MMA-URLS

Former top UFC fighter Nate Marquardt will finally make his Strikeforce and welterweight debut in July, and it will be in a title matchup. He will compete for Nick Diaz's old Strikeforce welterweight championship against a SF veteran, Tyron Woodley. MMA Weekly has it: The main event for the upcoming Strikeforce event in July is almost set as Nate Marquardt will make his promotional debut against Tyron Woodley with the vacant welterweight title on the line. Sources close to the match-up confirmed the fight to MMA Weekly on Monday with verbal agreements in place for the July showdown. Marquardt (31-10-2) was released from the UFC last June after a TRT issue prevented him from fighting Rick Story. He then signed with BAMMA, but never competed under their banner and was let out of his contract a few months later. Strikeforce signed him a couple of months ago, and this bout had been rumored ever since. Woodley is undefeated at 10-0 in his career, eight of those wins coming in Strikeforce. His last bout was a split decision win over Jordan Mein in January. The card will apparently either take place in Portland, Oregon or Indianapolis, Indiana. It was thought that a Luke Rockhold vs. Tim Kennedy middleweight title bout would headline the card, but we'll have to wait and see.

Posted in: title, strikeforce, welterweight, marquardt, woodley

Read the full article at Bloody Elbow

Nate Marquardt is likely to face Tyron Woodley at a July Strikeforce event for the vacant welterweight title. The bout will be Marquardt’s first fight since his sudden release from the UFC prior to the UFC on Versus 4. MMAWeekly first reported the bout. Marquardt was released from the UFC after the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission denied him from participating on the UFC on Versus 4 card due to elevated testosterone levels. While PSAC cleared Marquardt a few days later, UFC President Dana White fired Marquardt during a twitter video before the event took place. Marquardt had been signed to the British promotion BAMMA, but was released after the promotion was unable to secure an opponent. Marquardt’s opponent, Tyron Woodley, has not lost in his ten professional fights, eight of which have been with Strikeforce. The former MIZZOU wrestling standout has notched notable wins over Andre Galvao, Tarec Saffiedine, and Paul Daley. Woodley most recently fought in January, where he won against Jordan Mein. MMAFrenzy.com

Posted in: ufc, marquardt, woodley, place marquardt,  marquardt fight

Read the full article at MMA Frenzy

Ever since Nick Diaz bolted for greener pastures under the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) banner, Strikeforce has been operating its welterweight division without a 170-pound champion. Until now. A report from MMA Weekly has former UFC Middleweight Nate Marquardt, who was bounced from the promotion in mid-2011 prior to making his welterweight debut, taking on undefeated division standout Tyron Woodley this July at a location to be named. It will be the first "Great" fight in over a year. That's because Marquardt was riding the pine while flirting with the UK's BAMMA organization following his fiasco at UFC on Versus 4, a transgression severe enough to earn him his walking papers, albeit temporarily. Now he's back under the ZUFFA umbrella and we'll finally get to see what he can do at 170-pounds. But it won't be easy. Woodley has stifled the opposition since his mixed martial arts (MMA) debut in early 2009. The two-time NCAA Division I All-American has been successful in getting his opponents to the mat and keeping them there, which could present problems for Marquardt who is undoubtedly giving up some degree of size and strength to make the welterweight limit. Time will tell. With the exception of a middleweight mash-up that pits Keith Jardine vs. Roger Gracie, no other bouts have been announced for the upcoming fight card in July, which will air on Showtime (main card) and Showtime Extreme (prelims). As always, stay tuned to MMAmania.com for future updates to this event as they become available.

Posted in: welterweight, welterweight debut, marquardt, zuffa umbrella, future updates

Read the full article at MMA Mania

The lack of depth on Strikeforce’s roster looks to be coming into play once again with the organization’s apparent decision to award another title-shot to a competitor who has never actually fought in the related weight-class. Recent examples of similar booking include Ronda Rousey and Keith Jardine who both got a crack at a championship in their divisional debuts. This time around the vacant welterweight belt will be on the line with unbeaten grappler Tyron Woodley taking on seasoned veteran Nate Marquardt. Though no date is confirmed it is expected the bout will take place in Portland, Oregon this July on the same card linked to Roger Gracie-Jardine and Tim Kennedy-Luke Rockhold. MMAWeekly was first to report the match-up as being verbally agreed to by both parties. The majority of Marquardt’s success has come at 185 pounds as a member of the UFC where he beat the likes of Demian Maia, Martin Kampmann, Dan Miller, and Rousimar Palhares. The 31-10 Marquardt has been out of action for more than a year after being cut based on an elevated level of testosterone, then signing with British promotion BAMMA despite never actually having an opportunity to fight for them. Marquardt Discusses Re-Signing with Zuffa Woodley is 10-0 with eight of his wins coming under the Strikeforce banner. He has been on a particularly impressive run as of late with victories over Tarec Saffiedine, Paul Daley, and Jordan Mein. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC Tweet

Posted in: keith jardine, marquardt, ronda rousey, woodley, welterweight belt

Read the full article at Fighters.com

It appears Strikeforce finally has a plan in place regarding their still-vacant welterweight championship. Though not officially announced, a May bout between Nate Marquardt and Tyron Woodley will apparently involve the organization’s divisional title even though Marquardt will be making his 170-pound debut in the match-up. “It’s the best outcome I could have imagined, with all this. Like I said – back with Zuffa, back in a title-fight for my first fight back. It’s amazing,” said Marquardt on this week’s episode of Inside MMA, adding their clash would be contested over a five-round period. The belt has been on the shelf since Nick Diaz vacated it to join the UFC this past fall. “He’s a smart fighter, but at the same time, I have a lot more experience than him. It’s gonna be my fight to dictate where it goes,” Marquardt explained of his upcoming meeting with Woodley. Woodley is 10-0 in his career including recent wins over Paul Daley and Jordan Mein, while Marquardt holds an overall record of 31-10 with the bulk of his success coming at 185 pounds. “Nate the Great” has been out of action for more than a year after being released by the UFC due to testosterone use, then signing with BAMMA and waiting for a bout with Daley that never materialized. Marquardt Addresses Criticism of TRT It is expected Marquardt-Woodley will be added to next month’s Strikeforce event in San Jose currently co-headlined by Gilbert Melendez-Josh Thomson and Daniel Cormier-Josh Barnett. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC Tweet

Posted in: nate, marquardt, tyron woodley, woodley, ” marquardt

Read the full article at Fighters.com

When Nate Marquardt was released by Zuffa following an issue with his testosterone levels prior to a fight with Rick Story, it seemed unlikely that he would be given another shot. Well, as is starting to become the norm around MMA, there is second chances handed out. Marquardt signed with Strikeforce earlier this year, and [...]

Posted in: rick story, nate marquardt, marquardt, strikeforce title, tyron woodley

Read the full article at MMA Convert

A little less than a year ago Nate Marquardt was released by the UFC after an elevated level of testosterone forced his last-minute withdrawal from a headlining fight. Since then Marquardt has remained inactive, signing with BAMMA but never actually making his debut for the British promotion. Now, after inking a deal with Strikeforce, it appears “Nate the Great” will receive a crack at the company’s welterweight championship despite the circumstances surrounding his departure from the UFC, his yearlong stint on the shelf, or never having actually fought at 170 pounds. Though not officially announced by the organization, Marquardt recently revealed he’s been told that his May debut will involve the divisional belt. “It’s the best outcome I could have imagined, with all this. Like I said – back with Zuffa, back in a title-fight for my first fight back. It’s amazing. I also understand it’s gonna be a five round title fight for the 170 pound title,” stated Marquardt on Inside MMA where he confirmed the clash would come against unbeaten grappler Tyron Woodley. “You know, he’s a smart fighter, but at the same time, I have a lot more experience than him. It’s gonna be my fight to dictate where it goes,” Marquardt added on the topic of “T-Wood”. The match-up is expected to take place on May 19 at a show already featuring Gilbert Melendez defending his lightweight strap against Josh Thomson and the Grand Prix Final between Josh Barnett-Daniel Cormier. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC

