"I'm not trying to make all these little excuses." - Nick Diaz, on the UFC pulling him from the UFC 137 main event for skipping back-to-back press conference. Excuses follow. (MMA Junkie)
"If I'd have known the fight was going to be off, I would have [expletive] gone to the press conference, or I would have told somebody, 'Hey, if I don't make it to this stupid [expletive], I'm not fighting.' I think that people would have gotten me there. I think people would have come and gave two [expletive] and gotten me to that press conference.'" - Diaz. It's not my fault because no one told the fight would be off.
"I didn't even know there was a press conference. I thought it was some PR thing. ... People were trying to tell me, 'You're going to do this skit' and that I was going to be a part of some PR skit where I had this part where I was walking through a hall, kind of like that scene Jake Shields did. I was like, 'What the [expletive]? Are you kidding?'" - Diaz. It's not my fault because no one told me it was actually a press conference.
"I just don't think it's that big of a deal. ... It's not like there's people banging on my door trying to get an interview or something - snap pictures of me. Nobody gives a [expletive]." - Diaz. It's not my fault because no one cares.
"The bottom line is Georges is being a little bitch. He didn't step up and say anything when the UFC pulled me out of this fight. I understand sometimes you have to do what you're told, but why wouldn't you tell the media you still want to fight me?" - Diaz. It's not my fault that Georges St. Pierre is a coward.
"If I was Georges, I would want to fight the best. I would have asked for the Anderson Silva fight. I would have asked to fight the Strikeforce champ." - Diaz, who vacated the Strikeforce title.
"But he sits there like a robot and doesn't say anything at all, just like he's not going to say anything about me calling him a bitch now. If I saw B.J. Penn walking down the street and called him a bitch, we would be fighting right there on the spot." - Diaz
"The truth is Georges doesn't want to fight me in the street or in a cage. He knows who I am, and he knows where I came from." - Diaz, says the guy who got himself pulled from the fight.
YOU GOTTA SAY NICK DIAZ'S NAME NOW
"And they forced me to say at the of the whole thing, they forced me to say-- You gotta say Nick Diaz's name now. You gotta say his name. ... They're like, 'Say you're gonna beat Nick Diaz. Say you're gonna beat Nick Diaz.'" - B.J. Penn, on shooting new footage for the UFC 137 Countdown show. UFC President Dana White responded with two minutes of "raw and uncut" footage disproving Penn's claim. Penn responded with another video clip of his own, this one from before his fight with Kenny Florian. (BJPenn.com)
"I have no idea how this UFC interviewer situation got this big. I never wanted to attack the UFC, people were calling and telling me Diaz wasn't going to sign and I got paranoid thinking they were going to use that clip to get him to sign the contract, my bad." - Penn, somehow clueless at how a situation his own website distributed blew up in the echo chamber. (BJPenn.com)
NIKOLAI VALUEV IS STILL SEARCHING FOR HIS YETI
"I wasn't underestimating him, but after he punched me I couldn't see a thing, I wasn't controlling my body anymore. I was doing things automatically, I could only see shadows." - Antonio Silva, who was knocked out in the first round by Daniel Cormier. (Tatame)
"I was well prepared, but he punched me." - Silva. Truer words...
"That's the only chance Cormier has got, his punch. He isn't any good on the ground to fight Josh there. He knows wrestling, but... I guess Josh Barnett will win, he's more complete." - Silva
DON'T SAY THAT, RAMPAGE
"He can have a live feed on me. 'Bones' can watch me brush my teeth in the morning and see what toothpaste I used, who I am training with and how hard I am working, and he can see which hand I wipe my ass with for all I care." - Quinton Jackson. For the record, he uses the right hand of Tiki Ghosn. (Yahoo! Sports)
WHITE NOISE
"We have all kinds of stuff going and I didn't need this in my life." - UFC President Dana White, on the Red Sox lead in the AL Wild Card race falling to two games. Go, Rays, go! (Yahoo! Sports)
PARTING SHOTS
"I (had) thought Strikeforce was a cancer patient. Man, it's a damn AIDS patient instead – with Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the background ready to pull the plug." - Muhammed Lawal. Kevorkian, for the record, never pulled the plug. (MMA Junkie)
"I do get frustrated when I hear people say that Anderson Silva's wiped out the middleweight division. He hasn't wiped out the middleweight division: He's got to fight me yet." - Michael Bisping. Anderson's got to fight Alessio Sakara, too. (MMA Mania)
"Who cares? We're free on Spike. Are you kidding me? Mayweather ... who's Mayweather?" - Jake Ellenberger, who didn't make $30 million this weekend. (Fight Hub TV)
"It is funny how the real guy, the guy with the money, the real boss behind the scenes, is the coolest guy and the front man can be a bit of a problem." - Paul Daley. I don't know, Paul. Avon Barksdale is a bit of a problem. (Five Knuckles)
"Vitor is very dangerous, but I'm very dangerous too. We have two dangerous guys in the ring and we are going to see which one of us is more dangerous." - Cung Le. After the fight, Le will party in dangerous San Jose, partaking in some dangerous liquor. In the morning, his dangerous wife will wake him up to eat a dangerous breakfast of eggs and bacon with a dangerous glass of orange juice. He will read the dangerous newspaper, while his dangerous kids run around playing dangerous games like tag. He will invite his dangerous friends over to sit down on his dangerous couch to watch some dangerous football on a dangerous Sunday afternoon. They will eat dangerous chili and drink dangerous beer and talk about dangerous things. Someone will ask Le a dangerous question, and Le will respond, "Vitor Belfort is the more dangerous man." (Heavy MMA)