ESPN's Franklin McNeil (grrooooaaannnn) has talked to both Florian and Edgar. Both, it seems, believe they need a fight with each other to earn a shot at BJ Penn's title. Notable quote:

"Like Kenny, I want to fight the best in my division and right now he might be the No. 1 contender. So, fighting him is kind of a no-brainer. I want to get one [fight] in before the year is out. I would prefer November, but I would wait around to fight Kenny in December."

As for having his name mentioned prominently by Florian? That's fine by Edgar.

"It kind of gives me some recognition," Edgar said. "For a guy like Kenny to consider me as a formidable opponent; he's fought for the title and he's on a lot of people's list for a possible future title shot. So, it's good for me.

"I don't think Kenny's really calling me out; he's just making a statement that he wants to fight tough opponents."

Florian and Edgar are friends. The dropping of Edgar's name was not a show of disrespect by Florian.

"As an athlete, I have a lot of respect for [Frankie Edgar] for what he's accomplished," Florian said. "I respect him as a fighter and a person.

"It was the same with Roger Huerta. I had nothing against Roger; I liked Roger. But he was the best opponent available at the time. … It's nothing personal.

"I want to fight Frankie because he's a great fighter. That's the most important thing. It's about respect, and beating someone like Frankie Edgar will get me more respect."

McNeil suggests Edgar's rejuvenated and improved game revolves largely around improvements in the stand-up, but I would suggest the improvement is in jiu-jitsu. More specifically, in submission defense. Training with Ricardo Almeida has helped him to improve control, posture and positioning against opposition with good jiu-jitsu and particularly good guards. Edgar's base is already good, but Almeida has honed it to help Edgar avoid sweeps.

As for the match-up, I like this significantly more than a Florian - Stevenson fight. I don't think either Florian or Edgar are ready for BJ, but the winner here would be very close to a title shot. Florian would force BJ's hand and Edgar would erase the stigma of his loss to Maynard in April. This match makes much more sense than anything involving Stevenson.

That's a lot of Jasons:

MMAWeekly.com is reporting that Canadian middleweight Jason “Dooms” Day has withdrawn from his scheduled September 6th bout with Jason “The Punisher” Lambert. According to the report, Day suffered an elbow and biceps injury that will require him to undergo a MRI and keep him out of the fight.

Sherdog.com is now reporting that Day’s replacement will be fellow Canadian Jason “The Athlete” MacDonald.

MacDonald, a native of Pictou County, Nova Scotia, possesses a UFC record of 4-3 with victories over Ed Herman, Chris Leben, Rory Singer, and Joe Doerksen. MacDonald’s most recent outing came at UFC 87: Seek and Destroy where he fell victim to the ground game of Demian Maia after three grueling rounds.

Jason Lambert is looking to test his hand at 185 pounds after spending the majority of his career in the light heavyweight division. Lambert has gone 4-3 in the UFC with victories over Renato “Babalu” Sobral, Branden Lee Hinkle, Terry Martin, and Rob MacDonald.

As for the match-up, MacDonald must have a bitter taste in his mouth after his loss to Maia at UFC 87. And while MacDonald's willingness to let his opponents often dictate the real estate of their fights is troubling against a strong wrestler like Lambert (and Okami), MacDonald's guard should prove difficult for him. And Lambert's decision to cut to 185lbs will also compound his difficulties. It's arguable, but MacDonald might be a more dangerous opponent.

Tony Hawk hosted a benefit - "Stand Up For Skateparks" - to raise $50,000 for the Manhattan Bridge Skatepark in New York City. Matt Serra and Wanderlei Silva were in attendance. See the rest of the pictures here.

Big thanks to Transworld Skateboarding magazine for the cool photos.

I can scarcely fathom a scenario where this can happen. EliteXC wasn't even able to host a successful sophomore effort on free television. To think they can cajole casual MMA fans who view EliteXC and Kimbo Slice more with curiosity than fan loyalty to then shell out money in lieu of or in addition to what they currently spend on the UFC (that includes both time and money) or other sports requires an imagination superior to mine. The Pro Elite federation arguably doesn't have the depth to even do a one-off successful event on PPV, much less to do so consistently against the regular efforts of the UFC. Yet, it appears Pro Elite needs to do so to stay in business long term. Dave Meltzer explains:

DeLuca, just before his resignation, noted that television was not paying enough to sustain the company. That’s a key reason why Elite XC ended up on CBS in the first place. The network had been in serious talks with UFC, but UFC didn’t feel the terms were acceptable, even with all the advantages of network prestige and potential increases in viewership.

