The Weekly Wrap: Jan. 17 - Jan. 23

Odds and Ends

• The producers of Spike TV’s "UFC Primetime" pivoted nicely off of the drama that closed last week's premiere episode, opening the second installment with comments from B.J. Penn in which he took issue with his depiction in episode one. The ever-quotable Penn wondered if UFC President Dana White was "asking for a slap" when he voiced concern last week that Penn was slacking in training for his fight with Georges St. Pierre on Jan. 31.

This week, Penn was shown training hard and delivering more quotes about how little St. Pierre knows about what he is capable of. Penn was also shown with family and his baby daughter. St. Pierre was joined by Greg Jackson teammates Nate Marquardt, Donald Cerrone and Keith Jardine for training in Montreal. MMAJunkie.com reported that Penn shut down an interview for "Primetime" this week out of frustration with a line of questioning, but that was not touched on during the show.

The second week of "UFC Primetime" drew 825,000 viewers in its 10 p.m. timeslot, a slight drop from the first-week number of 880,000 viewers, according to MMAPayout.con.

• Several reports this week said that WEC 40 is set for April 5th in Chicago and will be headlined by Miguel Torres vs. Brian Bowles for the bantamweight title.

• One week after news came that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Jeff Monson, the former UFC heavyweight was arrested Monday on a domestic violence charge. A North Carolina woman who dated Monson told police he did extensive damage to her house after a confrontation over his relationships with other women. A warrant was issued out of Washington for Monson's arrest after pictures appeared in ESPN The Magazine of him spray-painting an anarchy symbol on the state capital building. Monson was expected to turn himself in in Washington before he was incarcerated in North Carolina.

• The flyweight title was not awarded as expected in the main event, but three new champions were crowned on Jan. 22 at the most recent offering by the Palace Fighting Championships: PFC 12 "High Stakes" from Lemoore, Calif. The card streamed live on Sherdog.com, where Jeff Bedard used a North-South choke to wrest the bantamweight title from Shawn Klarcyk, UFC veteran Diego Saraiva used a rear-naked choke to take the featherweight belt from Jorge Evangelista and colorful veteran Olaf Alfonso defeated Jeremiah Metcalf via armbar to take the vacated PFC welterweight title. The card was originally slated to be headlined by a bout between Rambaa Somdet and Pat Runez to crown PFC's first 125-pound champion, but Somdet pulled out a few hours before the fight due to injury. The PFC returns with a combined boxing and MMA card on Feb. 6 featuring Bobby Lashley.