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Ricardo Arona could be making his long-awaited debut for the UFC.

"I can't talk about this project right now, but there's a connection between me and the UFC now, something concrete that I didn't have before," Arona is quoted as saying to TATAME.com. "My return will be in the end of the year and will be in the UFC."

To say that Fedor Emelianenko is the mixed martial arts fighter of the decade is, if anything, to understate just how dominant a fighter "The Last Emperor" has been.

In a sport where results are unpredictable and no one is unbeatable, where legendary fighters like Randy Couture have pedestrian-looking records like 17-10, Fedor has stood far beyond the rest of the pack, establishing a record of 31-1, with the one loss coming when he was cut by an impermissible elbow.

Gegard Mousasi is currently training for his next fight to take place at the Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers-headlined Strikeforce event on Nov. 7 in Hoffman Estates, Ill., the fighter confirmed Monday on his blog for M-1 Global.

The Strkeforce 205-pound champ's opponent is to be announced, but according to Mousasi, the rumors are Kevin Randleman, Paulo Filho and Mike Whitehead. He added that while Ricardo Arona has not joined Strikeforce, the PRIDE veteran would be a great signing for the organization.

A light heavyweight encounter between Ricardo Arona and Marvin Eastman will cap off a night of ten bouts at Saturday's Bitetti Combat 4 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

FanHouse confirmed Tuesday with Bitetti Combat the complete card and with the exception of the recent exit of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, the lineup has remained intact.

PRIDE veterans Gilbert Yvel and Ricardo Arona, at least for now, have not reached agreements, respectively, with the UFC and Strikeforce.

UFC veteran David Bielkheden mentioned on his blog Wednesday after training in Brazil with Arona and the Brazilian Top Team that his good friend Arona has signed with Strikeforce. But that may be premature as Strikeforce director of communications, Mike Afromowitz, told FanHouse Wednesday that the promotion has not signed Arona to a contract.

Randy Couture will fight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in the main event of UFC 102, a fight that MMA fans have wanted to see for years. But not many fans have been itching for this fight as long as Couture himself has -- Couture said Tuesday that he's still kicking himself over a 2001 loss that cost him the opportunity to fight Nogueira eight years ago.

Our latest MMA Twitter mailbag delves into the potential for a relationship between the UFC and ESPN, the possibility that Tito Ortiz will return to the Octagon, the whereabouts of Ricardo Arona and still more about what's going on with Fedor Emelianenko after Affliction Trilogy was canceled.

The mailbag is below.

Our latest MMA twitter mailbag is, of course, heavy on questions about Josh Barnett, whose positive drug test has caused his fight with Fedor Emelianenko at Affliction Trilogy to be called off.

Affliction is scrambling to find a new opponent to face Fedor Emelianenko on August 1. Here's the latest based on discussions with several sources.

The organization is looking at four potential opponents right now: Vitor Belfort, Bobby Lashley, Brett Rogers and Ricardo Arona. They believe one of those fighters will take the fight on short notice.

Mixed martial arts has been a global sport for as long as it has existed. The first UFC event featured a Brazilian defeating a Dutchman in the final. The current UFC champions are two Americans, two Brazilians and a French Canadian, and the sport's top fighters outside the UFC include one from Russia and several from Japan.

But while the sport has always been global in the sense that the athletes come from all over the world and fight all over the world, its fans are still segmented by language barriers. The internet gives fans access to MMA news, but there's not a lot of English-language coverage of MMA events in Japan.

A blogger named Suki Kubo is changing that. A 31-year-old woman who was born in Kyoto, Japan and has lived in the United States for six years, Suki figured that being an MMA fan fluent in English and Japanese put her in a unique position to help American fans learn more about what's going on with the sport in Japan.

So she launched her blog, Suki MMA, which translates Japanese MMA articles into English. In the interview below, Suki answers my questions about how she got the idea to start the site, and what the differences are between the way MMA is covered in Japan and in the United States.