The Weekly Wrap: July 24 - July 30

Odds and Ends

• Strikeforce announced this week it had signed Ryan Couture, the 27-year-old son of Randy Couture. Couture, a lightweight who is 5-1-1 as an amateur, will fight Arizona-based fighter Lucas Stark at the Strikeforce Challengers event on Aug. 13 in Phoenix. The fight will be Couture’s pro MMA debut. All of Couture’s wins to date have come by submission, while Stark, who is 2-4 in pro MMA, has lost three times by submission. It was not clear if the bout will be televised.

• One week after announcing the field for its one-night, 135-pound women’s tournament on Aug. 13, Strikeforce headed back to the drawing board to fill a vacancy. While the company was working to prevent it, it appears Brazilian Carina Damm could be pulled from the four-women field due to visa issues. The promotion has an unnamed replacement ready if Damm’s issues can’t be ironed out.

• Another female fight Strikeforce was thought to have on the drawing board for August -- Erin Toughill vs. Shana Olsen -- will also not be happening due to weight discrepancies. Toughill, who’s struggled to make 145 in the past, blogged that she had proposed a 150-pound catch-weight for the fight.

• Several reports indicated that fighters on the pair of Impact FC events held over the past two weeks in Australia have not received proper and/or timely payment. The promoters of the event -- Andrew McManus and Thomas Huggins -- are in a dispute over who was responsible to pay fighters. MMAWeekly.com reported that Karo Parisyan, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, Jesse Taylor, Jeff Monson, Brian Ebersole, Murilo Bustamante and Denis Kang are among those who have received partial payment.

• Lawyers for the parent company of the UFC served subpoenas to Justin.tv and Ustream.tv in an attempt to obtain the identities of users who have uploaded pay-per-events for live streaming. The UFC claimed in a press release that 36,000 people watched a pirated stream of UFC 108 in January and 78,000 people watched a stream of UFC 110 in February, and that both were uploaded from the same IP address. The company, on a mission to stamp out piracy of its content, announced that it has reached settlements with 500 different parties for unauthorized use of its content.

• The Canada-based Maximum Fighting Championships announced a new six-event contract to broadcast its events on HDNet. Antonio McKee vs. Luciano Azevedo will headline the next broadcast on Sept. 10. The league first partnered with HDNet in 2008.