The UFC is finally going home; on Saturday night in Rio, the organization will host only its second major event in the birthplace of MMA. It’s been over seventy years since Helio Gracie put the wheels in motion when he challenged all comers in the pages of local papers, thank you Mr. Gracie for the greatest show on earth!

The main event could have cured the most stubborn case of insomnia and the card lacked big names, but the UFC’s second visit to Germany was packed with fights to remember.

Say what you will about some of the judging at UFC 131 (and I say some of it was pretty dire), but you have to give props to new Vancouver Athletic Commission boss Jonathan Tweedale for standing up for his guys.

Wha? There’s an event happening at Roger Arena this weekend? Who’s playing who? …Oh! There’s a UFC event in town this weekend! Why didn’t anyone tell us? Okay, so this might not be the highest profile UFC pay-per-view in history. In fact, it may well rank among the most yawnworthy in some time, at least for the casual fan. But there are some hidden gems in this fight card that will make snapping up a last minute ticket well worth the effort.

Even if you don’t have a ticket to this weekend’s Vancouver UFC 131 pay-per-view event, you can still get up close and personal with your favourite UFC fighters.

The Tactix Gym on Hornby St. was abuzz with the sound of clicking cameras and the primal roars of fighters as they hit mitts at the UFC open workout this afternoon. While the impressive facility was by no means packed to rafters with eager fans and busy hacks, a healthy mixture of tension and excitement filled the air as the fighters were put through their paces.

The UFC is back in Canada for the second time in less than two months and could cap off a historical weekend of sport in Vancouver providing the Canucks do the business!

So it’s here again, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is landing in Vancouver this week. Which means the streets will run red with blood, gangs will steal our daughters, hooligans will go on drunken rampages that last for six days, and our kids will learn the fine art of the switchblade. At least, that was the line of BS fed to the city prior to the first UFC excursion here last year by councillors Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman.

Not too many fighters have had a more emphatic start to their UFC career than Pablo Garza. The Scarecrow has won knockout and submission of the night respectively in his first two bouts in the infant Featherweight division.

No fight fan could have asked for a better start to 2011 than UFC 125. For those whose memory of the festive season is a little hazy this two-disc set is the perfect way to re-live one of the best title bouts in history.

Well fight fans, UFC 129 is almost upon us, and never has there been a stronger indication of MMA’s status in Canada. Not only will the Rogers Arena stage the biggest gate in MMA history, two Canadians are competing for world titles, with a further five fighting on the main card.

I’ll be your huckleberry – I’m going to come right out and say what all of you people are secretly admitting to yourselves but refuse to say publicly: head shots are terrific. They are to hockey as fifteen-car pileups are to NASCAR and helmet to helmet spine rattlers are to football. A head shot can be a thing of beauty. It can educate and inspire. It can rally a team, reverse momentum, it can do as much damage – perhaps more – than a pair of goals in thirty seconds.

Very few people alive can say they helped invent a sport, but Royce Gracie can; his contribution to MMA was paramount in making it what it is today. The UFC and Zuffa have paid tribute to him by releasing Ultimate Royce Gracie. This two disc set not only tells Royce’s story, it tells the Gracie’s story and how one family paved the way for the world’s fastest growing sport. By Tom Rooney

It was to be her big step up from the obscurity of MMA blogs to the big time of broadcast TV. But, instead, recent CBS Sports recruit Loretta Hunt’s promotion ended in this week sorrow when UFC boss Dana White refused her press credentials to cover last week’s Strikeforce show. Hunt has not been best of friends for Dana White for some time, with the two having done battle online over topics prickly Hunt covered for Sherdog.com, but few would argue that the reporter is one of the biggest names in MMA journalism.

Rolling off a tainted victory against Riki Fukuda at UFC 127, Calgary’s Nick Ring gets a chance to show ‘The Promise’ isn’t a lie when he turns out on June 11 at Rogers Arena against 7-1 James Head. Head will be debuting in the UFC, coming off a decision win over Gerald Harris at Xtreme [...]

By Tom Rooney: Two new B.C. Muay Thai Champions were crowned on Saturday night at the Maritime Labor Centre in the latest edition of Kai Singthong Gym’s Muay Thai Challenge. In the first co-main event Corey Hastings of Pucket Karate School took on Vern Musqua of Ruha Muay Thai for the open Canadian Muay Thai [...]

In a live chat with the Vancouver Sun this afternoon, British Columbia New Democrat Mike Farnworth was asked his position on province-wide regulation of mixed martial arts. And in a sign of changing attitudes, perhaps, he indicated he’s completely for it. The question posed was, “Hi Mike! Question out of left field perhaps – what’s [...]

It’s official – at least as official as professional mixed martial arts ever gets in the city of Vancouver – UFC 131 will land in B.C. on June 11. Rogers Arena will want to put on a decent sized buffet for the athletes, because not only are we getting the main event title shot decider [...]

2010 was a rough year for local mixed martial arts, when really, it should have been the boom times.  At the start of ’10, everything seemed to be coming up roses. Vancouver City Council had approved a two-year ‘test period’ for professional MMA events. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was set to come to Vancouver’s GM [...]

If you’re an MMA fan, not only do you know who Bas Rutten is, but you also know he’s all sorts of awesome. Rutten, the former King of Pancrase and a former UFC champion, brought superstar flava to mixed martial arts before anyone knew it was even a sport, with a brash pro-wrestling interview style [...]

Fighters seem to be learning that Twitter is for more than telling 900 followers, “Had a great workout today,” and in fact can be a useful pre-fight hype tool. Others are seemingly using the platform to try to talk themselves into fights they have no business getting into. Witness Aaron Simpson: I don’t think jon [...]

According to documents from the U.S. Department of Justice, UFC middleweight title contender, one-time Republican political candidate and part-time realtor Chael Sonnen has pled guilty to money laundering and could face twenty years in jail and a $500,000 fine. Sonnen dropped out of the race for the Oregon House District 37 mid-race in early 2010, [...]

Rogers Sportsnet cost the UFC at least one pay-per-view buy this past Saturday. Canadian fight fans were panicked when they heard the announcement last week that the UFC was going to show the UFC 125 preliminary fights not on Spike, but on ION TV in the US. As most Canadians don’t get ION on their [...]

Is it time for the Ultimate Fighting Championship to put Chael Sonnen on ice? The talented Dustin Hazelett was cut from the UFC yesterday after a trio of losses, and while he’s nowhere near the title contender Sonnen is, he’s also not someone who has tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. And nor would he, [...]

Adam Ryan’s Dynamic MMA gym was one of the success stories of local MMA in Vancouver. Sitting on Cambie Street near 41st Ave, the gym has been home to scores of police officers, teachers, teenagers, seniors, and elite fighters such as Belgium’s Bastien Huveneers. But Dynamic is no longer a Vancouver-based company. Instead, it has [...]