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Marcus Aurelio Refocused and Ready to Prove He’s Still a UFC Caliber Fighter at MMA Live 1 May 19 in Canada

(Aurelio teaching Dunham to keep his hands up.)

Heading into his MMA Live 1 welterweight bout with Matt MacGrath on May 19, Marcus Aurelio says he has a lot to prove to a lot of people, most notably himself.

The seasoned 37-year-old PRIDE, DREAM and UFC vet who is 4-2 in his last six outings is unhappy with the two blemishes he incurred on his record and is looking to erase them from the minds of fans with an impressive showing against MacGrath.

Although a hard-fought split decision loss to top tier UFC prospect Evan Dunham at UFC 102 back in 2009 left him with a bad taste in his mouth and without a job, his last loss against Shinya Aoki at DREAM 16 last September upset him more.

Aoki refused to engage on the feet and seemed content to take the decorated Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt down and hold him there before washing, rinsing and repeating the process the whenever Aurelio would get back up. Although he relishes the opportunity to avenge both losses, he says that he would rather do so in North America.

“I want to fight Evan Dunham again. I respect that kid a lot. The fight was so close. I almost had him in a choke. If I held it a little bit more, I would have had him. At the end of the fight, they gave him the decision and I respect that and I respect him a lot, but I definitely want to fight him again for sure. The fight with Aoki was frustrating. He got me in a good position and he stole the fight. He never tried to strike or exchange jiu-jitsu with me. I only had one chance in the fight when he shot and I sprawled and I almost took his back and after that I almost got his arm. The rest of the fight was boring,” Aurelio points out. “I hope I can fight him again and maybe we can do a better fight. The way I see it, if the fight was in America like in the UFC, after a minute [of stalling on the ground] they would say, ‘Okay guys, time to stand up.’ They should have stood us up, but in Japan Aoki is the big kid and they would never do that. He’s the biggest name in Japan so they wouldn’t risk him losing on the feet where he is the weakest. He was avoiding striking with me. The rules and the referees over there are always going to help him for sure.”

(Aurelio teaching Dunham to keep his hands up.)

Heading into his MMA Live 1 welterweight bout with Matt MacGrath on May 19, Marcus Aurelio says he has a lot to prove to a lot of people, most notably himself.

Although a hard-fought split decision loss to top tier UFC prospect Evan Dunham at UFC 102 back in 2009 left him with a bad taste in his mouth and without a job, his last loss — a unanimous decision against Shinya Aoki at DREAM 16 last September, upset him even more.

Aurelio (20-9) says he expects a more level playing field in his next bout despite the fact that he is facing a Canadian in Canada, but is prepared for the inevitability that at least a few fans will be cheering against him come next Thursday night when he squares off with MacGrath (10-5).

“I’ve never been to Canada. This will be my first time and I’m very excited. I heard that it’s a beautiful place. I try not to pressure myself. That’s the main thing for me. I’m coming into [MacGrath’s] house and everybody could boo me. I don’t know what to expect. I try not to let that worry me. I try to relax, have fun and take the fight seriously,” Aurelio explains. “If you look at any of my fights I always take them seriously and even the fights that I lost, I only lost by decision. My motivation is to do my best and try to win and not get finished. He’s going to have pressure on him as well. It’s going to be in his house in Canada and he’ll probably have most of the fans depending on him. How you deal with the pressure makes a huge difference in how you perform and I don’t let it pull me down.”

In spite of MacGrath coming in on short notice after Aurelio’s original opponent Cory McDonald bowed out of the fight with an undisclosed training injury, the lightweight Brazilian fighter who is moving up to 170 for the fight, says he’s not taking the 31-year-old Titans MMA product lightly.

“It was kind of a surprise for me when they called me a week ago to tell me that Cory was hurt and that I would be fighting Matt. My focus now is to train for any type of situation, so it didn’t really change my preparation. I’m going to be ready. I know he’s a tough guy. He fought my friend Claude Patrick a while ago. I called Claude and he gave me some advice, but I’m just making sure I’m in shape for the fight and my game plan will be to push the pace,” he says. “We’re both looking for the same thing, which is to get a big win to open up the eyes of the UFC. I’m sure he’s a tough guy and we’re both going to be prepared to put up a good fight. I’m ready for a war like I always am. Whatever happens, I’ll be prepared.”

To ensure that he is prepared, “Maximus” has split his Florida-based training camp between the recently-adopted gym of him and his displaced former American Top Team teammates, Imperial Athletics and the Team Nogueira affiliate in West Palm Beach. He promises the fans in London that he has a few surprises planned for the fight and is confident that the both the co-main event bouts between Karo Parisyan and Ryan Ford and his between MacGrath and himself will make it worth the price of admission.

