"I can tell you my game plan. My game plan is to beat Fedor. I want to be the [Buster] Douglas of MMA. Everybody was scared to fight Fedor and everybody was frozen. Against Fedor, they didn't believe it could be done, like Douglas when he went against Tyson. I want to be the first one to beat Fedor." -- Andrei Arlovski to Sherdog.com.
"You can jump around beating your chest and praising yourself, but everything can be taken away at any moment. I believe that people who behave like that are deceiving themselves." -- Fedor Emelianenko in remarks on Fox Sports Net’s "The Baddest Man on the Planet" documentary.
"I think that the love for boxing is so evident in Andrei, so what do you do? I'd be lying if I told you it didn't bug me when he comes out here and trains two weeks at a time with Freddie and I don't get to see him. I want to pull my hair out. But I'm out here [now] and we're always working on his ground game and transitions. His ground game is actually fine. Can it be improved? Sure, we can all be improved. I constantly remind him of that world champion in the UFC that took [Tim] Sylvia's leg home with him." -- Andrei Arlovski's jiu-jitsu coach, Dino Costeas, to Sherdog.com.
"I can take a damn shot. It's frustrating. This is the most frustrating loss of my life ever. Ever." -- Mark Coleman to UFC.com following loss to Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, protesting the referee’s stoppage.
"My parents lived in a bus before they lived in the house they lived in right now. [They were] hard workers, they saved their money… everything our family has today is because we work as hard as we possibly can. All you can do is kick the cameras out. They got kicked out for a while, but they're trying to make amends." -- B.J. Penn on Tapout radio discussing “UFC Primetime.”
"I think if he beats St. Pierre, that's probably his last fight in a while… I don't think B.J.'s going to come back to (1)55 regardless, win or lose." -- former Penn trainee and UFC lightweight Joe Lauzon to Sherdog.com radio on Penn.
"In reviewing that fight, I felt I was in great shape and I was doing well. I just made one mistake. I'm going to be a little more cautious and not make that same mistake twice. It was just a reminder this sport is for real, and I'm not invincible, so I've got to use it to motivate myself and keep improving because that's what this sport's about." -- Urijah Faber to Sherdog.com about his loss to Mike Brown in November.
"There's a lot riding on this fight… there's a lot of pressure, a lot of stuff going on. It's hard being in the WEC because I fight all these tough guys. I fight the toughest guys that you haven't heard of, the guys that aren't mainstream. So there's a lot of pressure on me. If I don't beat these guys, if I don't beat them in glorious fashion, then it doesn't say too much about me." -- WEC lightweight champion Jamie Varner to Sherdog.com's "Beatdown" radio show on his title fight Sunday night on Versus against Donald Cerrone.
"I remember dying at the hospital on that one. I was knocking over the gurney, throwing up blood on the floor, and then I had the most peaceful feeling I've ever had in my life. I woke up from the coma 2 1/2 weeks later, though." -- Cerrone to the Associated Press about a four-wheeler accident that broke his ribs and mangled his insides.
"We want to inspire athletes to train. Obviously, MMA athletes are some of the best conditioned in the world, so it made sense to include Kimbo." -- Derek Kent, Nike's United States media relations director, to The New York Times about why the company featured Kimbo Slice in a television ad last year alongside NFL player LaDainian Tomlinson.
“Ultimate fighting’s supporters also argue that at a time when funds are hard to come by, the state would earn a percentage of the big money from these spectacles, which can cost $200 to almost $400 a ticket. But it would be – literally -- blood money. The rise of ultimate fighting, which is becoming a staple of cable television, is a tribute to the large amounts of money to be made -- and to the nation’s bizarre double standard about violence and sex.” -- The New York Times editorial board in a piece published this week about the push to legalize MMA in the Empire State.
"He had a surprised look on his face and he said, 'I'm dead, I'm dead. I love you mom.' And then he fell." -- Gwen Moore, mother of the late heavyweight fighter Justin Eilers, recounting his last moments during court testimony about her son's shooting death on Christmas day in Idaho.
The Week Ahead
A full slate of fallout from the Affliction and the WEC cards will be mashed together with one of the biggest run-ups to a fight in UFC history as the final episode of “Primetime” special airs before the St. Pierre vs. Penn fight.