Steve Cofield makes the argument:

Barry Bonds is desperate to get back on the baseball field. So much so that his $15-18 million asking price is now down to the major league minimum. His agent Jeff Borris told Ryen Russillo of ESPNRadio that Bonds would play this year for the minimum salary. Borris said, "What other option does he have?"

Is fighter Tito Ortiz going to face a similar fate in the MMA world? This is not to say Ortiz has been involved in a drug scandal like Bonds but the slugger is out of baseball as much for his attitude as the steroid mess. Ortiz may be developing the reputation that he's a guy who is impossible to work with.

Cofield also brings up recent remarks by Affliction COO Michael D. Cohen about Tito's asking price being "more than ANY league could afford." 

Tito has clearly wildly over-estimated his current market value. I expect the UFC will re-sign a sadder but wiser Tito when it's all said and done.

MMA Weekly is reporting:

According to EliteXC vice president Jared Shaw, the promotion has tried to make the fight happen and wants it to happen as part of the Oct. 4 event, but to no avail.

“Nick Diaz is the No. 1 contender. K.J. Noons should step up and be the champion that we think he is and take this fight. Nick Diaz will take this fight any place, anywhere,” Shaw told MMAWeekly.com. “(Noons’ management) won’t even return our calls.

“I don’t understand it. This fight on CBS is maximum exposure and the opportunity for maximum sponsorship dollars, way more than he could make on Showtime. At this point, I question his management.”

Noon's management has been squirrelly about letting him fight on CBS for some time. As I said then:

I don’t really care how one sided the deal was — if it gets Noons on CBS during primetime defending his belt, then he should be prepared to give up anything up to 18 months, his first child and his left testicle to make the deal.

Noons' has to realize that his window to reign at EliteXC is a very short one and he should be working to maximize the exposure while they have the CBS window open. But his management team isn't so good.

MMA Payout has more:

Dion seems to be burning bridges and must be looking at boxing as being the other option for KJ, because I can’t imagine him going back to the bargaining table with the Zuffa folks.

The Fightlinkers are worried that their all time fave is trying to kill himself....again. Here's the quote from Evan's blog on Spike:

I've been gathering my gear for this adventure for over a month, not a long time by most standards, but far too long for my impatient nature. Being a minimalist by nature, wanting to carry only the essentials, and being extremely particular, it has been a little difficult to find just the right equipment. I plan on going so deep into the desert, that any failure of my equipment, could cost me my life. I've been doing a great deal of research and study. I want to know all I can about where I'm going, and I want to make sure I have the best equipment.

So says Sam Caplan at CBS Sports:

...after surveying the landscape, it appears very likely that at most, Lesnar is only two consecutive wins away from a shot at the title. In fact, he could even be granted a shot with just one more victory; there isn't a long line of UFC heavyweight contenders.

Sam goes on to rank the UFC field and he's right, it's damn thin. Here's Sam's UFC heavyweight ranks:

1. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
   
2. Fabricio Werdum
   
3. Gabriel Gonzaga
   
4. Frank Mir
5. Brock Lesnar
6. Heath Herring
7. Cheick Kongo
8. Cain Velasquez
   
9. Shane Carwin
10. Antoni Hardonk

HT Five Ounces of Pain

First EliteXC cancelled their September 20th Showtime event. Then they canceled a Cage Rage Contenders event set for August 16. Then their latest financial report bears an ominous similarity to some of the IFL's latter-day reports.

MMA Payout's Kelsey Philpott takes the glass is half full view:

It’s no secret that ProElite has been in trouble for some time now: the company is hemorrhaging money, has undergone significant upper-level management re-organization, and has wilted under the pressure of increased competition and greater expectations due to their network television deal. You can check out ProElite’s latest SEC filing here.

However, I will caution that this cancellation is by no means “the last straw” for the company. While this may signal financial trouble, it also indicates that ProElite is trying to do something about it.

The fact that they’re canceling shows and concentrating their efforts on the next CBS event suggests that they’re trying to reign in their costs. The risk-reward ratio is considerably more favourable for a network broadcasted event; and for a company that is quickly burning through its cash reserves, they must begin generating more than they spend.

