SURELY, YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS. I AM SERIOUS. AND DON’T CALL ME SHIRLEY.
“Just show up and put on a good performance.” – UFC matchmaker Joe Silva, to a rattled Karo Parisyan backstage at UFC 123. (ESPN)
“I feel like I’m dying. How am I supposed to fight like this?” – Parisyan, before his fight with Dennis Hallman.
“A lot of people were asking why I brought him back. I get in these positions where there are guys like Karo Parisyan who have put on a lot of great fights for me over the past few years.” – UFC President Dana White (Yahoo!)
“I can’t even shower. The water hurts my skin and my heart just starts pounding.” – Parisyan
“He falls on hard times, and I don’t want to sit here and act like a goof and pat myself on the back, but I’ve done a lot of things for him.” – White, who paid for Parisyan to see a sports psychologist. The adjective “sports” seems superfluous to me.
“Back when I was Karo. I would be in a suite right now. I made $500,000 in 2007 alone, and I made $100,000 on the Kim fight before sponsors. I had an eight-fight contract worth over a million dollars.” – Parisyan
“He was texting and calling me, and I was like, ‘I’ll give this guy one more chance.'” – White
“It’s beyond explanation, what the brain is capable of. At its worst, I wanted to put a bullet in my head. Just to stop it from rushing.” – Parisyan
“You ever heard the old samurai quote, that the man who is not afraid to die can never be defeated?” – Silva, offering some Zen advice to Parisyan.
WELL, WE HAD A CHOICE OF STEAK OR FISH
“They think I contracted something from tuna fish…which led to a bad stomach virus.” – Alessio Sakara, who had to pull out of his UFC 122 bout with Jorge Rivera hours before the event. (Youtube)
“The toxin levels are still high, and I am recovering now. So I am just waiting for February to come, at the latest March for my next match.” – Sakara, who might have freebased mercury.
“I promise you I won’t eat tuna fish anymore. I took a good beating from this.” – Sakara. Bettors take note.
LOOKS LIKE I PICKED THE WRONG WEEK TO QUIT SNIFFING GLUE
“He was doing a good job of cutting off the cage against Lyoto but I thought really that Lyoto was more effective in that first round.” – Kenny Florian, on the controversial decision between Quinton Jackson and Lyoto Machida at UFC 123. (ESPN)
“We don’t know what kind of criteria the judges are using to score the fights. Unfortunately, it’s American territory, American soil, he fought an American, and he didn’t knock him out.” – Anderson Silva, friend and training partner of Machida’s, and has apparently never watched the opening of a UFC broadcast. (SporTV.Globo.com)
“They see some superficial things like Rampage moving forward the whole time in that fight and they attribute that to him winning those rounds.” – Randy Couture. I guess this fight wasn’t so clear cut, eh Dana White? (Cage Writer)
“I think Lyoto Machida’s style is starting to work against him. Moving backward and really trying to stay away is not appealing to the fans and obviously the judges are not looking for that.” – ESPN writer and general philistine Franklin McNeil, who has already forgotten UFC 104.
PRAY TO J I DID THE SAME OL’ SAME OL’!
“On Twitter they’re calling it ‘the Wonderbar’ or ‘the Philmura.’ It’s kind of like a one-arm version of the Kimura, and I love it.” – Phil Davis, who won the “Submission of the Night” award at UFC 123. (MMA Weekly)
“It sucks that I have to say this, but I knew I was going to have to rip it. He wasn’t going to tap from just pressure. Man, I mean, he’s too rubbery.” – Davis, on Tim Boetsch.
“I don’t wanna see anybody hurt. I want him to be able to go home and play with his wife and kids.” – Davis. You don’t need two arms to play with your kid, Orndorff.
I HAVEN’T FELT THIS AWFUL SINCE WE SAW THAT RONALD REAGAN FILM
“I figured the second round would be more like the first. But getting off the stool for the second round, my legs felt like concrete.” – Joe Lauzon. It’s back… (Boston Herald)
“I don’t know why or what happened. I felt pretty good at the end of the first, but at the beginning of the second I felt dead. It was like I got worse. Instead of recovering, I got way worse.” – Lauzon. And it no longer feeds off of Herculean heavyweights…
“I’m not even sure. It had to be an adrenaline dump. I think I pushed a pretty good pace in the first round, but I didn’t feel like it was something that would make me gassed. I felt good at the end of my first walking back to my corner. I was a little winded, but I was OK.” – Lauzon. Just another victim of Lactic, the Acid Monster.
WHITE NOISE
“We’ll be in over a billion homes worldwide on television.” – UFC President Dana White, hinting at some sort of television deal. (Sherdog)
“We’ll probably do around 30, 31 fights next year.” – White, on postmerger plans.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world, there’s so many good guys out there, you’re literally fighting for your UFC life every time you fight.” – White, using a Bob Reilly-approved metaphor. (MMA Fighting)
PARTING SHOTS
“I don’t want to be the Dan Marino of MMA. ‘Oh yeah, he was a great fighter, but he never won the belt.'” – Jon Fitch. Laces out, Jon. (USA Today)
“Velasquez is more than a girlfriend, he doesn’t leave my head.” – Junior dos Santos, on UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez. This is not surprising if you’ve seen dos Santos’s girlfriend. (Portal do Vale Tudo)
“He tapped out on three different occasions, hiding it. It was a new thing for me, it was the first time I got three wins on the same bout.” – Maiquel Falcao, on UFC 123 opponent Gerald Harris. (Tatame)
“The dude knocks people out. He’s a man after my own heart.” – Paul Daley, on Scott Smith. No homo. (MMA Junkie)