Posted in: ufc, fight, nate, marquardt, lastminute withdrawal

Read the full article at Five Ounces of Pain

The past 12 months have been a roller coaster for Nate Marquardt. In March of 2011, "The Great" had just won a unanimous decision victory over Dan Miller at UFC 128. It appeared as though he was getting his career back on track, and he was re-energized by a move down to Welterweight, where he was set to fight Rick Story at UFC on Versus 4 in the main event of the evening. Everything was coming together nicely. And then it happened. The day before the Story fight, Marquardt was pulled from the match because of elevated testosterone levels. The withdrawal sent the entire card into disarray and caused Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White to immediately fire Marquardt and declare he'd never fight in the UFC again. Fast forward one year later. In the interim, Marquardt signed with the BAMMA, but never actually stepped foot in the cage for the British-based promotion. After being granted his release from the promotion earlier this year, there was speculation of Marquardt signing with Bellator, as well as a few other smaller promotions, before it was finally made official that he'd be signing with Zuffa-owned Strikeforce. In February, it was announced that Marquardt's first fight for Strikeforce would be opposite welterweight contender Tyron Woodley. According to a recent interview Marquardt had with "Inside MMA," the fight will be for the vacant 170-pound belt: "It's the best outcome I could have imagined, with all this. Like I said. Back with Zuffa. Back in a title fight for my first fight back, it's amazing. From what I understand, that's who I'll be fighting is Tyron Woodley. I also understand it's gonna be a five round title fight for the 170 pound title. You know, he's a smart fighter, but at the same time, I have a lot more experience than him. It's gonna be my fight to dictate where it goes." It certainly makes for a dramatic twist. Now, Marquardt -- who appeared to be banished for life by Dana White for life -- will not only make his debut for a promotion that is, for all intents and purposes, run by White, but his return will be welcomed with an immediate title shot. Interesting to say the very least, no? The fight has not been confirmed by Strikeforce officials as being a title fight, but it is officially scheduled to take place on the May 19, 2012, card that will feature a main event fight between Josh Barnett and Daniel Cormier for the heavyweight grand prix championship. The card will also showcasesanother title fight when Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Gilbert Melendez defends his strap in a rubber match versus Josh Thomson. For the latest news notes on Strikeforce: "Barnett vs. Cormier" be sure to hit up our complete event archive right here.