“I’m not going to tell you what they are, but I have some good surprises for this fight. I’ve been training some things with some guys, but like I said, I’m ready to take the fight wherever it goes. I have something for sure I’m working on to surprise the fans,” he says with a grin. “I’m happy that MMA Live is confident that I will come to fight and put on a good show. I’m going to do my best and try to put on the fight of the night. If you look at any of my fights, that’s something I always try to do. Everybody on this card has the same goal here, which is to put on an amazing performance and hopefully get to the UFC. I think we all deserve to be there and have a very good chance of making it there. Karo and Ryan and Matt are all really good fighters who deserve to be there and I think I do too. I just need to show what I am capable of. This is a great card and I’m sure we’re going to have a great time.”

MMA Photo Tribute: Dana White’s Incredible T-Shirt Collection

(“Wait, you’re giving this to me for *free*? My goodness, I’ve stumbled onto the perfect crime!”)

Much like myself, Dana White pretty much lives in t-shirts. It’s his trademark, like Don King’s hair, or Mark Pavelich’s eyebrows. The difference is, DW usually gets paid to wear his t-shirts. Like I said last week, Dana’s torso is the best viral advertising platform on basic cable. So, in honor of our unhealthy fascination with this man, here are 24 noteworthy Dana-in-a-t-shirt photos, along with some brief analysis.

(Wearing a t-shirt that references a local sports team is one of the easiest ways to be liked by strangers. In the pro-wrestling world, they refer to this sort of thing as a “cheap pop.”)

(“Wait, you’re giving this to me for *free*? My goodness, I’ve stumbled onto the perfect crime!”)

(Wearing a t-shirt that references a local sports team is one of the easiest ways to be liked by strangers. In the pro-wrestling world, they refer to this sort of thing as a “cheap pop.”)

(…or, you can just wear a shirt that references how dangerous a city is.)

(Often credited as a pioneer of mixed martial arts, Bruce Lee is a personal hero of Dana’s. Both of these shirts are available at brucelee.com)

(Dana often likes to remind us that he doesn’t listen to pussy-ass music; he likes the good stuff. But come on, we all have our guilty pleasures. DW’s gotta have at least one Bieber shirt hiding in the closet.)

(You can take the boy out of boxing, but you can’t take boxing out of the boy.)

(Dickhouse is the production company behind the Jackass series. At the time this photo was taken, the first trailer for ‘Jackass 3.5‘ had just come out; Jackass 3D would be released on DVD a month later.)

(I don’t know what the fuck this is.)

(There’s no bigger baller move than buying out a major MMA promotion and then struttin’ that ass in their t-shirt.)

(Dana shouts out the only late-night host brave enough to let Brock Lesnar anywhere near them.)

(DW could probably live comfortably just off the money he gets from t-shirt companies paying him to wear their stuff at weigh-ins.)

(And when the work day is over, and there’s nothing left to promote? Nothing beats a classic plain red.)

’2011 Hottest Women in MMA Grand Prix’: And the Winner Is…

(“No matter what happens, I hope we can still pretend to be friends.”)

Let’s not drag this thing out any longer than we already have. After four rounds of voting, over 50,000 votes cast, and one fairly-awkward video featuring the two finalists, you’ve made it very clear who your hearts belong to.

And so, the winner of 2011’s Hottest Women in MMA Grand Prix, taking a full 77.4% of the popular vote in the finals, is…

(“No matter what happens, I hope we can still pretend to be friends.”)

And so, the winner of 2011′s Hottest Women in MMA Grand Prix, taking a full 77.4% of the popular vote in the finals, is…

BRITTNEY PALMER!

The UFC Octagon Girl simply could not be caught, humiliating her opponents in every stage of the competition. First, she blew out Jade Bryce (taking 81.9% of the vote), then trounced Kelli Hutcherson (taking 77.2% of the vote), and finally ran over Gina Carano with 66.7% of the vote before meeting Arianny Celeste in the finals. It was a tough draw for Ms. Palmer, but she made it look easy. To celebrate, here are 22 more of our favorite Brittney Palmer photos. Congrats to Brittney, and thanks to everybody who made this possible…

Rankings Spotlight: MMA’s Top 5 Pound-for-Pound Fighters

(Weirdest part is, the Portuguese language has no phrase that means “dress shoes.”)

Just one of the many, many problems inherent in ranking MMA’s top “pound-for-pound” fighters – aside from the obvious fact these lists are 100 percent fantasy-based and therefore flatly ridiculous to begin with — is that a lot of people can’t even agree what the phrase “pound-for-pound” actually means. Does it simply provide a method for comparing the best fighters in the world across different classes? Does it purport to measure a fighter’s dominance relative to his size? Does it envision a bizzaro world where everyone is the same height and weight? And if so, does a 135-pound Fedor Emelianenko still have that ribbon of fat around his gut? Fuck if we know.

