FanHouse UFC92

Before UFC 91, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White predicted that the main event of Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture would garner 1.2 million pay-per-view buys and set a new record for his organization. A month later, White said, the December 27 UFC 92 show topped the pay-per-view buy rate of UFC 91.

And now White says he expects UFC 94 to exceed the pay-per-view buy rate of both UFC 91 and UFC 92.

Former UFC light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin will miss most or all of 2009 because of a hand injury he suffered in his UFC 92 loss to Rashad Evans, according to a report in The Sun.

The headline to the story says Griffin will miss "the whole of 2009," although the article says he could be back by autumn. Either way, that makes it a near certainty that the next UFC light heavyweight title fight will be between Evans and Rampage Jackson.

UFC light heavyweight Matt Hamill, who is coming off a second-round TKO win over Reese Andy at UFC 92, answered some questions from FanHouse this week. Via e-mail, we asked him about the UFC 92 fight, his future plans, whether his deafness affects his communication with his corner, and his thoughts on some of the big names in MMA.

You sustained a cut under your left eye against Reese Andy at UFC 92. How serious was that? Will it affect your training at all?
No, it was minor, it was actually some old scar tissue.

After the first round, your corner was getting on your case, yelling at you and swearing at you. Do you like that? Does that kind of approach motivate you to keep going? And how does being deaf affect how your corner communicates with you?
Duff (Holmes) and I have been training together for a long time. We communicate with our own form of sign language. Duff signs the first letter of each word as he says it and slips in some sign that he knows. I read his lips very well and we dont bring an interpreter into the Octagon so I can read his emotions too. He motivated me and I kicked it up in the second round.

On the second season of The Ultimate Fighter, Rashad Evans and Mike Whitehead had plenty of personal animosity in the house and had a fight in the Octagon. That was almost four years ago, but Whitehead made clear after Evans beat Forrest Griffin at UFC 92 that he still can't stand Evans:

"Forrest lost to a guy that I don't have a lot of respect for," Whitehead said. "I just hate the way that f**king Rashad goes out, just the way he carries himself, he's almost as bad as Tito [Ortiz] now. ... Kissing his glove and touching his d**k, that's not a good ambassador for our sport."

Despite getting knocked cold by Rampage Jackson at UFC 92, Wanderlei Silva was in good spirits afterward, telling Dave Farra of RawVegas.tv that he looks forward to getting back into the Octagon, hopefully at UFC 100 in July:

UFC President Dana White said last week that he's "trying to do something to make UFC 100 special." A big fight involving the Axe Murderer would be nice.

For Silva's part, he said he thinks fighting Chuck Liddell again would be interesting, and he also said he'd like to fight Rampage again a fourth time -- and maybe even a fifth.

Here's what UFC President Dana White did on the day of his organization's biggest event of the year, UFC 92:

Basically, he spent the day seeing how many people he could shock with his trick pen

UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar said before the Frank Mir-Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira fight at UFC 92 that he wanted Mir to win because he wants a rematch. Here's what Mir said about that:

Asked what he said to Lesnar after beating Nogueira, Mir replied, "Be careful what you wish for."

Mir told me a couple of weeks ago that he'll never lose to Lesnar, and he still exudes that confidence. I don't know who's going to win, but I do know that Mir-Lesnar II is a great fight.

Rashad Evans is the new UFC light heavyweight champion.

Evans beat Forrest Griffin by TKO with a dominant ground and pound display in the third round of tonight's main event of UFC 92, taking the title belt in the UFC's marquee weight class.

Griffin dominated the early part of the fight: In the first round, it was completely a stand-up battle, with Griffin doing a good job of using his superior height and length to land kicks to Evans' legs and body. In the second Evans landed a couple of solid punches, but for the most part Griffin wasn't hurt, and he continued to control the fight with his superior reach.

But in the third, Evans caught a kick, took Griffin down, and punished Griffin on the ground. Although Griffin got Evans into his guard, Evans was doing significant damage when the fighters were on the canvas, and Evans eventually pounded Griffin out.

All the undercard fights are over, and it's time for the UFC 92 main event: Forrest Griffin vs. Rashad Evans for the UFC light heavyweight title.

The Griffin vs. Evans fight starts around midnight Eastern. The live blog begins below.

Frank Mir did something tonight at UFC 92 that no one has ever done before, stopping interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in a dominant TKO, and setting up a rematch with Brock Lesnar in 2009 that will determine who the true UFC heavyweight champion is.

Nogueira had never been finished in his long and impressive career, even going the distance twice with the great Fedor Emelianenko. But Mir did it tonight, dominating Nogueira to an even greater extent than Fedor ever did.

Now Mir will take on Lesnar, the man he defeated with a first-round submission in February. Lesnar will head into that fight as the betting favorite, but no one can count Mir out.

Mir improves his record to 12-3. Nogueira, one of the legends of the sport, falls to 31-5-1.