Issue 074

April 2011

Catch the latest news and hot interviews over at our website, updated daily by our worldwide team of reporters

NEWS: MORE BAD NEWS FOR VOLKMANN FOLLOWING OBAMA COMMENTS

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for UFC lightweight contender Jacob Volkmann. After stating that he’d like to “knock some sense into that idiot” in reference to President Obama during an interview with MMA Fighting, Volkmann has now been temporarily dropped from his day job. White Bear Lake High School, where he has worked as an assistant wrestling coach for the last three years, has placed him under suspension. Following the suspension Volkmann told FOX News: “They didn’t like how I was representing the school. They said I was representing them bad because of what I said about the president and his policies.”

NEWS: ANDERSON WOULD WELCOME FIGHT WITH BISPING IN FRONT OF UK CROWD

UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva says he would welcome the opportunity to fight Michael Bisping in England if the UFC wanted to make the match. “The British fans are very knowledgeable and passionate about MMA. I would love to fight there once more. Michael Bisping is very impressive. He’s been in the UFC for a long time now and beaten some very good fighters. It would be an honor to fight him, perhaps in England,” he said. “He is fast, is very busy and makes adjustments quickly. I am a champion of the world, not just Brazil or America. Being a world champion means taking on the best fighters from around the world so if the chance came I would like to fight Bisping in the UK if that’s what the UFC put together.”

NEWS: KING MO SLAMS ‘FANBOY’ MENTALITY

Former Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion Muhammad ‘King Mo’ Lawal has blasted ‘fair-weather’ MMA fans for what he sees as a bias towards the UFC and lack of interest in other organizations. “Mousasi was my sixth or seventh fight. I tried trading with him but he was covering up from my strikes so I took his ass down. Now they say he is overrated,” Lawal said to Bloody Elbow. “Simply put, if we were both in the UFC and that fight happened we wouldn’t get that flack and we would’ve been all good. Some people are just groupies and they are idiots who are quick to say someone is overrated just because they don’t know shit about MMA.”

NEWS: NATE MARQUARDT GIVES HIS OPINION ON BEING DESCRIBED AS “A CHOKER”

Nate Marquardt summed up his opinion of talk that he cannot rise to big occasions in one word when he appeared on The MMA Hour recently: “Crap.” The top middleweight, who saw a chance to have a crack at the middleweight title slip through his fingers with a UFC 122 loss to Yushin Okami, has been roundly criticized by UFC president Dana White and others. White called him “a choker.” Marquardt: “I don’t really pay attention to that kind of stuff... You have to deal with that crap all the time and just basically brush it off. I gotta stick to what I gotta do,” he told host Ariel Helwani. “It was definitely very disappointing to be that close and I didn’t seize the opportunity like I could have. I’m very disappointed, but at the same time, I still got a lot more time in this sport and I still believe I’m going to be the champion.”