“He’ll put them out of business. They have no money. These guys have no money and they have no distribution. Four f---king people watch Showtime.” –- UFC President Dana White on Strikeforce during the UFC 101 pre-fight press conference.
“They work out who’s going to be the front guy, who works out the venue deals, who works out the production, and then they go and do a co-promotion. This happens every month in boxing.” –- Strikeforce head Scott Coker to Sherdog.com on co-promoting with M-1.
“It would validate all the hard work I’ve put in. I sacrificed a lot to get to this point. It would mean I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve surpassed someone I’ve always considered a legend.” -- Kenny Florian to Sherdog.com on Saturday's fight against B.J. Penn.
“I guess you get stuck with a stigma or whatever that you don’t train hard and then it just runs like wildfire between everybody. That’s just how it goes… No matter how good of shape I ever get in, until the day I die, I don’t think I’ll ever get the respect that I train hard.” -- B.J. Penn during the UFC 101 press conference.
“He’s got that right now. At one point Chuck Liddell had that. Guys have that aura. What I’m saying is, you gotta beat me in a fight. You can’t beat me with your aura.” -- Forrest Griffin on Anderson Silva during open workout.
“I think anyone who watched the fight knows who really won. I trained hard for this fight, and if I knew the decision would go that way, I’d have never come to Japan." -- Marlon Sandro on the scoring of his fight against Michihiro Omigawa at Sengoku.
“I’m ‘The Handler,’ not ‘The Footler.’ It’s something that I do train in, muay Thai, but it’s not something I specialize in.” -- Dan Hornbuckle on his head kick KO of Akihiro Gono in Sengoku.
“I’ve been carrying this whole thing with women’s mixed martial arts for a couple years, and that’s a lot. It’d be a great thing to win and hold that belt. But that means that load stays right where it’s at.” –- Gina Carano to The New York Times.
“I've got to be honest. The UFC just dwarfs what we're doing with boxing at this point.” –- Joe Hand, the longtime leader in selling boxing pay-per-view telecasts to bars and casinos around the country, to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He sold UFC 100 to 1,500 more bars than the record-smashing Floyd Mayweather vs. Oscar de la Hoya fight in 2007.
The Week Ahead
UFC 101 and WEC 42 fallout combine with the build-up to Strikeforce “Carano v. Cyborg” for an especially busy week.