FanHouse StephanBonnar

The UFC currently has four of its five champions sitting out with either injuries or illness, leading some to wonder whether the promotion has been cursed this fall. But Stephan Bonnar said this week on ESPN's MMA Live that it's not a curse, but a change of attitude within the UFC: According to Bonnar, the UFC brass has started showing more sympathy when its top fighters say they can't go.

It's safe to say that Forrest Griffin will have a job in the UFC for the remainder of his MMA career. The fighter who is largely credited for resurrecting the promotion as a result of his April 2005 fight against Stephan Bonnar on Spike TV should expect nothing less.

However, that doesn't mean Griffin, who is scheduled to face Anderson Silva at UFC 101 next month, is happy to see organizations like Affliction cease promoting events. In fact, the former UFC light heavyweight champion told FanHouse on Saturday that the demise of Affliction Entertainment really hit close to home.

Mark Coleman surprised a lot of people by defeating Stephan Bonnar at UFC 100, but he said afterward that he didn't surprise himself.

LAS VEGAS -- This is the UFC 100 live blog for light-heavyweight matchup between Stephan Bonnar and former UFC heavyweight champion Mark Coleman. The live blog is below.

In a wide-ranging interview with Dave Farra of Raw Vegas TV, former UFC heavyweight champion Mark Coleman talked about his upcoming fight with Stephan Bonnar at UFC 100, his thoughts on light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida, why he'd be a better fighter if head butts were allowed in MMA, and his desire to step into the Octagon with Kimbo Slice.

Above is Dana White's video blog for UFC 94, and the conversation at the 11:05 mark gives me a good opportunity to bring up just what an amazing performance we got on Saturday from Jon Jones, who defeated Stephan Bonnar by unanimous decision, improving his pro MMA record to 8-0.

Stephan Bonnar has a career record that pretty well tells you where he falls in the MMA light heavyweight rankings: He has 11 wins, but only one against a particularly noteworthy opponent, Keith Jardine. And he has four losses, against arguably the three best light heavyweights in the world: Rashad Evans, Lyoto Machida and Forrest Griffin (twice).

It's not an overstatement to say that when Forrest Griffin defeated Stephan Bonnar in the first Ultimate Fighter Finale, he changed the UFC forever. The fight was a slugfest that attracted huge numbers of new fans to the sport as part of the first live UFC card ever to air on basic cable, and it made Griffin the fan favorite that he still is to today.

But Griffin says he doesn't really care about the fight's historical significance.

"it was just a fight for me," Griffin said today on a call to promote his fight with Rashad Evans at UFC 92. "It was a hard fight, I was fortunate to win, and there's no point in me analyzing it any further."

Griffin, the UFC light heavyweight champ, has a simple attitude: He's focusing on getting ready to fight Evans, and he's not particularly interested in thinking about anything else. Asked today to discuss The Ultimate Fighter, Griffin said he doesn't give it a lot of thought, and asked to discuss the man he defeated to win the light heavyweight belt, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Griffin said, "I'm not fighting Quinton. I'm fighting Rashad."

Griffin said that defeating Bonnar -- and going 6-2 in the Octagon since then -- has made him famous, but he doesn't view that as anything special.

"It's crazy," Griffin said. "People want a lot of your time. I don't leave the house -- I go to the gym and the grocery store -- because if you're not out of the house people can't bother you."

Here's the latest installment of ESPN's MMA Live:

In a piece of good news right off the bat, the show starts off by telling us that ESPN will have the MMA Live guys on the scene in Las Vegas next weekend for UFC 91 to cover all the Randy Couture-Brock Lesnar action. That's a major sign that ESPN is serious about covering the biggest fights in mixed martial arts.