Posted in: fight, title, strikeforce, nate marquardt, marquardt

Read the full article at MMA Mania

The pictures on his office wall are beginning to get to Trevor Wittman. He never thought they would. But then, maybe he never thought about it at all. Maybe that’s what’s starting to get to him. Maybe that’s what’s got him sitting around his office as another summer begins to bake its way into the pavement outside, and here he sits looking at old pictures, wondering things he never bothered to wonder before.Here’s Nate Marquardt on the cover of a magazine, looking like a statue of Hercules with his airbrushed muscles and his impossible abs. Here’s Nate in a supplement ad torn out of a different magazine, posing shirtless next to some supposedly magic fitness powder. "Man," Wittman says and shakes his head. "Here I thought that stuff actually worked." It’s not that he didn’t know Marquardt was using testosterone. Wittman’s known for months, even if he didn’t like it and didn’t mind saying so. Still, what does he know about nutrition? What does a guy so skinny he could turn sideways and disappear behind one of his own heavy bags know about things like hormone levels?"Look at me," Wittman likes to say, pulling up his shirt to expose a rail-thin physique. "I don’t know s---."Verno Phillips didn’t need testosterone. That’s one thing Wittman does know. Verno used to eat two grapefruits a day when he was cutting weight. How’s that for nutrition? Verno was one of the best boxers he ever worked with, if not the best, and he did it on a pre-fight grapefruit diet. Surely that has to mean something, right?In the weeks after Marquardt’s testosterone use becomes public, there are so many more questions than answers, and not just for Wittman. After UFC president Dana White made it very, very clear that Marquardt was no longer welcome in the UFC -- according to sources who were present for the conversation, White told the fighter that "in ten years of doing this, no one has ever f---ed me worse than you’ve just f---ed me" -- the Alchemist Management team had to figure out what to do next. White had already beat them to the punch in the court of public opinion, announcing first on the internet and then on the Versus pre-fight show that Marquardt had been fired and that White was personally "disgusted" with him. What White couldn’t divulge, thanks to medical privacy laws, was why. If Marquardt chose to keep his testosterone use secret, the UFC and the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission would have to honor that. So there was one option for Alchemist to consider. Marquardt could always say nothing. He could wait this one out and hope that would people would either forgive or forget.But then, that was a risky strategy for many reasons. After White’s remarks, fans were ready to assume the worst. Marquardt already had one failed drug test on his record from his UFC debut in 2005. The less he said now, the worse fans might make it out to be in their minds.No, he had to talk, but he had to choose his venue carefully. Alchemist only wants to do this once, and with the greatest possible impact. A video interview would be best. Not only would his quotes be less likely to be taken out of context, but it would give people a chance to see him as an actual human being rather than just words on a page. MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani hosts a weekly internet show in New York City that would give him as much time as he could possibly need to show up and tell his side of the story. Plus his manager, Alchemist’s Lex McMahon, can go with him in case he gets into any tricky territory. Then, once it’s done, Marquardt can go into seclusion while McMahon figures out where his career will go next. See? Now they’ve got something resembling an actual plan.But while Marquardt is sent to New York City with McMahon to do Helwani’s MMA Hour, Wittman is sent back home to Colorado with very clear instructions: say nothing, give no interviews, get out of town and lay low. From a PR standpoint, it makes sense. But to Wittman it starts to feel an awful lot like he’s being asked to hide in shame, as if he’s done something wrong. He hasn’t. None of them have, or at least that’s what they’ve been saying to one another for months now. TRT is perfectly legal, and they went through the right channels to get it. So why do they have to do so much damage control now? And why does it feel so much more like an apology than an explanation?Wittman wants to be a good soldier. He ignores the calls and texts that are lighting up his cell phone. He goes back to Wheat Ridge, back to his gym, back to the office with the pictures on the wall. Back to the questions that don’t have answers. Back to the doubts that won’t leave him alone.Verno ate grapefruits. Verno was a champion.Somewhere in here, it begins to dawn on Wittman that Marquardt isn’t going to be the only one who suffers as a result of TRT gone wrong. For starters, he’s already out his ten percent cut of Marquardt’s purse -- money he was counting on -- and all because of a situation he had no control over. After all, he did his job. He got the fighter ready to fight. So where’s his money?And then there’s the problem of perception. Those UFC fighters that serve as free advertisement for the gym, helping to bring in new, paying members just by getting the Grudge name out there? That sword cuts two ways. When those same fighters screw up, it has a way of sticking to the Grudge gym and even to Wittman himself. Already he’s gotten Facebook messages from people who say they’d rather cancel their gym membership than train at a place where there’s any form of doping going on. And that’s just the general public. What are his peers saying about him behind his back right now? What did they think when he had to hide under the hood of his sweatshirt at the weigh-ins and slip out like some kind of criminal? He already knows what fighters and trainers say about the gyms that seem to double as black market pharmacies. What will happen if they come to think of his place that way? Such a brand, once applied, isn’t easily removed.This is why Wittman wants to talk. He wants to get his side of the story out there, to let people know that he doesn’t condone testosterone use and certainly never recommended it. When I call him after Marquardt’s MMA Hour appearance, which Wittman says he did not watch, he’s eager to get his views on TRT out to the general public. First, he says, he has to get clearance from Alchemist, which he does. Exactly who he gets that clearance from will become a subject of some debate, but that’s later. At the moment, all he’s thinking about is getting his point across, and quickly, while he still has a chance to change some people’s minds*****When the interview first runs on MMA Fighting, it seems like a minor development in the ongoing Marquardt testosterone saga. Wittman goes to great lengths to stress that while he personally doesn’t agree with TRT, he doesn’t think Marquardt intentionally did anything wrong. "Nate Marquardt is a guy who's never been untruthful with me," Wittman says in the interview. "Everything that he tells me, and everything he told me going into this fight and back before New Jersey, it's something that he truly believes in. He went and had his testosterone checked. And when I spoke to him about it, I could tell he really believes he'd done the right thing, because the doctors are telling him, 'Your levels are low. You need this. This is why you're tired. We'll give you this and you'll perform like you're young again.' Man, you start telling a guy that, he's going to believe you."His honesty from the beginning -- doing these tests, asking for permission to do this -- that's what hurt him. His honesty got him put in this situation. It's so hard to watch one of the most honest guys I've ever trained -- the biggest family man, the guy who signs every autograph -- get scolded and cut and lose his career and get this brand on him, all because he felt like he was doing the right thing."At the same time, Wittman also makes it clear that he doesn’t agree with the use of TRT, referring to it as "an enhancing kind of thing." He vows to step away from any of his fighters who are engaging in it or anything similar. "To me, if your testosterone levels are getting lower over the years, that's normal," he says. "You're getting older. As you get older in this sport, it's common sense you're not going to have the same testosterone levels as a 21-year-old man. But the big disadvantage a 21-year-old has when he comes into this is the knowledge and experience. "If you have a 21-year-old come into this with those naturally high testosterone levels, and then you've got an older fighter -- I'll just pick an age, say, 35 -- who has lower testosterone levels, the advantages of the older man are knowledge, experience. He's seen it in all different aspects. He's a veteran. To me, that's a huge disadvantage for the younger man. Yeah, he's going to be able to go, go, go. But that's his advantage. Let him have it. And let's outwork him. Let's beat him with our experience. But if we make a 35 or 40-year-old fighter as strong as a 21-year-old, to me, that's cutting corners." (Trevor Wittman watches sparring. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)This interview, to put it mildly, does not go over well. Not with Marquardt, and not with the Alchemist crew. Marquardt and Wittman exchange a series of heated text messages over it, with Marquardt accusing Wittman of all manner of betrayal. As Marquardt would later explain to me in a text message, the interview "killed" him. It also effectively ended a long and successful partnership, as far as he was concerned. The way Marquardt saw it, Wittman was out of his depth when it came to issues like TRT. He was a striking coach, not a doctor. What did he know about it? To jump out in the press and call what his own fighter had done a form of enhancement, and all at an incredibly sensitive time, is very nearly unforgivable in Marquardt’s eyes.But it’s not just Marquardt who’s upset by the interview. Though Wittman is technically Alchemist’s client just as much as Marquardt is, the management team has no difficulty figuring out who to side with in this conflict. It’s nice to have a trainer on your client list. It gives you inroads to the young talent at his gym, and it can even be a selling point for acquiring new fighters. But practically speaking, even a top trainer is nowhere near as profitable as having an active pro fighter in the prime of his career. It’s Marquardt who can still earn the big money in the cage. It’s Marquardt who can -- at least once this all blows over -- sell lucrative sponsorships. If Marquardt is mad at Wittman, so is Alchemist.At first it seems like both Marquardt and Alchemist might content themselves with simply being mad. Then Wittman’s monthly checks from Alchemist stop showing up. At first he thinks that maybe they’re just late, so he waits a couple weeks. When he calls, he gets the old ‘check is in the mail’ routine. Couple days go by, still no