FightOpinion's Zach Arnold has a different, more ominous, take:

The IFL is dead, and both Elite XC & DREAM are heading into dangerous territory. The MMA business at the end of this year may very well look exactly like the professional wrestling business on a worldwide scale — one major company (UFC… like WWE) and everyone else not even close.

When Pro Elite made the move to buy out a lot of B-level MMA companies, I thought it was a volatile and unwise move. How can you possibly manage four or five different MMA organizations by sitting in an office in Los Angeles? Impossible to do. By buying out all of the major B-level promotions (except Strikeforce), Elite XC has basically accomplished what UFC could never have dreamed possible of doing — potentially killing off an entire farm system of promotions for building new MMA fighters. Essentially put, if Pro Elite goes out of business soon then it can be fairly stated that the company negatively impacted the business by paying off so many upstarts and not doing anything with those promoters they paid off. Remember — promoters like Terry Trebilcock signed multi-year deals, so they will be on the sidelines in the foreseeable future if Pro Elite tanks and goes out of business.

Philosophically, I'm wary of monopolies but let's face it, the UFC is the only player in the MMA business who has their shit together at the moment. EliteXC started out their business with some shady antics and its seems the piper is calling in his due.

My main fear of a UFC only world is that we'll never see Fedor, Josh Barnett, Frank Shamrock, or Joachim Hansen fight again. That wouldn't be cool, but its certainly better than a world without MMA at all.

Just kidding about the title, couldn't resist making an Al Jaffee reference. The New York Times' Freakonomics blog features Brock Lesnar answering questions sent in by their readers, pretty good stuff, a cut above the kinds of questions Lesnar usually gets I'm sure. Here's a few of the questions:

Q: What is the prevalence of steroids in M.M.A. and the U.F.C. in particular?

A: Outside of what you can already find out on your own, I really don’t know. I mean, the shows are tested and the results are made public. A vast majority of the time the guys are clean, but occasionally they’re not. I can tell you that the testing is real and, at least in the U.F.C., the fighters can be tested at any time.

Q: Are there any legal M.M.A. techniques or moves that fighters won’t use because they are considered unfair?

A: No. If it’s legal, it’s fair!

Q: Inside the ring, are you ever bothered with doubts about possibly losing the match or personal injury? Likewise, do you ever worry about permanently damaging an opponent?

A: The second you have doubts about losing or getting hurt, one of the two is bound to happen. As for permanently damaging an opponent: it’s not something I worry about because my opponent and I accept that risk long before we ever step into the octagon.

Q: The W.W.E. is well known to be rife with backstage politics; does the unscripted nature of the U.F.C. eliminate that aspect, or does it still exist?

A: Where there’s money, there’s politics! I do my best to stay out of it all.

Q: If someone fights dirty, are they likely to quickly be branded as a dirty fighter and have people fight back dirty?

A: There is really no such thing as fighting dirty. People are going to do what it takes to win. If they break the rules, they will be penalized; otherwise, everything is fair game.

Q: Why do U.F.C. fighters seem to have better sportsmanship (i.e., hugging each other after a fight) while other televised fighters (W.W.E.) have little or no sportsmanship and turn the fight into a soap opera?

A: Because U.F.C. fighters are really fighting and professional wrestlers are entertaining. After you fight somebody, in most cases there is a certain mutual respect.

Q: Gov. Jesse Ventura recently stated during an interview on The Howard Stern Show that he felt M.M.A. fighters were "working stiff," or that the match outcomes are already decided but there is no "script" to be followed by the athletes. As a former professional wrestler, do you believe his comments have any merit whatsoever, or do they stem from an unfamiliarity with M.M.A.?

A: I think Jesse was unfamiliar with the sport when he made those comments and probably has a different view after sitting ring-side at U.F.C. 87 last Saturday. It’s one thing to see it on the TV, but it’s a completely different experience when you are there live.

Q: Who would you consider fighting even if there was no money on the line?

A: Would I fight somebody if there was no money on the line? Absolutely not.

While I respected Matt Hughes for his incredible run as UFC champ I never liked him and he's certainly doing nothing to change that. Its one thing to talk a little trash about an upcoming opponent or a fighter you've beaten even, IMO its utterly disgraceful to talk smack about a fighter who has soundly beaten you so badly that there's NO interest in a fourth Matt Hughes/GSP match. There's a phrase for what Matt Hughes is now: sore loser.

