The Japanese sports website SportsNavi featured an interview today with judo god Hidehiko Yoshida. Nothing major in the interview, mostly a recap of Sengoku’s 2008 events and Yoshida’s fights against Josh Barnett and Maurice Smith. Still no opponent named for the New Year’s show, so for now Yoshida is still matched up with …

From the UFC’s YouTube channel:

Via Suki MMA:
Sakuraba showed up at his Dynamite! press conference in costume as “Shocker”. According to Suki, “Shocker is a character in a famous sci-fi comic book “Kamen Rider.” We’ll take her word for it, but the picture is great. Sakuraba basically rules…Tamura looks bummed that he didn’t think to roll up …

The rumor making the rounds at this hour is that Affliction’s “Day of Reckoning” event will air live on Showtime instead of PPV. Word on the street is that the event will be joint promotional venture between Affliction, Golden Boy and Showtime. The preliminary fights are still scheduled to air on HD Net. …

The New York Times opines on Lesnar/Couture:

A classic matchup of youth versus experience will be on display Saturday when Brock Lesnar faces Randy Couture for the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title in Las Vegas. But the fight also represents a generational shift for both mixed martial arts and amateur wrestling.
Couture, 45, is the crafty mixed …

The UK newspaper The Daily Star reports on Ricky Hatton’s plans for the weekend–not *next* weekend, when he’ll be fighting Paulie Malignaggi at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas but *this* weekend:

Hatton will be among the sell-out crowd at the MGM Grand to watch the most eagerly-awaited Ultimate Fighting Champion bout for years.
Randy …

Here’s a promo video for the K-1/DREAM Dynamite! New Years’ Eve show. Probably won’t make much sense unless you’re a Japanese fight sport geek, but its pretty much awesome. Only two MMA matches announced for the card so far, but both are killer–the Sakuraba/Tamura fight might be coming a few years too late …

Not sure what happens next, but Showtime won’t be auctioning off EliteXC’s assets after all:
Showtime has halted plans for a public auction of ProElite assets.
The auction was scheduled for Monday, at which time Showtime was to sell ProElite’s remaining assets, including fighter contracts. However, Showtime in a statement today indicated that it has, at least …

We’ll be giving you live coverage of the UFC 91 weigh in starting right around 4 PM Pacific….
ESPN Live coverage has Stephan Bonnar and Frank Mir in the house. Mir sheepishly admits that he’s never had to cut weight, and that if he did “with his height and build it wouldn’t go very well”. …

The financial website MarketWatch.com (owned by Dow Jones, who owns the Wall Street Journal) has a profile of the UFC complete with video:

Cagey strategy delivers punch for UFC @ MarketWatch