check. The mail isn’t that slow. He texts McMahon, who assures Wittman that he’ll look into it. Nobody wants to tell Wittman what he’s pretty sure he already knows.This is the last thing he can afford right now. He already missed out on his cut from the fight in Pittsburgh that didn’t happen. He took time away from the gym’s flagging business to get Marquardt ready, and now he’s got nothing to show for it. A couple weeks from now his fears will be confirmed. He’s no longer an Alchemist client. The bad news just keeps on coming.Even with all that his stance on TRT has already cost him, Wittman makes good on his promise to stop being so naive about what his fighters may or may not be putting into their bodies. Before now, he’s always told himself that it wasn’t his business. These guys gets in their cars after practice and disappear. He doesn’t know where they go, what they do. It’s not like it was back in the days with Verno, when sparring and mitt work and conditioning all took place under the same roof. This is a different world. If you want to know -- really know -- how these guys get those muscles they show up with, you have to ask. So Wittman asks. He sends out text messages to all his fighters, asking them if they’re on anything he needs to know about.For most guys, the response is a simple no. Don’t worry about me coach. I’m all natural. Then there’s heavyweight Todd Duffee, who’s been an enigma to Wittman ever since he first showed up at Grudge. There’s no question about Duffee’s physical gifts. The man had some truly brilliant sparring sessions. When he’s on -- which is to say, when he shows up -- he might easily be the best heavyweight in the building. But, to hear Wittman tell it, the guy’s a head case. He’s his own worst enemy. He’s got all the ability anybody could ask for, but he can’t stop thinking about where he should be by now, what he should have accomplished. Even after getting released from the UFC for what could most charitably be described as ‘attitude problems,’ he still can’t seem to get out of his own way.You know those cartoons where the character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and he walks around talking to them both? That’s Duffee, Wittman says. So talented. So tough to figure out. When Duffee gets Wittman’s text explaining that he’s asking all the guys whether they’re on anything, his response is non-committal at best. Got it, he tells Wittman. As if the coach just wanted to know whether he understood the question. So are you on anything? Wittman replies. No, Duffee tells him, despite the fact that he’s one of the few MMA fighters who’s widely known to have applied for and received a therapeutic-use exemption for testosterone in the state of Nevada. Not that it will matter in the end. He’ll leave Grudge of his own volition soon enough and move on to the American Kickboxing Academy. Yet another new gym for Duffee. Maybe somebody else can help him where Wittman couldn’t.Perhaps the most bizarre part about Wittman’s falling out with Marquardt is that, even after everything that’s happened, Marquardt hasn’t gone anywhere. Text message quarrels aside, he still shows up at Grudge fairly regularly, either to train or just hang out. He asks Wittman (again, via text message) not to mention this fact on Twitter or Facebook, lest people think the two of them have made up and decided to be friends again. But in every meaningful sense, Marquardt is still very much a part of the Grudge team. It’s not as if Marquardt’s life is unchanged, however. He has, after all, been fired from his job and berated on TV by his former boss. Some fans took the extra time to hear his side of it on The MMA Hour, but many others probably didn’t. Many probably heard the UFC president say he was "disgusted" with Marquardt, and that was that. Even those who heard his tale of woe -- especially the part where he admitted to going back to the same doctor whose expertise in matters of hormone-replacement therapy had already been called into question by the New Jersey commission -- likely didn’t conclude that Marquardt was blameless in this saga. His punishment might have been overly harsh or inconsistent with how the UFC had treated other fighters in similar situations, but the consensus among most MMA fans was that Marquardt had at least some role in crafting his own demise.This makes it difficult to know how to handle himself in public. On the weekend of a Fight to Win event in Denver, Marquardt has agreed to be one of many Grudge fighters at a pre-fight autograph signing to benefit the family of a recently deceased doctor who was well known in the Denver fight community before his sudden death. But with the wound of his UFC firing still fresh, and the reaction of the local fans uncertain, now that doesn’t sound like such a great idea.Get out of town for a little while, his management tells him. Go camping with your family. Get out on the lake and relax a little. Turn the cell phone off and forget about this stuff while we figure out what’s next for you. And sure, that sounds like a good enough idea. But he doesn’t want to skip out on the autograph signing altogether, so the afternoon of the event he brings a stack of signed photos and other Marquardt memorabilia to the Grudge gym. Do me a favor, he says to Brendan Schaub. Take this stuff over there when you go. Tell them I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.Schaub has to admit that it’s a veteran move. Truth be told, he was thinking of doing the same thing to Marquardt. Now what’s he supposed to do, give both his stuff and Marquardt’s stuff to Shane Carwin? Nope, he’s stuck. Marquardt beat him to it."It’s just that, if I go to this thing, you know," Marquardt says and then trails off. He doesn’t have to finish. Schaub knows. Everybody knows.*****Heading into another hot Colorado summer, all this gym drama is the last thing Schaub needs. He has a fight of his own to worry about. He has to go to Brazil and fight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in August. Can’t everybody just get along well enough to help him out until then? Is that so much to ask?But that’s life. It’s messy and it’s inconvenient and it doesn’t stop just because you have a big fight coming up. You’ve got to make the best of it. Things are about to get even messier in Schaub’s life, however. Wittman is fed up with his chronic tardiness and general bad attitude, he says. Maybe this isn’t working out so well anymore, he decides. Maybe it’s time for Schaub to find someone else to train him.In Wittman’s version of events, it’s an emotional break-up that he can’t fully put into words. When I track down Schaub at one of Amal Easton’s downtown jiu-jitsu gyms a couple weeks later, he shrugs it off. Sometimes you just need to mix things up, he explains. Keeps your training from getting stale.As for Wittman’s comments about Marquardt’s testosterone usage? To Schaub, it’s an issue of unity."I don’t care if Shane robs a bank," he says. "I’m not saying anything bad about him."However you want to explain it, it’s one more curveball in an already atypical training camp for Schaub. Wittman’s been in his corner since his first fight. Now he has to figure some things out for himself. Things like where he’s going to train, and who’s going to train with him. Easton’s Jiu-Jitsu is a start. On a sweltering Friday afternoon, he’s there getting some Big Nog scouting notes from one of Easton’s grappling proteges. On a mat a few feet away, a class of sloppy white belts gets put through their paces by an Easton purple belts. Anybody could hear, but it’s not like this is top secret information anyway. Nogueira likes this guard pass, that sweep. He used to do this in his Pride days, but hasn’t done it since. If Schaub gets here, he should just get up and start over. That goes for pretty much anything related to the ground game, actually. If he’s not in an absolutely perfect position, raining down a righteous wrath on a nearly unconscious Nogueira, why even mess with it? He’s going to win this fight on his feet, with speed and strength and striking skill.Still, Schaub’s a perfectionist. Schaub likes to scare himself. Schaub likes to play those ‘what if’ games in his head, just to keep himself sharp and ready for everything. That’s why Schaub’s going to spend this time on a Friday afternoon working on the jiu-jitsu that he has no real intention of using. This is Nogueira we’re talking about, after all. They say he’s old and slow and a fraction of the man he used to be, but they said the same thing about Cro Cop. Schaub has a scar over his eye and a recently repaired nose to remind him just how much experience counts for in this game. In the morning, he and Marquardt will head over to a local boxing gym to work on the tools that he does plan on using. Or at least, that’s the plan until the boxers call them up at the last minute and tell them it’s off. They’ve got a thing. You know how that goes. Can’t make it after all. And so -- what else? -- they head over to Grudge for Saturday morning sparring. Wittman’s there with his team of non-superstars when Schaub and Marquardt come walking through the door."Boxers," Wittman shrugs when they tell him the story.Is it cool if they use the cage to spar a few rounds? Schaub wants to know.Sure, Wittman tells him. His guys aren’t using it. He even intends to stay out of their way and keep himself from doing any coaching. They aren’t his fighters, after all, even if they are using his gym. Even if the guy who accused him via text message of selling him out in the media is now here acting like everything’s cool, like it’s just another Saturday sparring session. As if he isn’t only here because his other plans fell through. This business makes for funny situations like that sometimes. Wittman’s been doing it too long to get worked up over it. Let them use the cage and beat each other up if they need to.But, what do you think? Of course he ends up coaching them from outside the cage. He can’t help himself. They might not be the best of friends right now. They may have quarreled and fallen out and all said things that the others won’t ever forget, but hey, he’s still a fight trainer. They’re still fighters. They all have at least one thing they still remember how to do together without thinking about it.