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What’s up everyone? Still in New York City, but found a little time tonight to catch up on what’s been going on in the world of mixed martial arts the past two days. The short answer is not much, but I’ll dump a bunch of links below in case you missed any of the news.

Strikeforce/CBS Standing Their Ground on April 17 | Sherdog

Heavyweight division crippled by co-promotional demands | SI.com’s Ben Fowlkes

Dana White and Bob Arum are BFF’s now! | WKR

Liddell’s fiercest opponent may be himself | Kevin Iole

Hong Man Choi is Frankenstein | Bloody Elbow

Mayweather Jr.: White knew nothing about combat sports before he met my uncle | Cagewriter

James Toney Calls Out UFC Champ Brock Lesnar as Freddie Roach Says the UFC is “Using” Toney | Bloody Elbow

Chuck Liddell talks about his naked workout video on Jimmy Kimmel Live | YouTube

Alistair Overeem Has No Problem Kicking a Little Girl | CagePotato

Josh Barnett will probably fight Mighty Mo at DREAM.13 | Josh Gross

Frank Mir’s WEC status uncertain, hopes to take part in future broadcasts | MMA Junkie

UFC invades New York City for UFC 111 special viewing party at Radio City Music Hall (saw that today) | MMA Junkie

“UFC Primetime: St-Pierre vs. Hardy” highest rated “Countdown” show ever | MMA Junkie

By the way, New York City is pretty badass. We explored Manhattan today and saw most of the major landmarks and locations like Times Square, Ground Zero and Central Park. It’s been a culture shock for me coming from an average-size town in Florida, but well worth the trip. You should make it here at least once in your lifetime if you’ve never been. If nothing else, come for the pizza. The pizza I ate tonight was freakin’ awesome…the bum diarrhea in the subway, not so much.

Update: A couple more stories that popped up this morning…

Chuck Liddell vs. Rich Franklin reportedly headlining UFC Fight Night 22 on April 17 in Nashville (Strikeforce counter), Tito out of UFC 115 fight against Chuck for unknown reasons | Fighters Only Mag I’ll try to do a post on this later tonight…

War Machine is selling his kidney on Ebay, Only $50,000! | MiddleEasy

I mentioned a couple weeks back I would be taking a trip to New York City. We were supposed to go two weeks ago today, but we ended up rescheduling it for this weekend because of that big blizzard that hit the northeast. Our flight leaves this evening, and I still have to pack and drive two hours to the airport, so I won’t be posting anymore today. I’m taking my laptop, but being this as close to as a vacation as I’m going to get I probably won’t be posting much, if any, until Monday when I return. I’ll keep my eye on things and if any major stories break, I’ll try to do something quick on it. Otherwise, I’ll probably just post links to stuff on Twitter when I get a chance. The news ticker will continue to run without interruption as well.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

If you thought WEC 47’s ratings were disappointing, wait till you see the estimates for UFC 110’s pay-per-view buy rate. From Dave Meltzer via Fight Opinion:

I don’t have a number of buys, but based on trending data which has historically been pretty accurate, it could be in the 215,000 to 240,000 range, basically along the lines of the tape-delayed foreign shows. This was foreign, but wasn’t tape delayed. One cable industry source gave an estimate of 215,000.

Ouch, not a good day at Zuffa headquarters.

I’m actually quite surprised by the low number. It didn’t have any established UFC superstars on the card unless you want to throw Michael Bisping in that category, but it did have Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Cain Velasquez and hardcore fan favorite Wanderlei Silva in the headlining slots. Not a recipe for big numbers, but I figured it would have hit somewhere in the 350,000-400,000 range, not question the floor for a UFC pay-per-view which previously stood somewhere around 300,000 buys. Apparently these guys aren’t as popular as we like to think amongst the casuals, or maybe the fact that UFC 110 took place only two short weeks after UFC 109 dissuaded people from buying it. I don’t know, but the UFC has to be looking forward to their big UFC 111 card with GSP and Frank Mir to help regain some of the momentum they lost over the past few months.

Image via Sherdog

…For UFC 111 at least.

The hottest ticket in New Jersey just got hotter, as it has been announced that Playboy cover model and UFC All-Access host Rachelle Leah will be returning to her old gig as Octagon Girl for one night only on Saturday, March 27th at UFC 111 in Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center.

I don’t think there will be any complaints about that.

Fanhouse posted a video today of GSP from late last year talking about he’s changed and improved as a fighter since his win over Thiago Alves at UFC 111. As always, GSP has a unique take on how he approaches the sport.

EA has been busy showing off the progress they’ve made on their upcoming EA Sports MMA title at the Game Developers Conference. Here’s a quick rundown of the latest details.