Fact is, pound-for-pound lists are really just a study in speculative fiction. Rather than trying to rank a bunch of fighters who will never actually fight we’d probably be better off writing a sprawling, dystopian novel presupposing that the Nazis won WWII, Custer didn’t die at the Little Bighorn and that during the summer of 1985 a 27-year-old Dan Severn accidentally stepped on a butterfly during his morning jog through Ann Arbor, setting off a chain reaction that caused Jon Jones never to be born at all. I guess what we’re trying to say is, things are about to get real theoretical up in this bitch. Like, comically subjective and shit.

Still, even if we can’t claim to know exactly what these rankings are trying to achieve, we do know one thing: Our carefully cultivated demographic information tells us you motherfuckers loves you some lists. And in that, we must oblige …

(Weirdest part is, the Portuguese language doesn’t even have a phrase that means “dress shoes.”)

Ben Goldstein:

1. Anderson Silva: All the easy analogies have been beaten to death, so what can you really say about Anderson Silva except that he’s a lion playing among wildebeests? It’s not just athleticism, aptitude, and creativity — Silva possesses the kind of extra-dimensional vision usually reserved for deaf composers and chess savants. When it comes to fighting, he can do literally anything.

2. Georges St. Pierre: Let’s be frank — GSP’s technical perfection is not always a thrill to watch, and his five-rounder against Jake Shields nearly ruined UFC 129. But the level of dominance he’s displayed against the UFC’s welterweight elite over the last four years has been astounding. You have to give it up for a guy who can take the fight wherever he wants it to go, 100 percent of the time.

3. Jose Aldo: I actually liked seeing Aldo get beat up a little bit by Mark Hominick; adversity is what makes a legend. Now that he’s survived that test, I have no doubt he’ll resume his slash-and-burn through the contender list at 145, starting with Chad Mendes, then (fingers crossed) moving on to Kenny Florian.

4. Jon Jones: The present and the future of MMA. His performances are already as impressively superhuman as Anderson Silva’s. All he needs is the title reign — and maybe, one day, a run at heavyweight.

5. Dominick Cruz: A complete and uniquely talented champion who has left some of the best bantamweights in the sport licking their wounds and scratching their heads. A win over Urijah Faber at UFC 132 in July would finally get him over with casual fans, while avenging his only loss in 18 fights.

Chad Dundas:

1. Jon Jones: Jonny Bones is 23 years old, has had fewer than 10 fights in the UFC, isn’t even done physically maturing yet and already, nobody in the world wants to fight him. That includes at least one guy on this list and that’s good enough for me.

2. Georges St. Pierre: All St. Pierre has done during the last three and a half years is outthink, outperform and outclass every opponent the UFC could find to put in the cage with him. Is it his fault he competes in the only sport in the world where that’s not good enough for some people?

3. Anderson Silva: Silva is so good that half the time it looks like he’s not even really trying. I guess that’s a problem for everybody not named Anderson Silva.

4. Dominick Cruz: One of the most elusive and unorthodox fighters in the sport, Cruz must be a nightmare to prepare for. Just 25 years old, as long as his body doesn’t come apart on him, he could be champ for a while.

5. Jose Aldo: Aldo may have shown his mettle in gutting one out over Hominick, but he didn’t exactly come away looking like a pound-for-pound great. I’m willing to chalk it up to sickness for now, but I’ll need to see a return to form if I’m going to justify keeping him on this list at the expense of guys like Frankie Edgar, Gilbert Melendez and Cain Velasquez next time. Wait, we are going to do this again at some point … right?

Mike Russell:

1. Anderson Silva: Besides the four round spanking he received from Chael Sonnen last year, no opponent has been able to touch “The Spider” the past few years. He’s the reason Georges St. Pierre is reluctant to move up to 185 and why Jon Jones will likely change his tune about fighting friends if Silva decides to move up to light heavyweight.

2. Georges St-Pierre: His only loss of the past six years came at the hands of Matt Serra, who loses 9.995 times out of 10 to GSP under normal circumstances. The problem is, the loss made him revert to a more careful (read, boring) style that has turned many fans off of watching his fights. It’s tough to argue against him being on this list, as he is as dominant a fighter as you’ll find, but if this was the top most exciting fighters in the game he would be somewhere at the bottom, ahead of Jake Shields and Jon Fitch.

3. Jon Jones: Another few wins over top competition could move Jones ahead of St-Pierre on the list, but considering that the UFC’s light heavyweight strap is becoming as cursed as its heavyweight one (in the past nine championship bouts it has been won by seven different men), the odds of him remaining champion are stacked against him.

4. Jose Aldo: Some people think that Aldo’s hard-fought win over Hominick should drop him in the pound-for-pound rankings. I think it should elevate Hominick up a few slots. The fight proved that Aldo can fight through adversity to win and although he didn’t look dominant in doing it, the same can also be said for the top two on this list at times during their respective careers.

