going to feature a battle of TUF winners as Season 15 winner Michael Chiesa meets Season 16 winner Colton Smith on that card.

**Filming for The Fast and Furious 7 movie began over the weekend and will be starring Dwayne Johnson. The movie was supposed to feature Ronda Rousey in a notable role but after announcing she would be a part of the project it was later clarified that the project was up in the air for Rousey.

**This might be the goofiest UFC promo I have ever seen:

**UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones confirmed today that the MRI on his foot revealed no breaks.

**Tonight’s edition of TUF features Roxanne Modafferi vs. Jessica Rakoczy at 10pm ET.

**UFC president Dana White has gone out and publically stated that he believes UFC 168 on December 28th could beat the numbers of UFC 100 from July of 2009, which is the largest card the UFC has ever presented. The show did a gate of $5.1 million in Las Vegas (which is the third highest gate in Nevada history for an MMA event) and believed to have done 1,600,000 buys on pay-per-view, which the company has never come close to beating since that show. It’s so hard to say three-months out from the show of what this show will draw and how the final build in the last ten-days will get people’s excitement and click. UFC 100 was a benefit of so many things falling into place from the build to the “100” show (which much like Bellator 100 was not their 100th event or even 100th numbered event), having both Brock Lesnar and Georges St-Pierre available to fight on the same card (Lesnar and Mir were supposed to fight at UFC 98 earlier that year and they had to postpone it due to an injury) and having Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping as your third fight on the main card coming off a season of TUF.

**Bellator has announced the following fights for their four-man heavyweight tournament for October 4th at Bellator 102 in Visalia, California:
*Cheick Kongo vs. Mark Godbeer
*Lavar Johnson vs. Vinicius Queiroz

**Bellator has signed an international television partnership with Fox Sports Latin America, which is in 50-million homes. The deal will begin in October with all live Bellator events, ancillary programming such as Bellator 360 and will carry the November 2nd pay-per-view live and free on the channel.

**The UFC has cut lightweight Ryan Couture following losses to Ross Pearson and Al Iaquinta in the UFC.

**The Canadian based Maximum Fighting Championship has signed a new television deal with Fight Network for three-years and will be carrying all of the MFC events on a two-week delay. The MFC’s next show is October 4th featuring three title fights.

**Bellator has signed Aaron Rosa and he will be fighting Mikhail Zayats on October 11th at the Bellator 103 card in Kansas City, Missouri.

**Invicta FC is planning to run their next event on December 7th.

**Both Jones and Gustafsson were taken to the hospital after the fight and Gustafsson had a noticeable limp after the fight. Neither attended the post fight press conference. It was reported later that neither suffered any broken bones but both required stitches. Jones camp told Ariel Helwani that he injured his foot early in the fight.

**The show drew 15,504 to the Air Canada Centre and had a live gate of $1,900,000 and below are the full results from the card:
*Daniel Omielanczuk over Nandor Guelmino by KO at 3:18 of Round 3
*Alex Caceres over Roland Delorme by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
*Michel Prazeres over Jesse Ronson by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
*John Makdessi over Renee Forte by KO at 2:01 of Round 1
*Mitch Gagnon over Dustin Kimura by guillotine choke at 4:05 of Round 1
*Stephen Thompson over Chris Clements by KO at 1:27 of Round 2
*Wilson Reis over Ivan Menjivar by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Myles Jury over Mike Ricci by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
*Khabib Nurmagomedov over Pat Healy by unanimous decision (30-27 all)
*Francis Carmont over Costa Philippou by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-26)
*Brendan Schaub over Matt Mitrione by D’Arce choke at 4:06 of Round 1
*Renan Barao over Eddie Wineland by TKO at 0:35 of Round 2 to keep the UFC interim bantamweight title
*Jon Jones over Alexander Gustafsson by unanimous decision (49-46, 48-47, 48-47) to keep the UFC light heavyweight title

**The following $50,000 bonuses were handed out after the fight:
*Fight of the Night – Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson
*Knockout of the Night – Renan Barao
*Submission of the Night – Mitch Gagnon

**UFC president Dana White intimated at the post fight press conference that Brendan Schaub may be fighting sooner than expected because of an opening that was recently created but would not elaborate on the potential fight for Schaub.

**Mike Chiappetta at FOXsports.com reported the score card breakdowns from the main event on Saturday night at UFC 165 between Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson. Judge Chris Lee scored the first round for Gustafsson and Rounds 2-5 for Jones, Judge Richard Bertrand had Rounds 2,4,5 for Jones and Judge Doug Crosby scored Rounds 3-5 for Jones.