*****You don’t request a fight against a Brazilian legend in Rio de Janeiro unless you at least think you know what you’re doing. After two years in the UFC, one thing Schaub knows is that it’s better to ask for a specific fight than to sit around and wait to find out what UFC matchmaker Joe Silva dreams up for you. Because Silva, well, let’s just say he doesn’t give many freebies. And when he calls, as Schaub says, "that’s your destiny." Do you want to have some say in the matter or not?When Schaub first asked for Nogueira in Brazil, he knew he’d have to play the bad guy. What he didn’t know was what kind of state his team would be in by the time the fight rolled around. Months ago, after he’d asked for it and before the UFC offered, he and Wittman joked about it. How Wittman thought it was suicidal to go down there and beat up on one of their heros. How Schaub was so busy thinking about how he’d win that he never stopped to consider what would actually happen on the ground in Rio when he won. How the only way Wittman would agree to walk out with him on fight night is if he could come down to the cage in one of those bulletproof enclosures like the Pope has. Otherwise, Wittman crowed, he was keeping his skinny ass home in the U.S. of A.That was just a joke a few months ago. Somehow, in a bizarre way, it came true.Schaub doesn’t have Wittman at his side when he lands in Rio in late August, but he’s far from alone. He’s got Easton, his jiu-jitsu coach. He used to live here, and he knows some tricks to make fight week in a foreign country a little easier. For instance, while Forrest Griffin may be griping about the weird food with incomprehensible labels, Schaub has a local restaurant making all his meals for him. He’s also got his trusty wrestling coach, Leister Bowling, which is like traveling with your own personal pitbull to help chew your way out of any sticky situations. He’s also got a football buddy of his, and his father, who is the kind of proud, supportive dad with the healthy glow of a certain income tax bracket that we’re often led to believe simply doesn’t exist in the fight game, where it’s all broken homes and childhood sob stories.Outside of that cheering section, however, there isn’t much support waiting for him in Ipanema when the fighters make their first public appearance at the UFC 134 open workouts. The Brazilian crowd has come out in a light drizzle to dance on the beach and sing their battle songs as the fighters go through the motions on a giant, damp mat set up just off the main drag."It’s actually not that bad," Schaub says of his early fan reception. Okay, so there aren’t a lot of Schaub fans making their voices heard, but it’s nowhere near as vitriolic as he expected. Griffin, on the other hand, smirks as he tells reporters that, upon entering, one fan told him he was going to die."But he said it in very poor English," he says. "So I was able to ignore him."Griffin might be content to play the villain in a foreign land -- and why not, when he seems equally unconcerned with being liked back home? -- but Schaub can’t quite embrace that role. When he hears no death threats at the workouts, he seems to light up just a bit. As if, maybe, this won’t be so bad after all. He’s making an effort, at least. When he came down here for the press conference a couple months ago, he visited a kids’ Muay Thai academy in a nearby favela. This time he’s brought them several bags of free gear from his sponsors, along with more Ecko t-shirts than any single group of children has ever wanted or needed. Who else is taking the time to do something like that right before the fight?But the trip to the favela is no small excursion. The UFC’s host hotel for this event is the Rio Sheraton. It’s a beachside resort with all the finest amenities -- a place where you can actually stand on your balcony at night with an overpriced cocktail in hand as you smell the cooking and listen to the barking dogs of a different favela just across the road. The plan is to meet down in the lobby at 7 p.m., but somehow it seems as if the entourage just keeps growing. Reporters, photographers, sponsors -- more and more join the caravan, which means more and more waiting as people get their collective act together. In the meantime, McMahon hands Schaub his cell phone so he can do a quick phone interview with a reporter back in the U.S. Same questions. Same answers. How many different ways can you say that you think you’re ready? How many times do you need to be asked what it’s going to feel like to have that many people screaming for your blood before you finally snap?Finally, everyone’s here and we can go. After a slow crawl through Rio traffic, the cityscape begins to change. Professional signs give way to hand-painted ones. People on street corners give you that ‘Are you here on purpose?’ look as you drive by. When we get out of the cars in front of a fenced-in basketball court, the humidity of the jungle presses in close. It’s not exactly a shanty town like you see in the movies. More like a poor neighborhood. A place where at least someone realizes that you can either teach the kids something or else abandon them to the worst impulses of their surroundings. When Schaub and his entourage stroll onto the paved court where the kids are practicing their punching form in street clothes and bare feet, you can almost see the culture shock on both sides. The big foreigner looks lost as he comes walking in with his backwards baseball cap on, surrounded by photographers and video cameras. He’s brought gifts. Gloves and shinguards and hand wraps. All the stuff they might not have even realized was missing from their kickboxing training up until now. But what are they supposed to make of this person who doesn’t speak their language and will never know their names? What world did he even come from? (Brendan Schaub visits a Brazilian favela with his team. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)From Schaub’s perspective, it’s an act of goodwill. He doesn’t have to do this, but he can do it, and so here he is. At the same time, it has the unmistakable air of a photo op. Here he is, watching the kids, and there’s the multitude of cameras, watching him watch them. Does it change the fact that he’s genuinely trying to do something nice for people he doesn’t even know? That the net result here tonight will be an act of kindness toward people who were grateful for it? It does not. The kids really could use this stuff. They really are glad to have it. Still, when trying to snap a picture for an MMA Fighting article, the real difficulty I have is getting a shot of Schaub that doesn’t have another photographer in the background. One thing no one can say about tonight’s charity work is that it was poorly documented. No good deed goes unrecorded.Soon Schaub and his team will load back up and head out to a restaurant to eat. He’ll sleep in a big bed in a hotel beside the sea. Tomorrow he’ll walk out in the HSBC Arena to the same chant of ‘vai morrier!’ -- you’re going to die! -- that greets every foreigner on this fight card. Some free stuff in the favela won’t change that.When his work here is done, he’ll fly back to Colorado and those kids will still be here. Now they have the gloves, the shinguards, the hand wraps. They’ll have free t-shirts whose origin will be slightly difficult to explain. Schaub and his management? They’ll have the photos and the videos, at least. And plenty of them. *****Wittman doesn’t watch Schaub’s fight when it airs live. He doesn’t order the pay-per-view, doesn’t sit down to see how one of brightest young pupils makes out in his first pro fight without the same old grinning striking coach in his corner. He doesn’t watch Schaub come bopping down to the cage as 14,000 Brazilians hurl venom at him like he’s come to repossess their cars. He doesn’t watch as Bowling and Easton set up shop in his corner. Doesn’t watch as Schaub stares across the cage at the decrepit former champion who, just two days ago, was limping around the Copacabana Palace Hotel as he admitted that he’d rushed his return from hip surgery because he wanted to fight in Rio so badly. Wittman isn’t at home to see it when Schaub lands an early uppercut that Nogueira takes with surprising ease. He doesn’t see when Schaub begins to fall in love with that uppercut, throwing it like it’s going to take Big Nog’s head off any second, when really all a fighter like Schaub needs is a jab and right straight and he’s a problem for anyone, as Wittman has told him time and time again. (Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira lands a heavy right hand that puts Schaub in trouble. Photo by Esther Lin, MMA Fighting)He doesn’t see when Nogueira times a perfect one-two off yet another Schaub uppercut, sending the younger man’s head bouncing back at a troubling angle. He doesn’t see Schaub faceplant into the mat. Doesn’t see him end his night in a bear hug from referee Herb Dean as his eyes bounce around in their sockets just like Cro Cop’s did that night in New Jersey. Funny, Herb was there for that night too. That was another one that ended with the two of them locked in an awkward embrace. Now it’s Schaub’s turn to wonder what happened. As if the fact that Dean is holding on to him while an entire building full of Brazilians loses its collective mind doesn’t say it all. The cups of beer go sailing effortlessly through the night and land with a plastic crack and sudsy splash on the Octagon apron. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.If Schaub had thought that this was possible, he probably wouldn’t have booked several extra days in Rio after the fight. Those were supposed to be days of celebration and relaxation, and now what? When he’s collected his wits and gone back to the Sheraton for the night, he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. He knows the friends and family he brought along probably want to get out and see the city, even if they’re mostly too polite to say it. And he feels bad, but he just can’t right now. Even three days later, when the crew finally heads to the airport for the long flight home, he’s still thinking about it. He got knocked out by Nogueira and everyone saw. Just thinking about it makes him curse out loud at himself.Later there’ll be plenty of time for second-guessing. What if the Grudge team hadn’t been so shaky during his camp? What if he’d still had Wittman in his corner? What if he’d thrown just one or two fewer uppercuts?You could do this for the rest of your life and it wouldn’t get you anywhere. Maybe you will do it for the rest of your life, whether it helps or not, just out of reflex. Schaub has a ten-hour flight back to the U.S. to think about it. The couldas and shouldas he can leave for later. For now he just hopes Nogueira goes on a run, racks up a decent winning streak. Then, with a little time and perspective, this loss might not look so bad anymore. He’s seen it in action before in this sport, how the future can shape the way we think of the past. The hope of a Nogueira winning streak is perfectly reasonable for someone who doesn’t know that, a little less than four months from now, Big Nog will walk right up to the edge of fulfilling that wish when he nearly knocks out Frank Mir at UFC 140 in Toronto. He has no way of knowing that, instead, Nogueira will get himself stuck in a kimura seconds later. Or that, his pride being what it is, the Brazilian won’t be able to bring himself to tap out before his arm snaps in half. How could he know any of that then, on that long night flight back to his familiar American life? As Schaub cruises at 35,000 feet over the dark blankness of the Amazon, all that is still in the future. All that, plus much, much more. And who’s to say what may come, or what, if anything, you’ll be able to do about it? Who’s to say where you’ll be this time next year? So much can change. It does. It has.