5. Frankie Edgar: If Edgar can definitively beat Gray Maynard in their rubber match, nobody will argue that he deserves to be on this list. If he wins, I’d like to see him take on Gilbert Melendez next, as I think “El Nino” could shake things up a bit in the UFC’s lightweight class and in these rankings.

Honorable mentions: Gilbert Melendez, Cain Velasquez, Dominick Cruz, Nick Diaz.

Rich Franklin: The CagePotato Retrospective Interview

("When you put your focus on one thing, you tend not to focus on the journey. Once you get there, it’s not going to be as big of a deal as you thought it was going to be.")
This Saturday, Rich Franklin will step into the Octagon for the 18t…

("When you put your focus on one thing, you tend not to focus on the journey. Once you get there, it’s not going to be as big of a deal as you thought it was going to be.")

This Saturday, Rich Franklin will step into the Octagon for the 18th time to face Forrest Griffin in the co-headlining feature of UFC 126. During his 12-year career, Ace has experienced everything from championship glory to bitter defeat, and now stands as one of the sport’s most revered statesmen. “I think that what people will remember me for is that I’m a tough competitor who’s put on entertaining fights for the fans all these years," Franklin tells CagePotato. "And I’m happy with that kind of legacy.”

Rich was generous enough to give us some phone-time recently, and instead of asking him about his gameplan for Forrest, we discussed Franklin’s career as a whole, from the moment he decided to pursue MMA as a full-time job, to the fight that changed his life, to every other notable moment that helped forge the fighter he is today. Let’s begin…

The Early Days, 1993-1999
Rich Franklin: “I started training in traditional martial arts in 1993, then I saw the first couple UFCs and started doing some jiu-jitsu. I was training at a Royce Gracie chapter here in Cincinnati, and the guy who was leading my class was a blue belt. By today’s standards, if the best you had in your area was a blue belt, you’d be way behind the times, but in 1994 it was a big deal to have that kind of a resource. So I was doing jiu-jitsu, working with kickboxing coaches, and of course I’d been watching the UFC, learning off instructional tapes and all those kinds of things.

I started fighting at these little local amateur shows out in Richmond, Indiana, and clearly at that point in time, I was just light-years ahead of the competition that was showing up at the event. The promoter told me, ‘These are amateur events, I don’t really have anybody for you to fight.’ But there was a gentleman there who said, ‘You know what, I run a pro show, and I’ll pay you to fight." And he offered me 200 bucks. I was like, ‘Wow, I can make money fighting? This is great. I’m gonna make 200 bucks." I was bankin’.

RICH FRANKLIN (5-0) vs. AARON BRINK (7-4) — Franklin’s first regional title fight
IFC: Warriors Challenge 11, 1/13/01
Result: No contest due to accidental injury, after Brink’s leg slipped through the cage.

‘Modern Warriors’: The MMA/Gladiator Connection

(Well, that’s what you get for leaving it in the hands of the judges.)
Friends, Romans, CagePotatoans, lend me your ears. We’re all familiar with the UFC’s famous gladiator introduction. And if you’re familiar with it, you probably …

(Well, that’s what you get for leaving it in the hands of the judges.)

Friends, Romans, CagePotatoans, lend me your ears. We’re all familiar with the UFC’s famous gladiator introduction. And if you’re familiar with it, you probably want them to change it. Guess what? It ain’t happening. Dana White (along with most Americans) is fascinated by that era of Roman history and its various dramatic representations, be it in the movie Spartacus, HBO’s Rome or the upcoming movie The Eagle. One can’t help but be infatuated with their tales of valor, violence, and debauchery. We can all go peruse Wikipedia and learn about the roots of MMA in pankration, so there’s no need for us to delve into its lineage and bore you.

Let’s take a quick look at gladiators. Many of them were slaves or prisoners condemned to fight, though there are some who volunteered for the job. While most gladiators’ non-fighting lives were rife with pain and sorrow — I mean, they were slaves after all — stepping into the arena was seen as a blessing, a chance to showcase their skills, a place to hear the cheers of the crowd and the love of the people. Some gladiators were as popular in the arena as the Senators themselves. While outsiders saw combat as barbaric and violent, it was a necessary evil to the combatants in order to attain glory.

For the gladiator, it wasn’t always about winning or losing, though losing could prove to be fatal; it was also about getting the crowd behind you. Most people aren’t aware that many gladiatorial contests were worked (like wrasslin’) in order to garner fan support. Look at it like Chris Lytle making a deal to try and win Fight of the Night. If you fought valiantly, the crowd cheered — unless you kept losing. We’ve all seen that “thumbs up or thumbs down” scene in Gladiator; well that wasn’t exactly accurate, but it wasn’t too far off from the truth. Your life was potentially in the hands of the official over the games and if they weren’t entertained, you died.