An interview on Fighters Only website revealed that “The Natural” Randy Couture has a desire to fight Mirko Crocop. Randy, whose son Ryan is making his pro-MMA debut on August 13th in Srikeforce, was quoted by “a source very close to the veteran fighter” at Xtreme Couture as saying:

“I can almost guarantee that he would gladly take that fight. I know it’s one that he was all for two years ago. I think he’d rather fight a contender at 205 but that he’d never shy away from a high profile fight like that,” the source told us.

Guess nobody told Randy that he said that! Earlier today, Randy Couture updated his twitter denying those comments, simply stating, “Whats all this cro cop talk ? Ive made no comments on cro cop . I have a ton of respect for him but us fighting is kind of old news!”

In other words, this alleged source really did not talk to Randy at all. Go credited news sources for not checking who your source really is! Lesson learned, if you don’t hear it from the horse’s mouth, that horse probably didn’t say it. Aside from that, i have always wanted to see Randy VS Crocop, but it seems one half of that equation is uninterested. So, let’s play pretend! If Randy and Crocop finally met in mortal combat inside the octagon, who would win and how?

Team Quest member Tyson Jeffries talks with The Fight Nerd about his upcoming match at M-1 Global Selection Americas 3 against Plinio Cruz on August 7 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We discuss his fight strategy, as well as if he thought the ref stopping his qualifying fight due to his opponent having a problem seeing was fair. Tyson also talks about if he likes this fast-paced tournament format, and gives us his thoughts on Team Quest teammate Chael Sonnen’s chances against Anderson Silva at UFC 117.

You can buy tickets to the event at Bally’s Casino in AC at this link here (where Fedor will also be making a special appearance to sign things for lucky Jersey fans), or if you can not make it to the show, you can watch it on M-1 Global’s website!

China is slowly catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to MMA thanks to organizations like Art of War, but an event is being held this fall not for mixed martial arts, but for competitive combat sports as a whole.

SportAccord signed an agreement with the city of Beijing, to organize the first SportAccord Combat Games. Scheduled from August 28 to September 4 2010, the competition will showcase 13 Martial Arts and Combat sports, both Olympic and non-Olympic, including Judo, Tae Kwon Do, boxing, Sambo, wrestling, Muay Thai and Kendo. The event will also include a Cultural Program that will reflect the social and cultural values of these sports and Combat Games as a whole.

Each sport will have 80 top athletes (both male and female) competing, who must go through the qualification system set up by their respective International Federations. During the eight days of competition, the 2010 SportAccord Combat Games will also include a cultural program to explain the rich cultural heritages of these sports and their social and educational importance.

You can view more about them at this link here. I actually wish I could go this event. It sounds very interesting and puts combat sports in a different light than we are used to seeing this. It is essentially the Olympics of Martial Arts, and I wish I could be there in person to enjoy their debut!

Attention all lovers of Bruce Lee! I suggest you get a clean pair of underwear before you read this. Celebrating his 70th anniversary and paying tribute to the 20th century’s most influential martial artists in the world, Hot Toys has sent us images of the 1/6th scale Bruce Lee Collectible Figure, specially crafted based on his image in the movie “Enter the Dragon” from 1973. The figure has two newly developed authentic head sculpts with Parallel Eyeball Rolling System meaning his eyes actually move, newly sculpted muscular body, two sets of specially-made costumes and two movie-accurate diorama backdrops, which are the dungeon and the room of mirrors from the final fight scene in the movie.

This figure is expected to ship sometime between the 4th quarter of this year and the 1st quarter of 2011, so start saving your pennies. Hot Toys has a reputation for very high quality 1:6 scale figures including figures based on the Predator series, Iron Man series, Terminator series and so much more, but they do not come cheap. Are they worth the high price tag? Absolutely, and if you are a fan of Bruce Lee and want to show it, this would be the way.

Hit the jump for more photos of this lifelike figure as well as all of the specs and what he comes with- trust me, it’s a lot of stuff!

The 1/6th scale Bruce Lee Collectible Figure specially features:
- Authentic and detailed fully realized likeness of Bruce Lee as Lee in the movie Enter the Dragon
- Two (2) newly developed head sculpts with Parallel Eyeball Rolling System (PERS) with different facial expressions, including one (1) battle damaged ver. with scars on both sides of face
- Multi-layered stereoscopic hair sculpture
- Approximately 30 cm tall
- Newly sculpted muscular body with over 30 points of articulation with battle damaged scars on chest, waist and back
- Fourteen (14) pieces of interchangeable palms including:
• One (1) pair of relaxed palms
• One (1) pair of fists
• One (1) pair for holding nunchucks
• One (1) pair for holding rods
• One (1) pair of posing palms during grappling
• One (1) piece for grappling
• One (1) piece of open palm
• One (1) piece for practicing Wing Chun
• One (1) piece with thumb up for imitating his act of nose touching
- Each piece of head sculpt is specially hand-painted