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So you want to run a fight gym, huh? You want the glamorous life of an MMA trainer. You want to drop thousands of dollars on wall-to-wall mats, punching bags of all shapes and sizes, a full-size boxing ring and MMA cage, all so you can spend your days breathing in that stale smell of damp leather and other people’s feet. You want to worry about mold in the vents and staph infection on the mats. Want to go through miles of athletic tape and buckets of disinfectant. Want to hear that sharp dinging of the round timer in your sleep. Want to spend the better part of your waking hours around the kind of people who essentially saw a sign that read, ‘Get Punched in the Face Here!’ and couldn’t pull over fast enough. Really? You’re sure this is the life you want for yourself? Okay, but you’ve got some decisions to make. For starters, you need to decide exactly how you’re going to make enough money to keep the lights on. Because you can be an honest-to-goodness, blood-on-the-floor and belts-on-the-wall fight gym, or you can be a glorified Tae Bo studio that caters to hobbyists who want to lose weight and learn a little self-defense they hope they’ll never have to use. There’s a whole spectrum in between, but the first thing you need to know is that it’s not easy to serve the real fighters and the casuals at the same time. Some might even say it’s impossible, or at least impossible to do well. Others might say that you better think of something that doesn’t include depending on professional fighters to pay your bills. Even when they mean well, so many of them are struggling just to pay their own.Working stiffs have money. The people who sit in a cubicle all day and desperately want to hit someone at night? The people who want to blow off steam in the morning before they get behind the wheel of a delivery truck all afternoon? Those people can afford $150 a month on the unlimited plan, or $75 a month for just a few days a week. Even some of the lower-level, but still competitive fighters with day jobs and big, violent dreams can swing it. You can sign those people up and feel reasonably sure that they’re going to pay you. You get enough of them, you might even start making some real money.You won’t get famous, though. You won’t get the satisfaction of taking a raw talent and molding him into a champion. You won’t get to hang on the cage behind your protege while Bruce Buffer booms out his name on a UFC pay-per-view. You won’t get that high when he wins with the left hook you created for him. You won’t get to smile in the victory posedowns. You won’t get thanked in his post-fight speech. And if no one has heard your name in interviews or seen your face on TV, why do they want to train with you in the first place? What’s so special about your gym?This is the catch-22 for every working fight gym, and the Grudge Training Center is no exception. The up-and-coming pros give you that sense of satisfaction, and the big-timers give you a name. It’s because of guys like Nate Marquardt and Shane Carwin that Grudge can attract new members despite doing almost nothing that could be called advertising. No radio spots. No billboards. No coupons in the Denver Post promising a free month if you sign up now to get in shape for summer. Nothing. Oh, there’s a sandwich board around here somewhere that they can put out on the sidewalk when they think of if, but they usually don’t. That’s because they don’t have to. If you know anything about the MMA scene in Colorado, then you already know Grudge. And the reason you know it is because of the guys who fight on TV, in the UFC, which is also the reason those guys pay no monthly dues at all, according to head trainer Trevor Wittman."Their value, the attention they bring to the gym, that’s enough," says Wittman. "People know, ‘Oh, Brendan Schaub? He trains at Grudge.’"At the same time, Grudge makes certain sacrifices in order to serve its pro fighter clientele. When a guy like Schaub shows up for a 10 a.m. training session with Wittman, he doesn’t want to share the mat with some cardio kickboxing class. He doesn’t want to sign autographs in the locker room or small-talk with a paying member who wants to know, seriously, what Dana White is really like. The gym is his place of business. When he walks through the front door of Grudge and gives Jen Berg that football jock nod of his on his way past the front desk, he is officially at work. He’s got a fight with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira coming up in August. He doesn’t need some guy with a nine-to-five getting in his way. He needs his own time and space. He needs personal attention from Wittman, and he gets it. In exchange, Wittman gets a walking advertisement for his gym, and a ten percent cut of Schaub's fight purse.Trouble is, there are only so many Schaubs out there, and he can only fight so many times a year. As of June, he’s fought just once in 2011. A ten percent cut of his purse for the UFC 128 bout with Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic comes to just $2,800. He rounded up to $4,000 when he wrote the check, he says, but still, is it worth the tradeoff? Is it worth effectively closing the gym to non-pros all morning and most of the afternoon? Is it worth ignoring the paying members in order to spend time with the non-paying ones? Because those cubicle jockeys who come in here at night, they might hardly ever see Wittman. When they’re learning the jab from one his assistant coaches, he’s at home shadow-boxing across the kitchen floor as he makes dinner for his wife and daughter. What if those members decide they’re not getting the full Grudge treatment, and decide to go somewhere else for their martial arts needs? Forget about winning and losing fights for just a second. How are you supposed to pay your rent from one month to the next? (Grudge fighters ease into a Saturday morning sparring session. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)Heading into the summer of 2011, this is the question on Wittman’s mind. His pro fight team is plugging right along, but he’s losing more and more dues-paying members every month, and there aren’t enough new ones walking through the door to make up for it. This leaves Wittman to make some difficult choices. One thing he can do is take time away from the pros to cultivate a relationship with the general population. He can give the average enthusiasts more time and space, and let the pros work with his assistants. But then, he didn’t get into this to be an aerobics instructor. He wants to work with fighters. He wants to be where the real action is. And besides, every head trainer knows how that story ends. You let somebody else handle your fighters often enough, pretty soon it’s someone else in that corner, making that ten percent. Pretty soon the fighter you took from amateurs to the big time is sending you a text message goodbye. Or no goodbye at all. It happens all the time. A trainer has to watch his back.Instead, he could put the squeeze on some of the lower-level pro team members who have been allowed to get a little lax in their payments. But it’s never fun to hassle your friends about money. It leads to uncomfortable situations, such as the one that occurs one Saturday when Wittman’s wife, Christina, who helps run the gym’s front end, is obligated to have an awkward conversation about monthly dues with one Grudge team member and Bellator fighter who looks positively stricken when asked to pay a fee for sparring privileges. It also leads to situations where talented, promising young fighters -- guys who, with some top-notch training and a few lucky breaks, might actually get somewhere -- are told to either sign a gym contract and pay their monthly fee or else find somewhere else to train. And how are you supposed to groom new prospects this way? Computer programmers and middle managers might have $150 a month to spend on gym dues, but a lot of the young men chasing this crazy dream of professional pugilism are doing just enough bar-bouncing or drywall-hanging to get by. They need that money for rent and groceries. If you like their chances to be somebody some day, sure, go ahead and let them ride for free. But then what are you supposed to tell the other guys, like the Bellator fighter? What, you don’t think he’s a worthy investment? And what are you supposed to tell the dues-paying members, who are already subsidizing the careers of some of the people who first attracted them to the gym, whether they realize it or not? The pros are the whole reason they can’t come in and get a workout during their lunch break. Now they’re paying for that privilege, just so they can tell their friends that they use the same heavy bag as these UFC guys?It’s a system with plenty of built-in inequities, and one that every gym struggles with. It’s a unique situation in pro sports. NFL teams don’t share their weight rooms with fans. Major League Baseball teams don’t have to clear off the field to let part-timers get a little batting practice in. But a gym has to make money, and fighters rarely bring in enough of it on their own.On a personal level, Wittman gets by in part thanks to a generous monthly stipend from the Alchemist Management group, which represents him as well as fighters like Schaub, Marquardt, and Eliot Marshall. Officially, the money comes from an endorsement deal with the Alchemist clothing brand, which produces a line of t-shirts that look almost exactly like every other t-shirt brand in the MMA space, and which one almost never sees on anyone except those who are paid to wear them. Wittman also depends on his percentage of fighter purses from the likes of Schaub, Duane Ludwig, Carwin and, of course, Marquardt, who just so happens to have a fight coming up in Pittsburgh at the end of June. Just in time, considering the precarious financial situation. (Nate Marquardt chats with Trevor Wittman and Fareed Samad after a workout. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)For Marquardt, this is shaping up to be a career turning point. After his decision win over Dan Miller at UFC 128 in New Jersey, he announced he’d be dropping to welterweight. That meant, at least temporarily, that he’d be setting aside his hopes for a rematch with UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva, who beat him back in 2007. But Marquardt was already a relatively small middleweight who’d had possibly the easiest weight cut of his career before the Miller fight. It was his pal, UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre, who suggested he consider a move down in weight. Before the UFC would sign off on such a move, however, they wanted an assurance from Marquardt. The UFC wanted to know that, if the situation called for it, he’d be willing to face his friend and occasional training partner for the 170-pound strap. The last thing the UFC needed was another contender who refused to fight a teammate and thus made matchmaking even more of a headache. Marquardt could make the move, the UFC told him, but only if he’d promise upfront to fight GSP if and when the time came."I basically called Georges and told him that’s what they were saying," Marquardt explains after one Saturday morning sparring session at Grudge. "He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it. Say whatever you have to say.’"According to Marquardt, GSP said he planned to be retired or in a new weight class himself by the time such a fight might materialized, so there was no real risk that they’d actually have to fight some day."So I basically had to tell the UFC, ‘Okay, I’ll fight Georges St-Pierre,'" he says.For his first fight at welterweight, Marquardt says he volunteered to step up and take an injured Jon Fitch’s spot against B.J. Penn. When that fight didn’t materialize, the UFC offered him Anthony Johnson, who he’d trained with when they were both filming the MMA movie Warrior. He’d fought guys he’d trained with before, but that was different. That was mostly when he was competing in Japan’s Pancrase organization, and there you knew you’d probably end up fighting your training partners eventually, so you could be careful about what to show them and what to keep under wraps in the gym."Training with Anthony, he was in a different weight class so I didn’t even think about it," he says. "Hanging out with the guy over the five weeks, it’s kind of weird. He’s a cool guy. I like him a lot."Still, business is business. You can’t be friends with everybody, and if he’s willing to take the fight then he must not be overwhelmed by fellow-feeling. As it turned out, it wouldn’t even matter in the end. Johnson would pull out with an injury weeks before the fight, and Rick Story would step up as a replacement opponent for Marquardt. Problem