Photo by Sherdog.com
Was Matt Brown robbed?
"Y'all don't even know. I got a bunch of Asian girls waiting for me. Damn! I was going to see which one I was going to take with me on a little getaway. Fly first class, talk about how I'm going to be UFC champion again. Get a private hut somewhere. All that just shattered cause somebody got their damn knee scoped." -- Quinton Jackson at the post-UFC 96 press conference after being asked to fight Rashad Evans in two months because of Frank Mir’s knee injury.
“I don’t know. I’ve just got that feeling. Just listening to him when we were in the ring talking he was kind of like, ‘Yeah man you’re lucky I wasn’t 100 percent’ and he started making excuses and I was thinking like it sounds like an excuse-fest is about to happen, so I know he ain’t going to take no fight with me. He’s making excuses now.” -- Rashad Evans on Quinton Jackson to Sherdog Radio Network's "Beatdown" show before the announcement was made that he will face Lyoto Machida, not Jackson, on May 23.
“I screwed up. There’s not much to say. I screwed up the fight… I feel really bad. Fighters deserve the best. Instead of talking about Mr. Brown’s great win people are talking about a ref.” -- referee Yves Lavigne to Aroundtheoctagon.com about his controversial officiating in the Matt Brown vs. Pete Sell fight at UFC 96.
“He wasn’t doing anything, and the ref wouldn’t stand it up, of course, because [Aoki’s] world is on the ground. I was getting frustrated. Just sitting there wasn’t any fun for me. I was extremely bored.” -- David Gardner to Sherdog.com about why he waved “Hello” to the crowd before getting snatched in a Shinya Aoki rear-naked choke at Dream 7.
“I was wondering what he was doing when he raised his hand, but when I heard him say, ‘Hello Japan!’ I thought, ‘No way! What’s with this guy? He felt so relaxed, so I knew he was making jokes. Maybe he thought he was on vacation here in Japan, so I punished him.” -- Shinya Aoki on the Gardner fight at a post-fight press conference.
“SHAMROCK: My son’s five years younger than Nick. If he acted like [Diaz] I used to send him to his room, take away his allowance. DIAZ: Where’s he at? I’ll fight him. SHAMROCK: He’s in college. You wouldn’t know.” -- Frank Shamrock and Nick Diaz, who fight April 11, in some verbal volleying at a Strikeforce press conference.
“This is going to be the new MMA 2.0. We’re starting over.” -- Showtime executive Ken Hershman at press conference for Strikeforce’s first card on the network on April 11.
“Very happy. I thought I was going to lose my job but, uh, I guess not.” -- Kendall Grove following his knockout of Jason Day at UFC 96.
“To my best friend in the world you’ll be forever missed, but always remembered.” -- Tapout’s Dan “Punkass” Caldwell in his blog post about the death of Charles “Mask” Lewis.
“(Mixed martial arts) wasn’t legal at the time, but yet still we were believing in it back when nobody else was even paying attention. How did you know Tapout was going to take off, even doing what we did? Sometimes you just believe. You know what I’m saying? And regardless of any outside circumstances, you choose to believe, believe in your vision. I go, ‘I got this thing inside, I believe it and I can see it. And I’m just going to go with it.’” -- Charles “Mask” Lewis in his final interview to Dub magazine the day before his death.
A relatively uneventful week before an incredibly busy five-week slate in the sport that will include cards from Sengoku, Roy Jones Jr. promotions, the UFC, WEC, Dream, Strikeforce and Bellator Fighting Championships.