Costume:
- Two (2) sets of costume including:
• Style 1:
• One (1) piece of Chinese style white shirt
• One (1) pair of dark blue trousers with black waist band
• One (1) pair of white socks
• Style 2:
• A (1) one-piece dark blue stealth suit
• One (1) pair of black socks
• Two (2) pairs of black cotton shoes

Weapons:
- One (1) pair of nunchucks
- Two (2) short rods
- One (1) long rod

Accessories:
- One (1) dark blue bag
- One (1) ball of strings
- One (1) snake

Diorama backdrops:
- Two (2) movie-accurate diorama backdrops with Bruce Lee’s Chinese nameplate, Chinese movie name and MMS DX series title including:
• One (1) imitating the scenario of dungeon in the movie
• One (1) imitating the scenario of mirror room in the movie, with middle part of the mirror which can be rotated with its back showing scene of Chinese cultural implement of punishment

Artists:
- Head Sculpted by Yulli
- Body Sculpted by Noh Sung Woon & Kouhei Okui
- Painted by JC Hong
- Head & Body Art Directed by JC Hong & Kojun
- Costume Made by Lim Young Jin
- Accessory Sculpted by Cha Tae Jin

The August Strikeforce Challengers event is shaping up to be interesting, despite the company still being unsure of whether Carina Damm will be fighting or not. Ryan Couture, son of MMA legend Randy “The Natural” Couture, has signed a multi-fight agreement STRIKEFORCE and will make his professional MMA debut on Friday, Aug. 13 at the Strikeforce Challengers event at Dodge Theatre in Phoenix, Ariz. The 27-year-old Couture, a member of the Las Vegas, Nev., based Xtreme Couture fight team, will face Lucas Stark of Chandler, Ariz. in a three-round lightweight (155 pounds) bout.

The Western Washington University graduate with a degree in mathematics brings with him an amateur record of 5-1-1 competing as a lightweight with all five wins coming by way of submission. In his final amateur bout on March 26, Couture fought to a draw against Sean Bollinger for the Tuff-N-UFF 155-pound title fight at The Orleans in Las Vegas.

Here is hoping Ryan will have more success than others who use the Couture name (*cough* Kim Couture *cough*). Will the son of one of the greatest legends in MMA rise to the top like his father or will he end up like Kim and be a cancerous mole on the neck of MMA fans?

Hot off the presses! Strikeforce just sent out a memo regarding women’s MMA fighter Carina Damm, who is set to participate in a 135 lb. tournament in about two weeks or so. Rumors have been spreading about her ability (or inability depending on which side of the story you are on) to participate due to travel issues, and the higher-ups at Strikeforce have decided to come out and make it official.

From the e-mail: As has been speculated on various websites, Brazilian Carina Damm is having difficulty obtaining the necessary visa to travel to The United States for her participation in the STRIKEFORCE Challengers event on Friday, Aug. 13 where Damm is slated to compete in the women’s welterweight (135 pounds) tournament in Phoenix, Ariz.

STRIKEFORCE is working diligently to help Carina secure a visa in time to make the trip for next month’s event. In the event that she is unable to acquire a visa, however, we have identified a qualified replacement for the tournament and will release her name if Carina is officially forced to withdraw from the event. This prospective replacement has been in training camp for several weeks and is prepared to take on the task at hand.

In other words, Strikeforce has no idea what is up, but that is not so much their fault and they sound prepared in case she is unable to get her visa ready to go. What could be their fault is the logistics of not giving Damm enough time to get things set up, but considering that they summoned Roxy Modafferi from Japan with about two weeks notice in November, there is really no excuse here except that someone is just being lazy.

The other participants in this tournament to determine the challenger to Sarah Kaufman’s 135 lb. title are Miesha Tate, Hitomi Akano, and Maiju Kujala. If Damm is out, who do you think will replace her in the tournament?

One New Yorker is out of UFC 118 in Boston, while a New Jersey native steps in! The NYBA Phil Baroni is out of his match on August 28 against 5-1 John Salter due to a collarbone injury. Replacing him is Dan Miller of New Jersey, or “Joisey” as the locals call it, out of the AMA Fight Club.

Dan Miller has lost his past three fights, but not without facing some of the top middleweight fighters in Chael Sonnen, Demian Maia and Michael Bisping. Miller battled them all to a decision when they met, and now the AMA fighter seeks redemption and a way back into the good graces of the UFC.