The CBS deal calls for a $1 million stock purchase every time they televise a show, and an undisclosed but smaller rights fee. DeLuca noted the only way to sustain the promotion long-term is to be successful on pay-per-view, which up to this point nobody in the MMA business has been able to make work financially except UFC.

Elite XC company had talked about doing a pay-per-view early next year, but it’s hard to put together a lineup that would work with UFC dominating that marketplace with monthly shows.

That's putting it mildly, Dave.

Maybe "war" is a bit strong, but "conflict" might be precisely what the company needs to gain any traction, make any impact or have any noteworthy fingerprint. What is becoming painfully obvious is that rival MMA organizations to the UFC cannot seem to generate publicity and interest among the media, corporate sponsors and fans on their own. They need the UFC to hate them and them explicitly. Zach Arnold explains:

For Affliction’s sake, the promotion must hope that their October 11th event in Las Vegas draws the ire of UFC for basically running on Zuffa’s home turf. If Zuffa ignores Affliction and does not give into the temptation of giving them free media coverage, then Affliction will have a very hard time generating media interest and significant cash flow for the second show. Without someone like Tito Ortiz headlining the card, it is going to be hard to fathom how Affliction will garner major attention from fight fans, insiders, corporate sponsors, and players in the fight game for the second show. Perception is reality and right now, Affliction is a t-shirt company that is simply viewed as a glorified ATM to fighters and nothing else. Unless the company can show a track record of consistency in promoting high-quality shows and turning a profit on said shows, then it is going to be very hard for this upstart organization to gain any sort of momentum unless they can draw the ire of Dana White and stir up a hornet’s nest in the press.

"How about a brawl poolside, instead of that wimpy protest by the Serbian? As for the gals, there's nothing that says I want to win like spitting out part of the other gal's earlobe. Do you think those possibly underage Chinese gymnasts (calling them 'women' suspends credulity) could handle a nice cross-body block by Shawn Johnson? Or a good, swift kick from Liukin? What's with all this congratulations to the opponents as they leave the mat? Why not a well-placed elbow in the gut? A little Gym-NASTY! That's the key to really big numbers! Thank goodness sanity has been partly restored to the sports scene by the surge of interest in Ultimate Fighting. Now, there is fine SPORT! What could be better than two guys knocking the snot out of each other in a cage while people scream for something approaching death? It warms the heart. I can't wait for the gals to come around and realize just how BIG that sport is going to be. They'll want their cut (and I do mean 'cut'). It's only a matter of time until NBC suspends programming for two full weeks to feature the International (or maybe inter-planetary) Championships of the Ultimate Blood Sport Association of America and the Free World! Then all those swimmers and tumblers and rowers will be sorry! Sure, they'll still be able to walk after 50 and they'll still be able to assemble sentences in whatever language they choose, but will they be remembered for a face drenched in red corpuscles? Will people remember how many punches to the head were thrown after the guy was down and helpless on the canvas? How do those arms-length Olympians expect to face their children without shame?"

-- Allen Costantini writing in his Karemudgeon blog for KARE 11 NBC in Twin Cities, MN. Costantini believes this cute oratorical rhetoric somehow makes an ignorant argument magically more informed. He unknowingly suffers from the misconception that modern MMA as we understand it today was created by clever marketers or television executives with the express purpose of inserting extreme violence into something akin to sport for ratings. In other words, because boxing or wrestling weren't violent enough, some marketing team with machinations decided to throw caution to the wind by "inventing" out of whole cloth something new in the form of what we see today. It's a poor understanding of the sport's appeal and history. Certainly there is an allure that the violence of MMA provides, but to think that violence for television glory was the presumptive impetus behind the sport's creation is little more than this gentleman's own fantasy.

"Big" John McCarthy explains:

First, if a titleholder from the UFC fights either in the UFC or in another promotion and loses to a fighter not under contract to the UFC, then the UFC just devalued itself and its championship belt. They will not have control of the person who is now considered the top fighter in the world and their belt will be viewed by many people as just another promotional belt instead of the belt that signifies the best fighter in the world at that weight class. People will realize that maybe not all of the greatest fighters in the world fight for the UFC, but that there are other promotions out there that have very good fighters who can fight as good or better than the more popular fighters under contract to Zuffa.

None of this helps the UFC so you can see why they will not be jumping on the WAMMA bandwagon. I can't blame Zuffa at all for looking at this the way it does. They have worked very hard to get where they are. They have their matchmaker in Joe Silva who sets up the matches that Dana White, the president of the UFC, wants to promote. They are a very successful self-contained promotion that has no outside influences telling them what to do. Why would they want to let someone in that can now influence their promotion in anyway?

