News and notes from around the MMA world …

- Where does Matt Hughes go from here?

- Thales Laites is out of UFC 81 because of injury.

- Sam Caplan predicts his breakout stars for 2008.

- Adam Swift chooses his 2007 awards and summarizes 2007’s power players.

- Tank Abbott vs. Kimbo Slice is on for February.

- What’s next Mirko Cro Cop?

- Dave Meltzer recaps the business of 2007 and and foretells the business of 2008.

- How well do you know MMA? (I scored 7 out of 10. If you take the quiz, let me know your score in the comments section.)

- Guess who’s back, back again?

- It looks like Diego Sanchez is staying at welterweight.

- Look at how they are building up Brock Lesnar.

Talking Points

Two big MMA names are on prime time network television, and there’s not much buzz about it. Tito Ortiz is one of the contestants on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice and Gina Carano is a gladiator on American Gladiators. I missed the first episode of Celebrity Apprentice because of DVR difficulties, but I’ll be watching it from here on out. Based on previous episodes I’ve seen of the show, this is tailor made for Ortiz and he should do well. As for American Gladiators, based on the Sunday Night premiere (I haven’t watched Monday’s show yet), Carano isn’t really show cased and doesn’t stand out, but she is the prettiest of the female gladiators (though really, that’s not saying much). I’m interested to see how she does because by being natural looking, she’s not memorable right off the bat.

If you get the chance, make sure you check out the UFC 81 site that I linked above. There’s a trailer where they show Brock Lesnar with his WWE belt and in the hype video for Mir and Lesnar, they even talk about his pro wrestling background. I think it’s great that the WWE allowed the UFC to use the footage, and let’s face it, it probably helps WWE just as much as it does UFC to have WWE footage on UFC TV. I especially liked it when Lesnar called Mir, Frank Mur.

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