**Today we got perhaps the greatest reason for a fighter not being able to fight on a certain date with Nate Diaz tweeting that he cannot fight Gray Maynard on November 30th at the TUF 18 Finale because of his high school reunion. The rematch between the two was announced as the co-feature for the show on the same card as Demetrious Johnson vs. Joseph Benavidez for the flyweight title.

**Bellator announced the semi-finals of this season’s featherweight tournament for October 11th in Kansas City with Justin Wilcox taking on Joe Taimanglo and Fabricio Guerreiro will fight Patricio “Pitbull” Freire.

**Current Bellator heavyweight Lavar Johnson was a guest on “The MMA Hour” Monday with Ariel Helwani and discussed his suspension by the California State Athletic Commission following a positive drug test after UFC 157 this past February. Johnson stated that his doctor put him on testosterone replacement therapy but because it was such a low amount he felt it wouldn’t come up in a test and didn’t disclose the procedure. Johnson lost the fight to Brendan Schaub, tested positive and suspended and then released by the UFC as a result. Johnson will make his debut this Friday night at Bellator 102 in Visalia, California against Vinicius Queiroz, as part of this season’s four-man heavyweight tournament.

**The UFC has signed Sergio Pettis, the younger brother of lightweight champion Anthony Pettis. Sergio will make his debut at UFC 167 against an opponent still to be named and will be coming to 135-pounds as he had been fighting at flyweight prior to the signing.

**The UFC has cut long time middleweight fighter Yushin Okami, who has been with the company since 2006 and put together a record of 13-5 while with the organization and once challenged Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title in August 2011 at UFC 134. There is a natural resentment from some fans over a talented fighter being released but it’s also a lesson about standing out and being someone that brings an audience when you fight. Okami was not going to be fighting for the title again unless he had an unbelievable turn around in fight quality and mounted so many victories together that there was no other contender, the odds of which were slim. The other side is that Okami is dangerous enough that he can pick off a lot of upcoming potential challengers and makes it difficult to book Okami in an environment where he is not adding any business to a fight card.

**Michael Bisping is out of the October 26th Fight Night 30 card in Manchester, England where he was scheduled to headline against Mark Munoz. The reason for Bisping’s withdrawal is an eye injury he suffered, which is the same eye he hurt when he fought Alan Belcher at UFC 159 this past April. The UFC has taken Lyoto Machida out of his fight with Tim Kennedy on November 6th at the Fight for the Troops 3 card and Machida will now fight Munoz on October 26th in Machida’s middleweight debut while they search for an opponent for Kennedy.

**There was a brief confrontation between Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen this weekend at the Olympia Expo in Las Vegas and yes, Wanderlei was filming it all:


**Here are the main card results from Bellator 101 on Friday night in Portland, Oregon:
*Saad Awad over Martin Stapleton by rear-naked choke at 3:46 of Round 1 in the lightweight tournament
*Will Brooks over John Alessio by unanimous decision (30-25, 30-26, 30-27) in the lightweight tournament
*Ricardo Tirloni over Rich Clementi by unanimous decision (30-26, 30-27, 30-27) in the lightweight tournament
*Alexander Sarnavskiy over Marcus Davis by rear-naked choke at 1:40 of Round 1 in the lightweight tournament
*Joe Warren over Nick Kirk by armbar at 3:03 of Round 2 in the semi-finals of the bantamweight tournament

**The UFC has also released lightweight Mike Ricci, who was part of TUF 16 and lost in the finals to Colton Smith last December while fighting at welterweight on the show. Ricci returned to lightweight and defeated Colin Fletcher at UFC 158 in Montreal and then dropped a unanimous decision to Myles Jury last week at UFC 165 in Toronto.

**A bantamweight fight between Nam Phan and Takeya Mizugaki has been added to Fight Night 33 on December 7th in Brisbane, Australia.

**It was announced on that light heavyweight champion Jon Jones will fight Glover Teixeira next but no date has been announced for the fight. UFC president Dana White stated that Jones doesn’t want to tie up the division and if Jones and Alexander Gustafsson win their next fights they will fight a second time at some point, hopefully in 2014. They are hoping Jones will be ready to fight on Super Bowl weekend on the proposed February 1st card in Newark, New Jersey.

**A story that will probably get a lot of focus is the death of Brazilian fighter Leandro Souza on Thursday night as he was cutting weight for tonight’s Shooto Brazil event (which has been cancelled). Souza was cutting down to 125-pounds for his fight and passes out as he was two-pounds off and was rushed to hospital where he was declared dead.