Latest UFC 111 Stories

Dana White says he'll fire UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva if he decides he'd rather dance than fight at UFC 117. His opponent, Chael Sonnen, says he's going to come right at Silva and force him to do something – anything – other than play his own private game for five rounds.

You add those two motivating forces together, throw in a dash of vocal displeasure from fans and media over his last title defense against Demian Maia, and you'd think that what we have here is a recipe for a real fight.

At least, it would be if we were dealing with a normal fighter, but we aren't. We're dealing with Anderson Silva. If there's one thing we've learned about him over the last few years, it's that he's going to do whatever he feels like once that cage door shuts, and he doesn't particularly seem to care what anyone else thinks about it.

LAS VEGAS -- Brendan Schaub's name did not appear anywhere on the UFC's official schedule, but that didn't stop the Colorado native from making an appearance at the open workouts at the MGM Grand Conference Center Marquee Ballroom.

While Schaub was there mainly in support of teammate and main event participant Shane Carwin, in a way, it also symbolized his hope to be considered among the sport's top-level heavyweights following his UFC 116 match against Chris Tuchscherer.

"I expect to be on the main card after this," Schaub (5-1) told MMA Fighting. "It's an honor to be on the Spike prelims, but after this, I expect big-name opponents. I think this will separate me from the rest of the up-and-comers. I think I showed what I do to up-and-comers like Chase Gormley and the guys on the [Ultimate Fighter] show, so I think from here it's going to be some pretty big-name UFC vets for me."

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- MMA Fighting spoke to Chuck Liddell at Wednesday's UFC 115 media day just days prior to his main event fight against Rich Franklin.

"The Iceman" talked about why he returned to action following his loss to Shogun Rua at UFC 97, how he convinced Dana White to let him fight again and what he expects to see from Rich Franklin come Saturday night.

Check out the video interview below.

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The long-anticipated rematch between Thiago Alves and Jon Fitch has been delayed yet again, MMA Fighting has learned.

The bout has been pushed back to UFC 117, UFC President Dana White confirmed to MMA Fighting.

"Making sure Alves is 1000 percent healthy," White replied via text when asked the reason for the postponement.

UFC lightweights Kurt Pellegrino and George Sotiropoulos have both signed bout agreements to face off against one another at UFC 116, a source tells MMAFighting.com's Ariel Helwani.

The match-up pits two lightweights who are both coming off impressive recent performances against one another on the undercard of an event headlined by heavyweights Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar this summer.

When Rousimar Palhares appeared to have held on to a heel-hook against Tomasz Drwal at UFC 111 a little too long, a lot of MMA fans and critics hailed his actions as being dirty and irresponsible.

MMA Fighting spoke to Drwal via e-mail about the incident recently, and he wasn't as quick to criticize Palhares.

Following UFC 111 on Saturday night, Jon Fitch met with the media and stated his case as to why he should be next in line to face welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. The American Kickboxing Academy veteran said he has improved a lot since their first meeting at UFC 87 and he still sees flaws in St-Pierre's game.

Dana White suggested that Fitch would have to face AKA teammate and good friend Josh Koscheck if Koscheck beats Paul Daley in May, which led to an interesting exchange between White and Fitch.

Check out the video below and weigh in: would you like to see Fitch get another crack at GSP?

When I caught up with Frank Mir just two days before his UFC 111 interim heavyweight title bout with Shane Carwin, I found him in a philosophical mood. Though Mir is known for his brashness, part of that is by design. Mir knows that MMA is part entertainment, and that fans like to be invested in fighters, whether it's love or hate.

But the former UFC heavyweight champ can also be quite reflective. We spent a lot of time that day talking about his family, about his recent visit to the site of 9/11 in Manhattan, and even about the possibility of losing. But perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of that conversation was Mir admitting that he's at least had some thoughts about going into politics.

Twitterholic and UFC President Dana White said that during last Saturday's UFC 111 title fight between Georges St. Pierre and Dan Hardy, his Twitter feed – which is followed by over 1 million people – was blowing up with negative feeback on the fight.

The fans, it seemed, were not overly impressed by St. Pierre's systematic five-round beatdown of Hardy. Perhaps the fight was so dominant, so lopsided, that to them it bordered on boring. The somewhat absurd corollary to this is that people believe Hardy's stock shot up with the performance while St. Pierre's dipped.

Oh, really? The guy on the beating end gets a credibility boost for surviving while the guy on the business end of the punches somehow suffers? That's preposterous. Hardy does deserve credit, but if you think his survival was something to behold, it is only because of the attack that came his way. Either they both get credit, or neither does; I accept the former. St. Pierre's performance shows that he is true to his word of trying to break down a fight to a mathematical formula, and here are the statistics to prove it.

Less than 72 hours since Shane Carwin beat Frank Mir to set up a UFC heavyweight championship showdown with Brock Lesnar, the early odds are favoring the current champ to hold off the challenger and hold on to his belt.

Though the fight is not yet official, UFC President Dana White told MMA Fighting late last Saturday night that the company was aiming for UFC 116, which takes place on July 3. The early line makes Lesnar a more than 2-to-1 favorite.

Shane Carwin is bright enough to handle the demands of a full-time job as a civil and mechanical engineer in northern Colorado. Maybe then, he'd be so kind as to explain the science behind the mind-scrambling statistics he's compiled. Twelve fights, 12 first-round stoppage victories.

"I'm wordless. I'm speechless," was all he could muster after smashing his way through his latest victim, the one-time undisputed and one-time interim UFC champion Frank Mir at UFC 111.

The challenges though, continue to get bigger, and the next problem the engineer must solve is the biggest in MMA right now: UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. When he and Lesnar meet this summer, likely on July 3 in Las Vegas, it will be -- quite literally -- huge. In fact, the biggest title matchup ever, at least in terms of bulk. And the interest level for the fight might just match the oversized participants.