UFC “too tough for Fedor” says Mirko

Mirko ‘CroCop’ Filipovic sparked controversy when he remarked recently that Fedor Emelianenko may have thought the UFC was “too tough” for him. “I like Fedor as a fighter, as a man, I don’t want to insult Fedor, but I don’t understand his attitude. I don’t know if someone else controls him,” Filipovic said.

“But I really don’t understand why he doesn’t want to enter the UFC. Definitely the UFC offered him the best possible deal, to pay him much more than Dream can offer or Strikeforce can offer, but he’s just refusing to go there. I don’t know why. I think he should take the challenge. I don’t think he’s afraid, but I think he wants to keep his perfect record, maybe he thinks the UFC is too tough. I think he should come. Why he’s not there, I don’t know.”

Kimbo vs Bas

Bas Rutten spilled the beans to Fighters Only about his split with Kimbo Slice following the collapse of EliteXC. The Dutch legend said Kimbo “turned into an asshole” and “didn’t want to do what I was telling him to do”.

We caught up with Kimbo recently and we asked him for his reaction to those comments. He said he had “no idea he felt that way” but confirmed the relationship had broken down. “I guess with him, he pretended to be a friend but he really wasn’t. It was just business with him. You pay a guy good money to teach you things and be a good teacher and they take your money. But then they turn round and say ‘I tried to teach you stuff but it’s not working’? Come on man, you’re not a good teacher.”

“So really he owes me some money right?” Slice laughed. “But it’s all good, we all do what we gotta do.” Slice is appearing in season ten of The Ultimate Fighter, which is currently broadcasting on Spike TV.

Gomi still thinks he’s world’s best LW

Takanori Gomi still believes he is the best lightweight fighter in the world, despite going 3-2 since his upset loss to Nick Diaz in 2007. He would have been 3-3 in his last six, if that fight hadn’t been declared a no contest because of Diaz’s marijuana use. But Gomi says, “I don’t see anybody over me in this weight class.”

“I think nobody has reached my best but there are great fighters able to get where I got, for sure,” he told a Japanese MMA blog recently. One fighter who might strongly disagree with that is BJ Penn, currently the lightweight champion of the UFC and unbeaten at that weight since 2002. Penn holds a submission win over Gomi from 2003.

One way to settle the issue would have been to have Gomi fight Penn in the UFC and that looked to be on the cards when Gomi gave an interview earlier this year and publicly called for Dana White to contact him. Now he says it is unlikely he will fight for the UFC. “I believed I’d fight for UFC but certain things meant I could not fight at that time. I regret having said that,” he explained.

Mousasi: “Filho is on steroids”

Gegard Mousasi and Paulo Filho have been getting into a war of words over the past few weeks and hope to settle it in the ring. Mousasi started things off by accusing Filho of being a steroid user and saying he would only fight him after a drug test. “We all saw what happened when he came to America, he got beat up. Now he’s back in Japan he can use all kinds of steroids.”

He also described Filho as “a little donkey who thinks he is a racehorse”, which is surely the most eloquent piece of smack talk we’ve heard all year. Filho responded by describing Mousasi’s physique as “paper thin” and saying he wants to beat him up because he “always has this superior look on his face”. Both fighters are available for DREAM to use, so there is a good chance of this beef being settled in the ring at some point.

Anderson looking for a fight with Randy Couture

Reports that the middleweight champion is having surgery on his elbow and will be out until 2010 are inaccurate, Ed Soares told Yahoo! Sports.

“Anderson wants to fight the biggest and the best fighters out there and Randy Couture falls into that category. After Anderson saw the way he fought Rodrigo Nogueira, he said he became an even bigger Randy Couture fan,” he said.

However, Soares did stress that the UFC has neither offered nor even discussed a Couture fight with Silva, who is coming off a light-heavyweight win over Forrest Griffin at UFC 101.

The middleweight division is displaying a decided paucity of challengers at present, although Dan Henderson and Nate Marquardt are both angling for a second shot at Silva’s title.

As a result, Silva is known to be interested in taking ‘super fights’ at light-heavyweight, a division which Couture looks likely to drop down to following his loss to Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC 102. To read more about Anderson Silva’s desire for new challenges turn to page 28

Wanderlei 2.0

Wanderlei Silva has ended weeks of speculation by confirming that he has had plastic surgery around his eyes and nose. Pictures of the Brazilian legend had been circulating for some weeks on the Internet, apparently showing the after-effects of facial operations.

“People are noticing my eyes,” Wanderlei commented via his website. “I’ve had more than 200 stitches around there, in the area of the eyes, so the doctor scraped my skull. The goal is for me not to get cut so easily in my next fight because before, I was receiving big cuts only from scratches. I was always having to get seven, 10, 15 stitches, and this was hurting my performance.”

He also had work done on his nose. After having it broken multiple times, he was struggling to breathe through it. This problem was particularly apparent at night, when his restricted breathing would cause him to wake repeatedly. “I was suffering from sleep apnea and would wake up four or five times per night. In the end you give up on sleeping and the next day you are broken. Now I can sleep through the night, I’m feeling very good.” The surgery means his next fight will probably be in early 2010, but no opponent has yet been lined up.

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