From a MMA Shoot interview with Hughes:

HT Steve Cofield.

As a bonus, in the extended entry there's an animated gif of GSP pulling an absolutely brilliant sweep, the kind of move I doubt Matt Hughes could even diagram much less execute that is sheer poetry in motion and one no one watching with any understanding of the sport could find boring. If Matt Hughes ever wonders to himself why he'll never be champ again, its because he isn't learning. He's not the same guy who trained with Militech and Horn anymore, that guy would have watched the whole fight.

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Randy Couture went on the Adam Carolla show and claimed that he and Fedor would each take home $6 to $10 million for their long awaited bout. Pramit Mohapatra breaks down the numbers on Randy's "projections" for his payday should a fight with Fedor take place:

Let's take a rough look at Couture's statements and see if he's being realistic. First, here are my assumpions: let's assume that the Randy-Fedor PPV sells for $50, that the PPV broadcaster takes 50% of the PPV cut, and that the event sells out a 15,000-seat arena.

At $50 a pop, 700,000 PPV buys gives us $35 million in PPV revenue. Give the PPV broadcaster half and the promotion ends up with $17.5 million.

Now, UFC 87 (with an announced attendance in the neighborhood of 15,000) made a reported live gate of $2.2 million. Let's be generous and say that Randy-Fedor garners a live gate of $3 million.

That gives the promotion a revenue of $20.5 million. Remember, this is revenue and not profit. In other words, we haven't considered the cost of producing the event, marketing costs, the cost of renting the arena, and -- as we've learned this week -- taxes. We also haven't considered the pay for undercard fighters. Or, the cut the promotion itself will take off the top.

Even without all of these costs factored in, Couture's estimate of a $12-20 million total payout for both him and Fedor seems very unrealistic.

HT Fightlinker

Here are this month's lightweight Meta-rankings. As always keep in mind that these are not our opinion, rather a compilation of the rankings issued by leading MMA web sites. This is the division where IMO the meta-rankings really bring some clarity to a very muddled picture. Because the UFC abandoned the division for more than two years, PRIDE was long considered the sole province of top lightweights.

Despite the UFC having rebuilt an extremely impressive division in the last couple of years, because most of their top contenders have either been young (Florian, Huerta, Griffin, Stevenson) or moved from higher weight classes (Penn, Sherk), there wasn't a clear record of cross-competition. Therefore the ex-PRIDE fighters were long over-ranked, and even though Penn is now almost universally considered #1, the other contenders in the UFC lightweight division are still underranked IMO.I expect if Florian vs Huerta is won in impressive fashion that the winner will break into the top 10, maybe even into some top 5s. If Griffin keeps winning he should continue to rise as well.

The DREAM tournament should have brought some clarity to the picture, but instead only muddled things further with upset losses by Aoki, Ishida, Calvacante, and Kawajiri and the unexpected rise of Eddie Alvarez and the come-back of Hansen. It seems like the fighting world has decided to act as if Aoki's loss to Hansen doesn't count against Aoki but does help Hansen. The meta-rankings even out those sites who choose to ignore Alvarez with those who consider him near the very top.

Ribeiro's balloon continues to deflate as his inactivity continues. I'm still very interested to see him fight one of DREAM's PRIDE veterans, Ishida, Kawajiri, or Uno would all be good matchups for the BJJ ace. 

Noons, Schulz and Varner illustrate the value of winning belts in weak promotions. None of them has beaten another fighter currently ranked in the top 25 in the last three years (Schulz beat Huerta way back in the day). They've all got some impressive wins but I don't think they'd do that well in the bigger leagues. Schulz will have a chance to rise higher in the WVR/Sengoku lightweight tournament which is an excellent mix of the best fighters from small promotions like DEEP, CageForce and KOTC.

Facing the winner of that tournament will keep Gomi active but he's becoming increasingly irrelevant over time, as if he were in a parallel and much smaller universe. At this point, the only fighters on his resume still on the top 25 list are Ishida, Kawajiri, Hansen and Penn and he lost to the latter two.

Thomson and Melendez are likewise trapped in a parallel universe of Strikeforce. It would be nice if they would go fight in DREAM, Sengoku or Elite XC if not the UFC.

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