solved. Sort of.For Marquardt, the weeks following his victory in New Jersey aren’t just about dropping weight and training for the next fight. Instead, they’re about testosterone. Specifically, they’re about proving to the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board that he truly needs the testosterone-replacement therapy (TRT) he’s been undergoing since August of 2010.It’s all part of a complicated dance that’s been happening behind the scenes since February of 2011, when Marquardt first alerted the New Jersey commission to the fact that he was undergoing TRT. He applied for a therapeutic-use exemption -- in other words, official permission to use testosterone to bring what his doctor said were chronically low hormone levels to within a "normal" range -- on Feb. 11, according to NJSABC counsel Nick Lembo. But the New Jersey commission was skeptical at first. In part because Marquardt had begun the treatment with his personal physician, who was not a board-certified endocrinologist, and in part because his initial application for a TUE was deemed "incomplete," the New Jersey commission laid out a series of requests that Marquardt had to agree to in order to be licensed for the fight against Miller.For starters, he had to see an actual endocrinologist, and undergo tests both before the fight and on fight night to ensure that he was within acceptable hormone levels. He also had to go off the TRT for two months following the fight, during which he would be tested several more times in order to establish baseline testosterone levels and determine whether he was truly in need of the TRT. Up to this point, things had gone relatively well. Marquardt had met the New Jersey commission’s requirements and passed all the tests. Though his testosterone use was no great secret inside the gym -- and though Wittman was no fan of it -- it was far from public knowledge. He seemed on course to quietly put the New Jersey situation to rest and move on to his next fight in Pennsylvania. But now there’s a problem. After more than two months off TRT, Marquardt starts to feel "even worse than I did the year before," as he will later say in an interview with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani. It’s exactly what many experts warn of with hormone-replacement therapy. Testosterone might not have the side effects that other substances do, but as anti-doping pioneer Dr. Don Catlin says, when you begin taking it, "you take it for life." After being on it for several months, getting off of it in order to satisfy an athletic commission can take a physical toll.And yet, Marquardt doesn’t look like a man depleted during this TRT-free period. During one sparring session, he keeps trying to get Wittman to watch his rounds and give him feedback, but Wittman keeps getting pulled in several directions at once. Marquardt doesn’t seem to feel he’s getting the attention he needs, and his sparring partner, Vinny Lopez, feels the brunt of his frustrations."Sorry about that," Wittman tells Lopez afterward. Lopez, a heavily-tattooed, gregarious middleweight who’s loved by all inside the Grudge gym, just smiles and shrugs. After all, you could do a lot worse than to get beat up by Marquardt. (Marquardt [right] spars with Vinny Lopez as Wittman looks on. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)With about three weeks to go until the Story fight in Pittsburgh, Marquardt is cleared to resume TRT treatments. But instead of going to an endocrinologist who would use World Anti-Doping Agency protocol in treating him, Marquardt goes back to his personal physician, the man who helped him get started on testosterone in the first place, and whose expertise the New Jersey commission had been wary of. Because Marquardt has gone so long without TRT as a condition of the New Jersey licensing issue, this doctor recommends a more "aggressive" treatment to get his levels back up in time for the fight, according to Marquardt.Instead of pills this time, it’s injections. Three of them. All administered by a doctor who is not a board-certified endocrinologist. In hindsight, it’s the kind of thing that seems like such an obviously bad idea, you wonder what anyone was thinking. At the time, however, no one sounds any alarms. It’s not until a blood test reveals high testosterone levels that Marquardt and his management team begin to sweat. That’s when their focus turns to Pittsburgh, to the Story fight, to all the things they need to do to keep this potential crisis contained. Little do they know that their worst-case scenario is about to become a reality.*****If you ask Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission executive director Greg Sirb now, he’ll tell you that his commission doesn’t do therapeutic-use exemptions (TUEs) for testosterone."It won’t happen in PA," he says when, well after the Marquardt episode, I ask him about the protocol for getting a TUE in his state. "There is no such thing."That is to say, there is no such thing in the usual sense. The Pennsylvania commission doesn’t give TUEs, according to Sirb, which also means it doesn’t require or even accept applications for them. Even if the Pennsylvania commission finds out that a fighter has been using testosterone during his training camp -- even if it is told by another commission that this same fighter applied for a TUE there -- it doesn’t matter in the state of Pennsylvania, according to Sirb."As long as he came in underneath what we consider the normal range, he’s fine," Sirb says. "He’d have to come in under the normal range. That means he’d have to be off of it, depending on how much he’s taking, but at least a week [before the fight]."Here’s where the careful reader might ask, what about the weeks before that? What about a month out from the fight, when the hard training is taking place? What about the fighter who is using testosterone that he doesn’t necessarily need, simply to recover faster from those grueling days in the gym? Does he just get a pass?The answer seems to be: pretty much, yeah. As long as he’s stopped using it in time for his levels to come back down to the upper limit of what the PSAC medical board has determined as a "normal range," he can fight. That might be baffling from a regulation standpoint -- Sirb himself admits that testosterone use is a "very, very tough issue for commissions," even if the PSAC has decided to do very little to regulate it -- but it also makes Pennsylvania one of the best states in the union for a fighter like Marquardt to compete in. All he has to do is get his levels down to normal in time for the pre-fight drug test -- something he managed to do in New Jersey with no trouble -- and he gets the green light. In the days leading up to the Story bout on June 26, Marquardt and his team have reason to be optimistic.Though his testosterone levels were high in a blood test earlier that month, once the team is in Pennsylvania for the fight those levels begin to come down in a hurry, according to several sources."We were looking at the numbers and making our own little graphs in our minds, plotting the points and looking at where he’d be by when, and we were like, man, he’s got it," says Kelly Crigger, the staff publicist for the Alchemist Management team at the time. "No problem."Even Wittman, who up to this point has remained mostly in the dark about the details of Marquardt’s testosterone use, is amazed at how quickly the levels change in subsequent blood tests throughout fight week."Seeing how fast those numbers came down really made me think," he’ll say later.Even Sirb, who says he heard from the New Jersey commission about Marquardt’s testosterone use "probably a few weeks before the event" (other reports say it was more like the week of the event), admits he thought it wouldn’t be an issue by the time of the final test on the day of the weigh-ins."I think everybody was pretty confident," says Sirb. "I think something all parties learned was that his levels were definitely coming down, according to the levels we were getting, but he was also cutting weight. When he stopped drinking fluids and he’s trying to cut weight, I think the levels stopped coming down as fast."The Alchemist crew isn’t content to leave something this important to chance. Marquardt’s levels still need to come down, since this is a situation where getting close to the mark doesn’t help. According to Crigger, this is when Alchemist takes a holistic approach to solving the problem."They had me running all over town to get anything they could find, like in Google searches and online, that was supposed to bring down testosterone," says Crigger. "I was running back and forth to the grocery store. It was Brazil nuts and coconut water and almond milk -- all these homeopathic cures for high testosterone."At the same time, this is still Marquardt’s first fight at welterweight in the UFC. Back when he was a small middleweight, maybe he would have had the luxury of some almond milk in the days before the weigh-in. But this is something he hasn’t factored into his weight-cut regimen."I take all this [expletive] to Nate’s room, and he hasn’t opened the first item," says Crigger. "Like, if Brazil nuts bring your levels down, you’d think he’d be chawing on them like there’s no tomorrow. He hadn’t even opened the pack. Coconut water and almond milk and all this stuff I bring back, he hadn’t even touched."To make matters worse, the team has to keep going back and forth from the hotel to the hospital for blood tests, and all in downtown Pittsburgh traffic. It’s an added fight week stress that nobody needs. As the day of the weigh-ins approaches, it’s clear that this is going to be a tight. Marquardt’s wife and kids are there. So are his sponsors. The whole Alchemist team is in crisis mode, and CEO MC Hammer is flying in for this."To [Alchemist manager] Lex [McMahon’s] credit, he was cool under pressure," says Crigger. "There was a lot going on, and he was handling it, staying cool."The day of the weigh-ins, McMahon is calling for test results every few minutes. The lab is working on it, they say. The final numbers -- the ones that will determine whether Marquardt gets to fight or not -- aren’t in yet. Hold please.Back at the hotel, Marquardt waits to hear his fate and tries to keep going about his normal pre-fight preparations. As Crigger and McMahon are driving to the hospital one more time, McMahon gets the email on his phone. It is not good news. The levels are too high. Still too much testosterone. It’s a no-go. (Lex McMahon consoles Marquardt backstage at the UFC on Versus 4 weigh-ins. Photo courtesy of Kelly Crigger)McMahon doesn’t want Marquardt to hear it over the phone. Better to do it in person. At the weigh-ins at Heinz Field later that afternoon, the Marquardt team and Pennsylvania commission officials all come together with the UFC. Something has to be done. The PSAC isn’t budging from its standard. The number (which no one will reveal, citing medical privacy laws) remains the number. Marquardt is still above it, and this all that matters as far as the state of Pennsylvania is concerned."Like a good manager should, [McMahon] tried everything he could to get Nate to fight," says Crigger. "I mean, everything. Sirb said no. [McMahon] even went to the doctor who was doing the medical checks for all the fighters and said, ‘Hey, what do you think of these testosterone levels?’ This doctor was like...‘That’s nothing. I deal with professional football players whose testosterone is triple that.’ I was like, first of all, really? Are they rhinos? But still, suddenly there was hope."That hope is quickly dashed by Sirb and the Pennsylvania commission. They’d set their number and Marquardt missed. He’s out. No fight for him. That means no paycheck. That means no ten percent for Wittman. That means angry sponsors. That means confused and disappointed fans. That means the uncomfortable questions are only just beginning, and he still has to face the UFC president.Oh, God. Dana White. What’s he going to say? Backstage at the weigh-ins, Marquardt and McMahon wait to find out. The day before, when Crigger and Marquardt discussed the possibility that he might be pulled from the bout, the fighter was "shaking and in tears." Now he seems numb, like it hasn’t completely sunk in. What will they tell the fans? Exactly how mad is White going to be?McMahon tries to keep everyone calm as they wait to find out. Maybe he can still talk his way out of this. Then there he is, the UFC president, and he’s on his way over here. Does he look pleased? He does not. The team braces itself and waits. This is going to be bad. That much they can tell just from looking at White. What they don’t know yet is how bad. What they can’t possibly know is just how much things are about to change.