• Total Strike Control: Similar to Fight Night Round 4, the game’s entire striking system will be controlled by the right analog stick, but for those of us who aren’t in love with that idea, the striking controls can be remapped to the controller’s face buttons.
• Controller’s rumble technology will be used to tip off player when opponent is preparing to attempt grappling transition
• Three separate health meters for head, torso and legs with appropriate damage modeling, won’t be seen in the HUD
• Stamina meter which replenishes itself, max stamina will gradually decrease as the fight wears on, will be seen in the HUD
• Hexagon and circle cages and  square rings will be featured as seen in the latest batch of screenshots
• Three rule set options: Unified rules, Strikeforce rules (no elbows on the ground), Japanese rules (foot stomps!)
• Flashy ring entrances complete with their own music and walk down the ramp
• Primary attributes: stand up, clinch, ground, submission, and health, focus on one specific fight style
• Unique fighter specific fighting stances and styles as seen with Nick Diaz and Cung Le in the latest screenshots
• Jimmy Lennon Jr. ring announcer, Big John McCarthy referee

If you missed it, here’s the latest batch of screenshots and an interview with EA Sports MMA’s Randy Chase.

With clear evidence that the cut sustained by Stephan Bonnar in his fight against Krzystztof Soszynski at UFC 110 was caused by an accidental headbutt, it seemed like a no-brainer for the Combat Sports Authority of NSW to overturn the victory the ref awarded to K-Sos. Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t.

The Combat Sports Authority of New South Wales, which was tasked with regulating the February event in Sydeny, Australia, ruled this past Tuesday that the official result ruling the fight a TKO win in favor of Soszynski stands.

“A review was held … and the Combat Sports Authority of NSW did not seek to interfere with the referee’s decision,” wrote Craig Waller, Executive Director of the Combat Sports Authority of New South Wales, in an email sent to MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) late Tuesday night.

It’s baffling how an athletic commission even with smoking gun evidence can refuse to make the right call in such a situation, but unfortunately it’s what we’ve come to expect with these regulatory bodies. It just sucks for Bonnar who now has an official L on his record he doesn’t deserve. He’s disappointed, but believes the UFC will at least give him an immediate rematch.

“It was obviously a battle between me and [the NSW commission], but as far as the fight, Dana White’s a fair guy, and I’m pretty confident we’ll have that rematch soon,” Bonnar told MMAjunkie.com.

Rumor has it the rematch will go down on June 19 at the TUF 11 Finale in Las Vegas. At least they have instant replay there in case lightening somehow strikes twice.

The EA Sports MMA team has released a bunch of sweet new screenshots for their upcoming title. For the first time you’ll see Nick Diaz, Cung Le and Scott Smith with their signature fighting styles along the different venues and a quick look at Bobby Lashley’s ring entrance. We should be getting some new gameplay footage soon too so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Check out more pics at the official EA Sports MMA website.

“If they think I’m going to go in there and get choked out or lay down and get my armbarred and all that, they got another thing coming to ‘em, you know what I’m saying? Like I said, yeah, you’re right, MMA is not like boxing because boxing is tougher, you know what I’m saying? I look at it like this, if a guy get in there and try to take me to the ground, he might see his head go into orbit. The head is going into orbit, for real. These guys in MMA, they good wrestlers and good grapplers and good kickers, like girls, but, you know, when it comes to throwing them blows, they ain’t got a chance in hell, you know what I’m saying? Then they say I don’t got a chance if I go to the floor. Hey, the only way you gonna know is if you tune in and watch. And that’s what I want you to do. Pay your $54.95, come see James Toney. If you hate me, come see me try to get beat, if you love me, you enjoy the ride, have a good time and eat your popcorn…Randy Couture, he respects my game like I respect his game. He’s the best at what he do in his sport; I’m the best at what I do in my sport. We gonna see who has the better style and everybody know it’s James Toney. If he tries to throw blow for blow with me, he definitely gonna get knocked out. That’s a given, you know what I’m saying? If he tries to take me to the ground, it ain’t going to be easy, you know what I’m saying? He’s still gonna get knocked out. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation for him.”

—James Toney telling Fight Hype he’ll knock out Randy Couture wherever the fight goes

I’m not gonna lie, I couldn’t care less about James Toney fighting in the UFC (a boxer in their prime like Pacquiao, yes, Toney, no) and damn sure wouldn’t pay $55 just to see him, but if he fights Couture, it will be kind of entertaining to see what happens if Couture manages to put him in his clinch and dump him on the mat. Something tells me if that happens, it won’t be Couture who gets knocked out.

What do you think? Is Couture the right opponent for Toney? Would Toney knock him out?