Latest UFC 114 Stories

A broken arm suffered in his recent May victory will sideline UFC heavyweight Mike Russow until January 2011.

Russow, who authored one of the best comeback moments in recent memory with a stunning third-round knockout of Todd Duffee after trailing most of the fight, had been expected to only miss six to eight weeks while healing.

In theory, a midseason awards selection would preclude anything that happened after June 30, but let's be informal and grant this awards column a four-day waiver so I can name UFC 116 as the fight card of the year thus far.

Perhaps because it is the freshest of events in our minds, it seems like the obvious winner, but even a closer look confirms what we knew. It was an event that had a little bit of everything you'd want in a night of action, from highlight reel finishes (Gerald Harris' slam KO over Dave Branch) to brilliant technique (Chris Lytle's finishing reverse triangle/armbar sequence) to a blistering main event between Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin in what is rapidly becoming the sport's glamour division.

The UFC 114 event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas drew an attendance of 14,246 for a total gate of $3,895,125, the Nevada athletic commission revealed Monday.

UFC 114, which took place May 29 and featured the grudge match between Rashad Evans and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, sold 13,294 tickets and only 14 tickets were left unsold. 1,702 tickets were papered.

Here's a news flash for MMA fighters everywhere: somewhere in your ranks, even at the highest level of the sport, there is at least one gay fighter. Maybe you've trained with him in the past. Maybe you've even faced him in the cage before. Odds are you never knew it, and it never mattered.

I make this point not for shock value, but to remind some fighters to think before they speak – or Twitter – because they don't necessarily know who they're talking to or who they're talking about.

Take Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, for instance, who made headlines in a Los Angeles Times profile piece wherein he worried that acting was too "gay" a pursuit for a tough guy like himself.

Jason Brilz was on his way out of the Octagon after losing a somewhat controversial split decision to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira at UFC 114, and all things considered he was feeling pretty good.

The sold-out crowd at the MGM Grand might have been moaning with indignation on his behalf, but he had a smile on his face. He'd fought well, he'd enjoyed himself, and now he was content to saunter off to the locker room and relax for a minute or two. He got about three steps out of the cage when he heard someone shouting at him.

"So I stopped and I looked over and it was Dana White," Brilz told MMA Fighting. "He said, 'Get your effing butt back in the effing cage, and give your victory speech. You won that effing fight.' I was like, yes sir. Your boss yells at you to do something, guess you've got to do it. I went back in."

Perhaps no fighter has ever etched himself into UFC lore with more speed and efficiency than Todd Duffee. That's both good and bad, as it turns out.

In his first fight, he notched the quickest knockout (officially, anyway) in UFC history when he finished Tim Hague seven seconds into the first round. In his second bout at UFC 114, he managed to have the most dominating striking performance of any fighter who ever went on to lose the fight via stoppage.

At least, that's the story according to Fight Metric, which reviewed the stats from the fight to reveal that Duffee landed 51 "significant strikes," while Mike Russow landed only 14.

Continuing their long history of support for the military, the UFC is moving forward with plans for a full event to take place on a U.S. base in Afghanistan.

UFC President Dana White said the company is currently in talks with key government and Armed Forces personnel to make the event happen.

"It's going to happen, but even when it does happen, we're not going to be able to talk about it," he said. "It's going to be a stealth mission. We're going to zoom in there, put on a fight and get the hell out."

On Saturday night in Las Vegas, thousands of fans booed when two out of three judges awarded Antonio Rogerio Nogueira a split decision win over Jason Brilz at UFC 114. Few if any of those fans knew that a few hours earlier in Amsterdam, a different fight promotion had used a different system of judging that might have given Brilz the victory that most fans thought he earned.

That fight promotion in Amsterdam was the It's Showtime kickboxing organization, and the different system of judging was quite simple: The show used five judges instead of three. Maybe two more judges would have gone for Brilz over Nogueira, and a five-judge panel would have given Brilz a split decision win at UFC 114.

During the same weekend that Rampage Jackson fought Rashad Evans at UFC 114, he was the subject of a Los Angeles Times profile that didn't portray him in the most flattering light.

Too often, negative newspaper profiles of mixed martial artists are filled with inaccuracies and ignorance, and biased in a way to portray MMA in the worst possible light. This profile of Jackson, however, actually treated him quite fairly. And the ignorance on display in the Los Angeles Times article isn't the writer's, it's Jackson's.

The more live MMA events I attend, the more convinced I am that no two crowds are exactly alike. This was probably true in the heyday of the Roman Coliseum, as well. Some audiences heap love on even the most hapless gladiator, while others drink too much wine and boo everything from the lions to the free bread.

The sold-out crowd at the MGM Grand for UFC 114 seemed especially inscrutable and difficult to please. If two fighters went more than ten seconds without unloading on each other, the boos came pouring into the Octagon. UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes and NBA great Tim Duncan got similar treatment just for appearing on the big screen. Snoop Dogg and Mike Tyson, however, both got a hero's welcome.

And David Spade? He was caught somewhere in the middle, which actually seems about right when you consider that he was in "Tommy Boy," but was also in "Dickie Roberts."

After a decisive defeat at the hands of 22-year-old rising star John Hathaway in his return to the welterweight division at UFC 114, it's back to the drawing board for Diego Sanchez.

Sanchez's next move is anyone's guess, but UFC President Dana White has his own opinion, and he believes that the onetime lightweight No. 1 contender belongs in the 155-pound division.

Say you go to a movie on opening night. Just humor me. I swear there's an MMA-related point in here somewhere.

Say it's supposed to be a big blockbuster, something you've been looking forward to since you first saw the trailer in all its explosion heavy, one-liner spewing, ADD glory. Say the movie itself turns out to be firmly mediocre. Say you feel like you've been letdown yet again.

Say you spend the rest of the evening wondering how Hollywood keeps convincing you to drop your money on this stuff.