FanHouse UFC83

At UFC 83, Kalib Starnes ran away from Nate Quarry so much that the fans went from cheering him to booing him over the course of 15 minutes, and this week he has become the laughingstock of mixed martial arts (video includes Starnes swearing):

Now Starnes, whose contract with UFC has been terminated, is trying his best to recover from the PR disaster of the way he fought -- or refused to fight. He first gave a brief interview to Mike Chiappetta of NBC Sports in which he sounded defiant and called criticism of him "outrageous," but he later backed down and released a statement that began with this:

"I would like to begin by saying that I was very happy to fight in Montreal, and that I trained really hard for my fight. I know that there were many people, including myself, who were disappointed with my performance, and I would like to apologize to my coaches, trainers and the fans for what happened. It was by far the worst fight of my career."

Starnes is right to apologize, but then he goes on to criticize the "extremely biased articles and commentary" about him. The truth is, the articles and commentary aren't Starnes' problem. The people who watched the fight know what they saw, and what they saw was ugly.

This video, which has been viewed more than 50,000 times on YouTube, shows why Kalib Starnes is the laughingstock of mixed martial arts after his pathetic performance at UFC 83, when he spent 15 minutes running away from Nate Quarry. (Warning, some offensive language at the end):

Now UFC President Dana White has severed ties with Starnes, although there's some question of whether he resigned or was fired. White says:

"I don't care if Starnes says we cut him, or he asked to be let go - at the end of the day if you're a professional fighter, and you are fighting in the UFC in front of your hometown crowd, you have to show up to fight."

There are some rumors that Starnes is happy to be out of UFC and that he wants to sign with another promotion, but why on earth would any promotion want him now? Starnes made a fool of himself on Saturday and alienated MMA fans, and he has a long way to go to repair his image.

The burly bald guy you see in the above photo is mixed martial arts referee Dan Miragliotta. As UFC fans know, Miragliotta is an enormous man (6-foot-4, 296 pounds) who has no trouble with the physically strenuous job of separating two fighters. Clearly, he is not someone you want to mess with.

And yet mess with Miragliotta is exactly what a fan at UFC 83 did.

Mr. Sunshine reports that a fan at the Bell Centre in Montreal jumped over a barrier and charged toward the Octagon, where he crossed paths with Miragliotta -- who promptly put him in a rear-naked choke. The photo you see is the aftermath, as Miragliotta and security personnel check on the fan.

Miragliotta told Mr. Sunshine via e-mail, "I didn't want to hurt the guy so I was just going to put him to sleep and then help get him out of there before he hurt someone or himself." Well done, sir.

The single most impressive thing anyone did in the Octagon at UFC 83 last night was the way Rich Franklin spun out of a Travis Lutter arm bar. Franklin looked for a moment like he was going to have to tap out, but he worked his way out of it and had an excellent performance. He talked about beating Lutter in this video, but he also said something else that's interesting:

Franklin is possibly the second-best middleweight in UFC, but he gave a very frank, candid assessment of whether he deserves a shot at the best middleweight, champion Anderson Silva.

"I'm sure they're not going to put me in another title fight," Franklin said. "At this point, Silva's beaten me twice. So would I fight him again? Yeah. Do I see a point in it? I don't know."

That's especially refreshing considering the way Lutter disparaged Silva last week. It's nice to hear Franklin acknowledge that right now, there's Silva and there's everyone else.

Of course, that raises an interesting dilemma for UFC: What do you do when you have a fighter who's that much better than everyone else? I'd like to see Silva fight Georges St-Pierre at 180 pounds, but if that doesn't happen, Silva could be so dominant that he makes the UFC middleweight division boring.

Georges St-Pierre beat Matt Serra for the UFC welterweight title at UFC 83 tonight, thrilling his hometown fans in Montreal with a dominant performance to avenge his knockout loss in 2007.

St-Pierre controlled the fight throughout and won by a second round TKO. Early on he effectively went for takedowns, and as the fight went on he increasingly landed solid strikes. The referee stopped the fight late in the second when they were on the ground and Serra had no answer for St-Pierre's strikes.

Serra entered the Octagon as the champion, although St-Pierre was technically the interim champion because Serra had been out of commission with a back injury. There is now no doubt; St-Pierre is the one and only champion of the welterweight division. Some will also consider him the best fighter in the sport of MMA regardless of weight class.

The crowd was a huge factor in the first UFC card ever in Canada; we noted the crowd as we live blogged both the main event and the undercard.

St-Pierre improves his professional mixed martial arts record to 16-2; Serra falls to 9-5.

