"You have to put your best foot forward, and we have to go with the most prestigous championship in all of sports..." - UFC President Dana White, holding up the purple-jeweled WAMMA belt he recently won in an auction on eBay. (Fox Sports via Bloody Elbow)
"If we were in boxing, we'd be throwing the Klitschkos in there, which would put everybody to sleep." - White. The entire nation of Germany would be riveted.
"The fans that we've had for years appreciate the fact that when we have thirteen pay-per-views a year, that we give them some big fights for free too." - Dana White. Fans also appreciate pay-per-views headlined by Frank Mir vs. Mirko Cro Cop, Quinton Jackson vs. Keith Jardine, and Rashad Evans vs. Thiago Silva.
"We looked at a lot of different things. What we do is we have a big white board in here. We put all the big guys up on the board." - White, acknowledging, with a wink and a nod, that fighters under 155 pounds weren't considered.
"And the Cain Velasquez-Junior dos Santos fight made the most sense." - White
JOSH BARNETT SAYS SOME THINGS
"Titles and things like that are the spoils of war. You have to go out and win battles before you raid the dead of all their belongings." - Josh Barnett, on the vacant Strikeforce heavyweight title not being put up as collateral in the heavyweight grand prix. (MMA Mania)
"You could almost say that I'm sure he's had his issues growing up with a thing like gigantism, and all the difficulty that's come from that. But gigantism is what actually allows him to be a decent fighter, because he doesn't do anything particularly awesome, but he's just massive." - Barnett. Replace "gigantism" with "steroid use" and turn this quote around on Joshi. (MMA Fighting)
CO-PROMOTING AIN'T EASY
"I think it was a deal that made it very difficult to be profitable from." - Strikeforce Director of Communications Mike Afromowitz, on Walter and Skyler White's purchase of a car wash. (Sherdog)
"That was the biggest acquisition we had made as a company. Right away, signing Fedor put our company, put Strikeforce, in that many more households." - Afromowitz. No word on whether those households want to copromote.
"You know, what's funny is somebody said to me not too long ago, ‘You are never going to make money with Fedor.'" - Afromowitz. There is, however, always money in the banana stand.
"[Fedor] losing two in a row ... maybe it was for the best, from a business standpoint of course." - Afromowitz. Strikeforce was sold to the UFC just over a month later.
TEAM QUESTION MARK
"I never heard anything from [Henderson] before he filed the lawsuit." - Matt Lindland, on a lawsuit filed against him by former friend and business partner Dan Henderson. (Sherdog)
"I thought we were friends. He never called me and said he had a problem with me. He just filed the lawsuit. That's not how I do things. You don't sue your friends." - Lindland. You do, however, sue to get on the Olympic wrestling team.
"I have no idea what the basis for the lawsuit is. None of the documents we've asked for have been delivered to us, so I have no idea what we're being sued for. That would at least tell me why [Henderson] thinks he has a case." - Lindland. Team Quest has never been known for their gameplanning.
WHITE NOISE
"The Japanese ruined him!" - UFC President Dana White, on (Fight Opinion)
"Obviously... the last thing we want to do and even the stuff that's happened with me, and really in the last 10 years there's been one thing that I've regretted and apologized for and, uh, it was taken out of context. It wasn't a homophobic slur but... this is the fight business, man." - White. Dana conveniently forgetting that he called Loretta Hunt's anonymous source a "smurf."
"I think that people need to stop taking themselves so seriously and... it is what it is." - White. Elegant as always with social issues is Dana White, Joe.
"I mean, look at Fox as a network. Fox is an edgy guy's network. Family Guy, exactly, Family Guy and if you look at the programming on FX, their stuff is edgy. It is what it is, you know... some people are going to get offended and some people are going... if you don't like it, don't watch it." - White. That hole ain't diggin' itself.
PARTING SHOTS
"It's like when I fought Chuck Liddell to get the title. No one counted me in." - Quinton Jackson. When underdog cliches go bad. (MMA Fighting)
"Besides being the champion, she's the highest paid female athlete in the world." - Cris Cyborg's manager Rudimar Fedrigo. Fedrigo mispoke or Strikeforce done gone broken the payscale. (Tatame)
"I feel like I've taken first step in re-building my MMA career." - Andrei Arlovski (Sherdog)
"Just to clarify what happened during Toquinho's fight, he told me that he stopped because his opponent said 'stop, stop' when he was punching him hard. ... Who can say now that 'Toko' isn't a fair fighter? He is just too naive, but he has a big heart." - Murilo Bustamanate, with better spin than the Harlem Globetrotters. (MMA Torch)