MMA Mma Rumors

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.

Dana White may have another big announcement up his sleeve.

The UFC president announced on Friday that he had resigned Tito Ortiz, booked Vitor Belfort vs. Rich Franklin for UFC 103, and signed a new television deal with ESPN UK. However, his biggest announcement may be yet to come.

It has been only one week since Affliction: Trilogy was canceled and the company's promotional arm closed up shop. One week. Seven days. Yet with the drama surrounding Fedor Emelianenko's will-he-or-won't-he saga, it seems like it's been an eternity.

In the time since then, huge contract offer numbers have been bandied about (the UFC never confirmed the offer's value, and Emelianenko's side denied any formal offer was made), Fedor traveled to and left the United States, and the two sides again were unable to meet in person.

In those seven days, nothing has changed. And that only serves to frustrate UFC President Dana White.

British welterweight Paul "Semtex" Daley is still in negotiations with a number of promotions and a deal with the UFC has not yet been finalized, contrary to the reports Wednesday of a four-fight deal.

Our latest MMA twitter mailbag ventures into the never-ending discussion of whether MMA and boxing are competitors, but we start with the bizarre hoax about former UFC star Kimo Leopoldo dying.

MMAUSA: Are you surprised so many media outlets fell for the Kimo Leopoldo hoax? Or is that just what the media is these days?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one. Based on what we know right now, the story started with this post at The Underground, claiming that Kimo Leopoldo died of a heart attack in Costa Rica. The story was picked up by a couple of Web sites, and Kimo Leopoldo dead became a popular search term in Google. Eventually, news outlets including TMZ, the New York Daily News, the Orange County Register and the TV station KTLA picked up the story as well.

Ultimate Chaos, a strange MMA event built around the massive main event of Bobby Lashley vs. Bob Sapp, turned out to be a fairly dull show that culminated with Lashley destroying Sapp with an easy first-round TKO.

Lashley, the former WWE star, and Sapp, the former Japanese kickboxing star, made for something of a freak show, and neither fighter looked particularly impressive. But Lashley was certainly the better fighter in the cage Saturday night.

Last week, UFC President Dana White surprised a few people by saying that he'd like to put together a matchup between middleweight champion Anderson Silva and current Affliction middleweight Vitor Belfort.

The statement was surprising because White's been burned in the past announcing matchups that never happened and deals that fell through. Most recently, he did a verbal contract with Mirko Cro Cop prior to UFC 99, but the Croatian star bolted after one fight. Most famously, he had then-PRIDE fighter Wanderlei Silva enter the octagon at UFC 61 to announce a matchup with UFC superstar Chuck Liddell. But talks soon fizzled and White wasn't able to put the two together until after he bought PRIDE and acquired Silva's contract.

So what do those situations tell us about Belfort?

The UFC has requested the date of November 21 for UFC 105 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, according to a calendar on the Nevada State Athletic Commission's website.

There's an unsanctioned fight Saturday night in Alabama between over-the-hill boxer Ray Mercer and former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, the kind of ridiculous fight that gives combat sports a bad name. But the fight just got even more ridiculous, because just two days beforehand, the promoters have changed it from a boxing match to an MMA fight.