CURIOUS LIKE A CATSMASHER, PART ONE
“I was a little bit surprised. Akiyama gets to go fight Bisping, and I get Brian Stann.” – Chris Leben, who gutted out a victory over Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 116. You know, Brian Stann is a former WEC world champion at middleweight light heavyweight, Christian. That’s kind of a big deal. (MMA Fighting)
“If he wins it builds him up, and if I win that’s four wins in a row for me, and then who knows?” – Leben. Win or lose, I’m sure there will be a bottle involved.
“Sometimes they’ll do things and I don’t have a clue why they did them, to be honest with you.” – Leben, on the UFC’s match making.
“Hopefully I go out and I crush Brian Stann and I get in their ear a little more about it, and some things will happen.” – Leben. Or maybe piss on Dana’s pillow or something.
CURIOUS LIKE A CATSMASHER, PART TWO
“I’d bought a new truck, and I had never drove a truck before. It had just rained. Apparently I stepped on the gas a little too hard so I kind of slid out and hit the embankment of the highway, and the cops were working right there, so they saw me.” – Leben, on his run-in with the law for driving under the influence. And driving without a valid license. And driving without insurance.
“Somebody told me, you know, you’re not supposed to blow if you get pulled over. I don’t know, I guess my lawyer says that’s not necessarily the case now, but I didn’t blow.” – Leben, who found himself surprised again when told that putting a penny under his tongue wouldn’t fool the Breathalyzer.
“I didn’t take the test, just because I know that in Hawaii if you get in an accident [the legal blood-alcohol limit is] .05 if there’s an accident, not even .08, so it’s super-duper low.” – Leben. I’m glad that a known alcoholic is making the smart decision to avoid blowing into a Breathalyzer because he’s straddling the legal limit. That’s some sort of progress, methinks.
“I definitely wasn’t hammered, but I was definitely in the wrong. I didn’t blow so, you know, who knows what’s going to happen now.” – Leben. I have faith that you’ll refrain drinking and driving in the future. In the musical sense.
NICK/TUCK
“Either I was going to get the fight with Diaz and expose him, show that he’s not some damn unstoppable, pitter-pat punching tank, but just some dude who can get beat up. Or, the other option, I was going to expose him for what he is, which is a guy who picks favorable fights constantly.” – Jason Miller, on the failure to make a fight with Nick Diaz. Diaz will instead fight Evangelista Santos January 29th. (MMA Fighting)
“We said 181, but they wouldn’t take it.” – Miller, who last fought at Diaz’s weight of 170 pounds when Georges St. Pierre bloodied him up at UFC 52.
“They want me to be totally emaciated to make the weight. Meanwhile, he’s calling out Anderson Silva to make himself look tough.” – Miller
“You jumped me on TV. It’s a damn storyline that’s real. This isn’t manufactured drama. This isn’t The Ultimate Fighter TV show. It’s real.” – Miller. The Ultimate Fighter is still real to me, damnit.
“That will be forever etched in there, and if he ever fights up a weight class we’re all going to have a good laugh about how he ducked ‘Mayhem.'” – Miller. Or a disappointed groan.
FENNEL, THE WORST SORT OF HERB
“All he needed to do was let me know, acknowledge the submission so the fight would end.” – George Sotiropoulos, on how Marc Fennel handled Joe Lauzon tapping to a kimura at UFC 123. Fennel, who was half-way across the Octagon on the wrong side of the action, bull rushed Sotiropoulos when he finally noticed the tap. (Vigilante MMA)
“I didn’t want to let go of the arm in case Lauzon continued fighting and then the referee tells us to continue. You know when I used to compete in jiu jitsu, they’d tap or they’d scream and then I’d release it and they’d continue fighting and the bout would continue.” – Sotiropoulos
“So I maintained the submission and even though I had Lauzon’s arm bent back, he wasn’t in any danger of any pressure on the arm, I was just holding it back without any pressure.” – Sotiropoulos
“I’ve seen a lot of referees after a knockout or a knockdown or a submission, they jump on the guys and I think one day someone’s going to get hurt the way some referees break up the fight. Like sometimes a guy is grounding and pounding someone and you see them dive on the guy Brock Lesnar style … someone’s gonna get hurt.” – Sotiropoulos
PARTING SHOTS
“I think it’s fun, no? Because sometimes I talk, we talk, its making the fight more interesting.” – Wanderlei Silva, on the back-and-forth trash talk between him and rumored opponent Chael Sonnen. (MMA Torch)
“If promoters have a conflict or argument, ultimately, typically the best-case scenario 99 out of 100 times is that the fighters get to fight and the promoters battle it out and whoever prevails in the argument gets compensation from the other one.” – Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney, on controversy surrounding TUF winner and former Bellator fighter Jonathan Brookins. Bellator claims that Brookins entered the show while still under contract with them. (MMA Fighting)
“I don’t ever hope for a brawl. If I could have an entire career of ten-second knockouts, I would be completely satisfied with that.” – Rich Franklin (Tapology)
“It’s not about the referee, it’s not about judges, it’s about the guy who stepped in the cage and said ‘change it, change it, it’s not Hermes, it’s Ferrid [Kheder].” – Hermes Franca, who was the victim of a fraudulent decision in Costa Rica. All three judges scored the bout for Franca, but the promoter of the event instructed the ring announcer to declare the fight for Ferrid Kheder. In a bit of surprising news, the promoter also manages Kheder. (MMA Weekly)
“People sometimes want something and it’s not always possible.” – Lyoto Machida, on an episode of Don’t Forget the Lyrics! (Tatame)
“I think he’s less of a typical stereotype of what the mainstream thinks of MMA and at one point what I thought of MMA — that it’s mainly testosterone-laden, tatted up, pierced guys.” – Shari Spencer, manager of Georges St. Pierre. Because the first thing I think of when I see GSP is that he could use some more testosterone. (Sherdog)