Naturally, we’ve been very happy about the rise of Ronda Rousey and what it means to the future of women in UFC and just Mixed Martial Arts competition in general. But as much fun as it has been to talk about the successful, charismatic and, well, attractive Rousey, I’ve regrettably ignored what is an equally important – or maybe even arguably more important – story in Rousey’s opponent, Liz Carmouche, becoming the first openly gay fighter in UFC history.

The move is a nice one for UFC President Dana White, who famously dropped an F-Bomb (f*ggot, not f*ck) in an interview several years ago, as he can now boast of the UFC’s universal inclusiveness with both women and homosexuals all in one fell swoop. PR stunts aside, though, it’s just good for everyone, as long as it’s not the only thing that defines Carmouche. I’m sure she’d like to be known as a UFC champion, in addition to being a champion for equality.

In the meantime, her presence is a win-win for everyone involved, as the UFC takes a step forward in fighting the stigma of White’s mistake, while Carmouche goes into her championship match at UFC 157 on Feb. 26 against Rousey with not only female MMA fans supporting her, but also gay MMA fans, and that’s something that means a lot to her.

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"I am ze true keeng!"

As we were watching UFC 154 on Saturday night, making hilarious quips and cyber high-fiving because we’re all awesome bros and babes, there was some excitement and chatter about something that wasn’t happening in the ring and in no way related to Brittney Palmer’s body. UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and former light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida were on hand to watch the highly-anticipated and much-celebrated return of welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. Silva’s presence of course begged the question: “Yo, is he gonna challenge GSP?”

And the answer, as we all learned, was “Nah”. It turns out that Silva and Machida were in Canada to film a movie with Steven Seagal, which sounds horribly awesome and I can’t wait to see it when it goes straight to Laser Disc, which Seagal invented, by the way. But don’t let that discourage you from thinking that Silva vs. St-Pierre will happen, because Silva is at least saying all the right things.

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<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

First the bad news – while there’s no official word yet from Strikeforce, its parent company Zuffa LLC, or Showtime, it appears that Strikeforce’s incredibly-anticipated January event that promised to make up for the canceled September and November events will indeed be the organization’s last. TMZ, the world’s leading news source for mixed martial arts business dealings, reported yesterday that the future that many people predicted for Strikeforce after it was purchased by Zuffa is indeed coming true. Yes, this sucks.

Now the kind-of-good news – that January 12 event in Oklahoma City could be one of the most exceptional events in MMA history (much like those that we have EXCITING LIVE DISCUSSIONS for), as the rumored plan involves every Strikeforce champion defending his and her titles one last time. It’s not official yet, and according to Yahoo!, we shouldn’t get our hopes up, because UFC president Dana White hates Showtime and won’t let this happen. But I’m a careless optimist and I believe they’ll think of adorable fans like me and absolutely make it happen.

But now, the great news – With Leather favorite and extreme badass Ronda Rousey will indeed be heading to the UFC, which marks an incredible 180 for White.

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Nice of you to join us, Mr. Jones.

Well, it feels like it’s been a while since we last met, but here we are, on the verge of watching Jon Jones prove that he’s not the coward that so many people called him after UFC 151 was canceled. A massive black eye for this popular promotion, UFC 151 was supposed to give us Jones against Dan Henderson, but the latter was injured. Chael Sonnen, though, stepped up and offered to fight Jones, which would have been totally welcomed by fans. Would it have been a better fight? Who knows, but at least it would have been something.

Instead, Jones refused to fight a replacement, and without a decent fight to carry the card – despite all of us screaming for Rhonda Rousey – Dana White announced that the event was canceled. Oh, and he’s still not very happy about that. Said White yesterday of Jones:

“I think he takes this thing, or is acting like he’s taking it, lightly, which he shouldn’t be,” White continued. “The fact that the fight was canceled isn’t a joke. It’s not funny and a lot of people were affected by it. There was a lot of collateral damage that happened with the cancelling of the show. We’ll see how this goes.” (Via)

So at UFC 152 Jones owes us. He owes us proof that he’s a badass and that he only deserves to fight the best. He owes us a successful and powerful light heavyweight title defense, but I’m sure plenty of us would like to see him lose to Vitor Belfort tonight.

In other action, Demetrious Johnson will fight Joseph Benavidez for the first ever flyweight championship, and Michael Bisping will face off against Brian Stann (full list after the jump).

Join us tonight at 7 PM ET to talk up the preliminary fights on FX (8 PM ET), and at 10 PM ET for the pay-per-view event. Share this discussion with your sparring partners on Facebook and Twitter tonight, and unlock the incredible CUB SWANSON BADGE. And then go grill yourself some meat. No corn.

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Strikeforce Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey is a volatile red-carpet personality who sorta looks like somebody bombarded actress Julia Stiles with gamma radiation and isn’t afraid to detail how many times she’d punch Kim Kardashian in the face. She also looks really great naked. UFC President Dana White looks like a guy who’d have a non-speaking role as “Dan’s poker buddy #3″ in the background of a ‘Roseanne’ episode. He won’t stop throwing up the “hang loose” gesture. It’s not surprising that when they stand together, the effects of both are magnified tenfold.

To illustrate this point, here are Ronda Rousey and Dana White walking the red carpet at an event to promote the new season of FX’s ‘Sons Of Anarchy’. The photographers (who communicate by going EHH EHHH EHH EHHH until somebody looks at them) are not shy about telling Dana to take 30 steps to the right to get his gross face out of their Ronda Rousey torso shot, and he obliges, because shit, he totally understands.

As Cage Potato points out, he’s got this red carpet accompaniment thing down-pat.

I’ll say one thing about DW: Whenever he does a photo-op with an attractive woman, he doesn’t act like a hover-handing sissy. He leans in and grabs a piece. Best perk of the job, if you ask me.

My advice: stay as far away from Charlie Hunnam as possible. Hunnam and Rousey would make those super babies from Baby Geniuses 2.

"I'm going to Legoland!"

In case you missed it on Saturday, we had a few friends over for the UFC 145 Pay-Per-View, including UFC.com writer, blogger and fighter “Danny Boy” Downes and FilmDrunk daddy and MMA aficionado Vince “Spicy Meat-a-ball” Mancini. Of course we thank them for their time and contributions, as well as you commenters for making that one of the more enjoyable UFC pay-per-views in recent memory, so you can expect that we’ll be doing this – or something similar – again. As for the fights, here are the official results that caused so many of you to shake your meat hooks in rage:

Marcus Brimage d. Maximo Blanco – Split decision (28-29, 29-28, 30-27)
Chris Clements d. Keith Wisniewski – Split decision (28-29, 29-28, 30-27)
Mac Danzig d. Efrain Escudero – Unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 30-27)
Anthony Njokuani d. John Makdessi – Unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
Matt Brown d. Stephen Thompson – Unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 30-27)
Travis Browne d. Chad Griggs – Submission
Eddie Yagin d. Mark Hominick – Split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Michael McDonald d. Miguel Torres – KO (punches)
Ben Rothwell d. Brendan Schab – KO
Rory MacDonald d. Che Mills – TKO
Jon Jones d. Rashad Evans – Unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 50-45)

Of course, I was more pleased that Vince brought up Cecil Peoples – one of the most notoriously criticized officials in MMA history – and someone mentioned the Cecil Peoples action figure, because I had all but forgotten about a series of fake UFC toys created by a Sherdog forum user named Masato a few years ago.

They’re always worth sharing because the Steven Seagal action figure with its guitar/assault rifle should be real, dammit.

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