This is the problem that confronts Dave Szade and Michael Lynch, the chief executive officer and chief operating officer, respectively, of WAMMA. They have a pretty good idea, and I want to see the best fighters in the world fighting each other no matter what promotion they are signed to. Politics and money have a huge influence over all of the combative sports and since that is not going to change, it is going to take a "hell freezing over" moment or a shift in the political power of the sport before you see the UFC and WAMMA working together.

McCarthy is actually describing why the UFC won't join WAMMA, but the truth is there need to be rivals to the UFC or at least moderate competitors of a lesser scale who are willing to work together for WAMMA to gain any traction. That, it seems, is not so easy to pull off. Entities that have tried to go head to head with the UFC are new, suffering or dead (BodogFIGHT, IFL, the Pro Elite federation; too early to tell with Affliction). But the other point of note is that if any rival to the UFC was able to gain some momentum, their incentives to join and work with WAMMA would be begin to resemble the UFCs as aforementioned. WAMMA won't admit that this is their aim, but they are trying to realign the power positioning of the MMA landscape for rival organizations in a quest for legitimacy. They will reply that WAMMA wants to work with the UFC, but WAMMA aim's are antithetical to much of what the UFC is trying to accomplish. The UFC knows they don't have a monopoly on talent and the MMA fans and general public are unaware of many talented competitors in other promotions. To legitimize WAMMA is to legitimize the UFC's competition in a way co-promotion could only hope to do.

Dave Meltzer has an interesting breakdown and history of the relationship between former Olympians and MMA. More specifically, the article is about how those Olympians have fared in the sport of MMA after their Olympic careers are mostly over. Meltzer, quite rightly, finds no correlation and offers this account for evidence. Notable quote:

Perhaps the most famous example of this occurred four years ago. Karam Gaber Ibrahim of Egypt, then 24, was the star wrestler in the 2004 Olympics.

Competing at 96 kilograms (211.5 pounds) in Greco-Roman, he was throwing world champions around like they were school children. But just a few months after winning the gold medal, he fought on a New Year’s Eve show in Osaka, Japan, against the larger pro wrestler-turned-fighter, Kazuyuki Fujita, and was knocked out cold from a punch that resembled a clothesline-style manuever in just 1:07.

The Gaber Ibrahim situation is common in Japan, where they look to put their experienced MMA fighters against people in other sports with international credentials, but inexperienced in the fight game.

Still, that doesn’t always work out for the Japanese.

On the same night as the Ibrahim vs. Fujita fight, Rulon Gardner, the 2000 gold medalist and 2004 bronze medalist as a superheavyweight in Greco-Roman wrestling, on a rival show in Saitama, Japan, faced former judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida. Gardner’s balance from wrestling enabled him to keep the fight standing, and he used size and rudimentary boxing to batter Yoshida the entire match to take the decision. But Gardner said he did the fight as a one-time deal, had no interest in it as a career, and never fought again.

There are others as well who have been thrown to the wolves early: Katsuhiko Nagata, Bu Kyung Jung and Kazuyuki Miyata. Even though Meltzer is correct that there's little relationship between Olympic status/glory and success in MMA, part of that is a function of the lack of adequate preparation some of these MMA athletes recieve. Many are given very high profile matches against veteran opposition without the benefit of time to develop a usable skill set for Mixed Martial Arts. The results are demonstrative in that they prove even world-class athletes cannot compete in professional MMA at the highest levels on their backgrounds alone, but they squander the opportunity to harness their backgrounds to produce more successful fighters. Quite a waste, really.

TODAY on "MMA Nation" we'll be talking to the wrestling phenom: Team Takedown's Johny Hendricks. We'll talk about his upcoming WEC debut versus Alex Serdyukov, training at Cobra Kai, his experience on the TapouT show and why he passed up the Olympics in favor of a career in mixed martial arts.

We'll also be talking to Strikeforce Vice President Mike Afromowitz about his promotion's return to The Playboy Mansion, what the strategic future plans of Strikeforce look like and whether he'll book Akiyama vs. Misaki II.

We'll also be giving away tons of tickets to Barbarian Fight Club's Combat in the Cage.

"MMA Nation" airs every Saturday 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on 106.7 WJFK. To listen live over the Internet, go to WJFK's website and click "Listen Live".

"MMA Nation" is also available by podcast on iTunes.

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See you then.