FanHouse FedorEmelianenko

Imagine my surprise when I saw the face of Fedor Emelianenko atop a New York City taxi this weekend.

"Wow," I said to myself. "Maybe MMA in New York is more popular than I thought?"

Then imagine my even greater surprise when I read the bizarre question next to Fedor's photo:

"Do you know who I am?," it read. Ugh.

In the 13 months since his last fight, Tito Ortiz has said more times than I can count that he's close to signing a new contract to return to MMA with another organization. So take this with a grain of salt: Ortiz claims he's close to a new deal with Strikeforce, and he's already targeting an October return to fight Renato "Babalu" Sobral. He also says he has his eyes on a future fight with Fedor Emelianenko, and he says he won't return to the UFC as long as Dana White runs the company.

Last week, UFC President Dana White surprised a few people by saying that he'd like to put together a matchup between middleweight champion Anderson Silva and current Affliction middleweight Vitor Belfort.

The statement was surprising because White's been burned in the past announcing matchups that never happened and deals that fell through. Most recently, he did a verbal contract with Mirko Cro Cop prior to UFC 99, but the Croatian star bolted after one fight. Most famously, he had then-PRIDE fighter Wanderlei Silva enter the octagon at UFC 61 to announce a matchup with UFC superstar Chuck Liddell. But talks soon fizzled and White wasn't able to put the two together until after he bought PRIDE and acquired Silva's contract.

So what do those situations tell us about Belfort?

Update: Affliction Vice President, Tom Atencio, just informed FanHouse that he received an unexpected call from a member of Takanori Gomi's management team about reaching an agreement on a new contract that benefits both parties. Stay tuned.

Takanori Gomi won't be competing at "Affliction: Trilogy" after all. FanHouse has learned that Affliction Entertainment could not reach an agreement with the Japanese MMA star to fight on their upcoming show on August 1 in Anaheim, Calif. Affliction Entertainment Vice President, Tom Atencio, told FanHouse on Friday that after weeks of negotiation, the two sides couldn't agree on a contract. Gomi was offered a fight against Rafael Rivera.

After UFC 99, I wrote that Cain Velasquez looks like a future UFC heavyweight champion. I've heard some pushback on that from people who take a contrary view, saying Velasquez didn't look very good in the stand-up, and that he ate some hard punches from Cheick Kongo at the start of all three rounds of their fight.

I agree that Velasquez needs to work on his stand-up, and he definitely needs to learn better head movement so he doesn't get punched right on the button the way he did against Kongo. But I also think Velasquez showed a lot of heart in taking those punches from Kongo and managing to quickly take him down in all three rounds, and I think people are too quick to dismiss how impressive it is to win all three rounds against Kongo: In nine previous UFC fights, Kongo was 7-2, and the two losses were by split decision. No one has ever dominated Kongo in the Octagon the way Velasquez did. And that's why Velasquez is on my list of the Top 10 heavyweights in MMA, which is below.

Fedor Emelianenko and the folks at M-1 are taking a page out of the Dana White playbook, with a new Fedor video blog on the official M-1 YouTube channel. A second video is below.

One of the questions UFC President Dana White knows he's always going to get, everywhere he goes, is whether he'll sign the consensus best heavyweight in MMA, Fedor Emelianenko. But at a pre-UFC 99 question-and-answer session with UFC fans, White got a different question: Would he sign Fedor's next opponent, Josh Barnett?

Fedor Emelianenko is the best fighter in mixed martial arts, a fighter so dominant that he looks almost unbeatable. But one person thinks he can beat him: Jeff Monson.

Yes, Monson -- who is generally considered somewhere between the 10th and 20th best heavyweight in the world -- says he's just the man to end Fedor's reign atop the heavyweight division in MMA.

Takanori Gomi (30-5) will not be facing Brett Copper (9-4) at "Affliction: Trilogy" on August 1.

MMA Weekly reported early Thursday morning that the 165-pound catchweight bout was close to being finalized, but Affliction Entertainment VP, Tom Atencio, told FanHouse on Thursday that after brief consideration, the fight is not happening.