Both of the Miller brothers have picked up short notice fights in the past so this is familiar territory to Dan, and this could be his last chance to save his contract before the UFC looks at that record and terminates him. The match will be part of the untelevised undercard for UFC 118, which is headlined by Randy Couture VS James Toney.

Via MMAweekly

M-1 Global’s M-1 Selection 2010 Americas Semi-Final world tournament bouts have been finalized with the live event taking place August 7, 2010 at Bally’s Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Even bigger news is that Fedor Emelianenko will be attending as a special guest! Yes, that is right, the recently dethroned top ranked fighter, although not to Tim Sylvia, will be doing a special media session with journalists (and me too, somehow) and then an autograph session with the hordes of East coast fans who will flock to the event.

I attended the last two M-1 Global shows and they were pretty enjoyable. It is a rare thing to see a ring still used in MMA, and at the last show it caused a few snags, but the fights were still good with plenty of knockouts and submissions. UFC veteran and hometown boy Tom Gallichio makes his return along with TUF veteran Shane Primm, as well as some other local standouts and ATT fighters. It’s almost a Florida VS New Jersey card, so it will be interesting to see what kind of crowd this draws.

The semi-final round bouts feature rising American stars expecting to show spectacular performances in order to solidify a berth in the Finals on September 18, 2010. Tickets are priced from $35.00-$125.00 and are available to purchase through www.TicketMaster.com, but the Fedor event is FREE! For those unable to attend in person, free broadcast coverage of the entire 2010 M-1 Selection tournament will be available live to viewers worldwide on www.M-1global.com and selected affiliate partner sites.

See the tournament bracket after the jump with some familiar names, including UFC and TUF veterans!

Tournament fighters include:

Josh Bacallao and GeorgeSheppard Lightweight Division

Josh Thorpe and Jose Figueroa Lightweight Division

Tom Gallicchio and Aaron Meisner Welterweight Division

Leonard Bentley and Colin Schrader Welterweight Division

Shane Primm and Mike Geurin Middleweight Division

Tyson Jeffries and Plinio Cruz Middleweight Division

Robert Rodriguez and Daniel Viscaya Light Heavyweight Division

Byron Byrd and Sammy Collingwood Light Heavyweight Division

Mehdi Hassan and Pat Bennett Heavyweight Division

Andrei Kapylov and Kenny Garner Heavyweight Division

Coming up in a few weeks, TIm Sylvia returns to competition as he takes on “The Headhunter” Paul Buentello at “War on the Mainland“. We got an exclusive interview with the former UFC heavyweight champion as he prepares for this showdown that was years in the making!

When last we spoke to Big Tim… well, last time I did not speak with Tim, Bauzen did on my behalf and I showed up at the end to have a staredown with him. Now that it is months after Moosin and I have my voice back to do an interview, Tim and I discuss how he is training for this fight, as well as what he thought of his and Mariusz’s performance at the Moosin event (which I have a huge photo gallery of here).

We also talk about the heavyweight rankings and why Tim says that Fedor is still on top of the ladder, despite losing to Fabricio Werdum a few weeks ago in Strikeforce, then we get nerdy and talk some video games!

Photo courtesy of Zuffa... and that's how I dodge the bullet of using their stuff

Over on MAMMA-online.com, I read a piece about the UFC and Pirates. YARRR! No, not those kind of pirates sadly. Zuffa recently announced that it has served subpoenas on two streaming video websites, commanding them to reveal the identities of users who have uploaded video of live Pay-Per-View UFC events. The websites, Justin.tv and Ustream.tv, enable users to broadcast live streaming video to an unlimited online audience. Although originally developed to bring user-generated content to a large live audience, these sites have been exploited by some users to broadcast illegally uploaded content, including UFC events.

Just to give you an idea of how bad it is, on January 2, 2010, over 36,000 people watched a live streaming feed of the UFC 108 Pay-Per-View event that was uploaded from a single IP address. Less than two months later, on February 21, 2010, that same IP address was used to upload multiple live streaming feeds of the UFC 110 Pay-Per-View event, which was watched by over 78,000 non-paying users! Dana White added, in a press release from Zuffa, “I can’t wait to go after the thieves that are stealing our content. This is a fight we will not lose.”

It’s a good thing I don’t do any illegal activities on my site… except for the drug trafficking. Thank you, google ad sense! Some would argue that the pay-per-view model of business no longer works because of the internet, but laws were meant to protect big corporations from being undermined like this, despite whether or not we will agree with it. Some of us just can not afford to spend the cost of a PPV every few weeks, but do not want to give up being a fan and supporting the UFC product. I think just about anyone who reads this site would be guilty of watching an illegal stream or downloading an illegally uploaded fight somewhere online, so is the UFC in the right to go after the pirates or do you think it helps their business?

Via Paul Miles at MAMMA-online.com