UPDATE: UFC 83: Georges-St. Pierre Beats Matt Serra for Welterweight Championship

Welcome to the FanHouse live blog of the UFC 83 main event, featuring round-by-round and minute-by-minute updates of the Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Serra welterweight title fight.

The undercard is over and the Serra vs. GSP main event will start a little after midnight Eastern. In the undercard, Rich Franklin beat Travis Lutter, Michael Bisping beat Charles McCarthy, Mac Danzig beat Mark Bocek and Nate Quarry beat Kalib Starnes.

Live, round-by-round updates of the Serra vs. St-Pierre main event begin after the jump.

This is the front page of today's edition of the Montreal newspaper La Presse.

With the French Canadian mixed martial arts star Georges St-Pierre headlining UFC 83 in Montreal today, the UFC is calling this a major opportunity to expand the sport north of the border. And it does seem to be catching on: The Bell Centre sold out quickly, and that's St-Pierre in the upper right corner of the front page of the paper. How many American papers have ever had an MMA fighter on their front page?

But it's also important to remember that these things are all relative, and that UFC doesn't get anywhere close to the attention of the Montreal Canadiens, as you can see on that front page. (Another major paper in Montreal gives major front-page play to the Canadiens but none at all to UFC.)

My friend Picard, the assistant program director at the Montreal sports radio station The Team 990, tells me, "the UFC up here is quite a huge deal. There's been a great buzz about it amongst the fight crowd and I think that this being the event city that it is, it's even bigger." But he adds, "the hype over the Canadiens is at least 50 times greater than that for the UFC."

We'll be live blogging UFC 83 here at FanHouse.

With UFC 83 coming up Saturday night, we've seemingly analyzed every angle of the Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Serra main event. But St-Pierre says something interesting here about his loss to Serra the first time they fought:

"The loss that I had against Matt Serra was the best thing that ever happened to me," St-Pierre said. "I lost that fight because of myself. The punch came, caught me right on a good spot at the right time, I didn't block it, my hand wasn't there to block it, my mistake."

St-Pierre says he's emerged as a better fighter because he learned from that mistake, but I have my doubts that he's really any better because of that loss. Yes, he's had two impressive wins since that loss, but almost all of his wins before that loss were impressive, too.

I have a feeling that St-Pierre feels like he has to tell himself that there was some kind of upside to letting his guard down against Serra. But I don't think that's the truth.

We'll be live blogging UFC 83 here at FanHouse.

As he prepares to fight Matt Serra for the welterweight championship before a hometown crowd at UFC 83, Montreal native Georges St-Pierre is doing something refreshing: He's admitting that he's nervous about it. The Montreal Gazette reports that St-Pierre had this to say yesterday:

"It's a day I've been waiting for for a long time, a historic day. It's the best training camp I've ever had. I've trained so hard, and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. ...I'm scared. I'm very nervous. I have butterflies, but I have to make my butterflies fly in formation."

St-Pierre's fans don't seem the least bit nervous; they all seem to think that he's got this fight in the bag. But it's only natural for St-Pierre, fighting in front of the biggest crowd in UFC history, a crowd that will be almost unanimously in his corner, has some butterflies. I like the fact that he acknowledges them.

The UFC welterweight title will be on the line when Georges St-Pierre takes on Matt Serra at UFC 83. Serra won the first time they fought, but it's hard to find anyone who thinks he'll win again.

There are two fighters in MMA, St-Pierre and UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, who have an aura of invincibility around them, and who are generally considered the two best in the sport. Dave Doyle of Yahoo compiles a poll each month of the best pound-for-pound MMA fighters in the world, and in the most recent poll, only two fighters got first-place votes, Silva, who ranked No. 1, and St-Pierre, ranked No. 2. People treat those two like they're unbeatable.

But they're not, and you can't blame Serra that he's growing increasingly annoyed with each passing day that no one gives him a chance. The way people talk about St-Pierre vs. Serra, it's almost as if we're getting ready for a rematch of Silva and Daiju Takase.

Takase, for those who don't know, is the mediocre fighter with the 7-11-1 career record who somehow, inexplicably, beat Silva in 2003. It was a result that made no sense, and if Takase and Silva ever fought again, well, let's just say it wouldn't be pretty for Takase.

Matt Serra, however, is no Daiju Takase. I don't think Serra is going to beat St.-Pierre Saturday night, but I don't think it's impossible, either. And as we get closer to the fight and as virtually everyone says Serra has no shot, I find myself more inclined to root for Serra, the champion no one gives a chance.