Heading into his scheduled welterweight bout with Jon Fitch at UFC 117 on Saturday night, Thiago Alves failed to make weight. He came in a half pound over the 171-pound limit for a welterweight fight and declined to cut any more weight. He instead fought Fitch at a catchweight and forfeited 20 percent of his fight purse. After dominating Alves for three rounds, Fitch was okay with Alves’ blunder. "It was only half a pound and the thing with California, like when I fought Diego (Sanchez) here I missed weight too my first try, the scales are digital and they round up to half a pound. He could have been a fraction of a quarter of ...

 Strikeforce cagefighting champion Nick Diaz is only 26 years of age, but the young Stockton California native has fought in almost every legit MMA promotion there is, including a three-year, 10-fight stint with the biggest and best one, the UFC. All his matches have been tremendously entertaining, the best one possibly being the "news reel-style" knockout win over a heavily favored Robbie Lawler at UFC 47 in April of '04. Diaz, in my opinion, is one of the top "pound for pound" fighters in the world today, and the eldest of the two fighting siblings was recently in Las Vegas to race in the Xterra Triathlon, an "iron man" contest; but ...

  While many people have complained that Dan Hardy is not a worthy challenger for UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre, and there is a solid argument to be made there, it's also worth emphasizing that any opportunity to see one of the best martial artists in the young history of our sport perform is not to be missed. To celebrate this rare treat I thought I would do a Judo Chop on one of the moves most associated with St Pierre: the superman punch.  In his most recent fights, especially his triumphs over the highly credentialed amateur wrestlers Jon Fitch and Josh Koschek, ...

 Speculation has been running rampant for several weeks over reports that Chuck Liddell would face Rich Franklin at UFC 115 instead of original opponent and opposing coach from the current season of "The Ultimate Fighter" Tito Ortiz. MMAWeekly.com initially reported the rumored bout on March 13. The UFC has on Monday confirmed those rumors announcing Liddell will indeed face Franklin on June 12 in Vancouver for the main event of UFC 115. The story surfaced after Ortiz had suffered injuries during training that would prevent him from fighting in the bout against Liddell in June, and it was former middleweight champion Rich Franklin that would step in to replace him. The UFC denied the initial reports and stood ...

   There may not be a scarier moment in a fighter's life than when they are told something could be "career ending." That's the nightmare that Thiago "Pitbull" Alves faced just before his fight at UFC 111 when an MRI and CAT scan revealed a brain anomaly that concerned doctors enough that they would not clear him to fight. At that point, Alves started to deal with the harsh realities of not only his fight career being in jeopardy, but simply said when the word "brain" is uttered by any doctor followed by "problem," the worst thoughts start trolling around in your head. "When my manager called me on Wednesday he told me I was not going to ...