Posted in: ufc, fight, time, fighter, marquardt

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"Right when he was first exiled, or kicked out of the UFC, whatever you want to call it, cut from the UFC, MC Hammer is in his team. He called me up and asked me if we could meet in [Los Angeles], so I met him there, we had dinner. He was lobbying to get Marquardt back in and I said, 'Ya know, I love you man, but he's gotta get out there and fight in other shows.' He opted to not fight in any other shows. He wanted to sit out and he wanted to be back in the UFC. So we talked, we're putting him back in Strikeforce and we'll see what happens. I like Nate Marquardt, he's a really good guy. But professionally, he needs to get his shit together. He needs to come into Strikeforce and he needs to make weight, he needs to pass all the tests and do all the other shit, so we'll see how it goes." Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White updates Millad Salehivand on the status of former UFC Middleweight number one contender Nate Marquardt, who was re-signed to compete in Strikeforce after getting cut by the world's largest fight promotion last June. Despite flirting with BAMMA, "The Great" never competed outside of the Octagon and was able to wait for the right opportunity to prove to his former boss that he deserves a second chance. He'll get one as a 170-pounder, but only if he makes weight and passes his medicals, which cost him his job once already. Anyone think he's here to stay? Or one and done?

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, he, marquardt, right opportunity

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It looks like Strikeforce finally has a plan in place regarding their vacant welterweight title. According to a report on this week’s episode of UFC Tonight, Nate Marquardt has been signed to fight at 170 pounds in Strikeforce and will likely make his debut later this year in a championship clash with unbeaten contender Tyron Woodley. No specific or even general date was mentioned for the match-up. Marquardt made a name for himself in the UFC where he even competed on the organization’s first Fight Night in 2005. He was last seen in the Octagon a little less than a year ago where he beat Dan Miller. However, Marquardt was cut a few months later after showing an elevated level of testosterone leading up to a scheduled bout. He has not fought since despite signing a deal with BAMMA. Marquardt Explains his Side of the Story Pertaining to UFC Release Among the numerous instances of notable success for Marquardt are wins over Martin Kampmann, Rousimar Palhares, Kazuo Misaki, and Demian Maia. “Nate the Great” holds an overall record of 31-10 with 23 stoppages including ten TKOs and thirteen submissions. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC Tweet

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, nate, nate marquardt, marquardt

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Nate Marquardt is an enigma. He has an unshakable faith in Jesus, but he doesn’t hesitate to bend the rules a bit in order to try to break his opponent’s neck. He is the sweetest, meekest, most soft-spoken guy in the world, but he is juiced out his ass AND his balls. Now, adding further to the enigma, Dana White believes that Nate Marquardt is “disgusting and has no business fighting” for Zuffa, but he will be returning to the Zuffa-Forza promotional umbrella, likely fighting for the Strikeforce welterweight title against Tyron Woodley later this year. This is a very good development for Marquardt, who is probably itching for a paycheck. He was cock teased by BAMMA for several months without ever actually fighting for them, and he is a pretty generous guy (when I went to his gym as a guest, he refused to even charge me a drop-in fee,) so he deserves to be able to make some money fighting. It remains to be seen how Marquardt will withstand the cut to 170 pounds, but he really had nowhere to go in the UFC middleweight division. Ergo, Strikeforce is not a bad place for him to end up. This move also lends Strikeforce some much-needed talent. Maybe this was Dana White’s grand plan for Strikeforce once it “handed over the reigns”: to turn it into Australia. If you’re “disgusting”, have bad BO, got hit with your second steroid suspension, or throw sucker punches, they can send you to the promotion where all the misfits earn their bread. Some pretty good fighters are misfits, so I would watch this. They could invite Renato “The Asshole” Sobral back under these auspices (David Heath shouldn’t have called him “motherf*cker” anyway.) Heck, they could even decorate the venues like Mos Eisley Cantina and invite Amanda Lucas over for the party.

Posted in: strikeforce, nate, doesn ’t, nate marquardt, marquardt

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Only eight months after receiving his UFC walking papers, Nate Marquardt has become a member of the Strikeforce roster.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, nate, member, marquardt

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Imagine this scenario. You move in to a new apartment and instantly start to discover odd things. First, the previous tenants have left behind an Elvis mug. Who knows why? Next, taking the pictures off the wall you notice they have also sellotaped pictures of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the back. Finally, you find Mormon pamphlets in one of the cupboards. The feeling of living in someone else’s house is strong and unsettling but hey, don’t let that stop you drinking out of an idolater’s Elvis mug. That’s the best metaphor I can come up with to describe the situation that Nate Marquardt is now in as he moves into Tyron Woodley’s house, the Strikeforce 170lb division, where Woodley has declared himself the unofficial champion. As reported on Fuel TV’s UFC Tonight show last night, Marquardt has signed with Strikeforce and has verbally agreed to face Woodley in a bout one would expect to be for the vacant welterweight belt, rumored to do down in May. For those that do not know, after his fight with Yoshiyuki Yoshida, along with the whole BAMMA 9 event was pulled from a February 11th date, Nate and his manager Lex McMahon negotiated an amicable split with the British promotion in order to find fights elsewhere. This Strikeforce contract comes eight months after losing his job with the UFC and ten months after his last fight, a unanimous decision win over Dan Miller. Credit to Obilo Nwokogba for the banner image.

Posted in: fight, strikeforce, nate, marquardt, woodley

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In June, the UFC cut middleweight Nate Marquardt after he could not get medical clearance to fight at UFC on Versus 4 just hours before he was scheduled to weigh in. Now, he is back in the Zuffa fold, as … Continue reading →

Posted in: ufc, fight, yahoo sports, marquardt, tyron woodley

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It appears Strikeforce has strayed from the norm, signing notable free agent Nate Marquardt in hopes of strengthening the organization’s roster by inking a legitimate contender with name value. Marquardt brings both experience and ability with him, jp;domg numerous wins against respected adversaries including Rousimar Palhares, Martin Kampmann, Dan Miller, and Demian Maia. News of the 32-year old’s signing was confirmed on this week’s episode of UFC Tonight. He is expected to debut against Tyron Woodley with divisional gold on the line. Marquardt has been out of action for nearly a year after enduring an unfortunate mixture of injuries and contractual issues. He was released by the UFC relating to his use of doctor-prescribed testosterone, essentially being banished at the time, then signed with BAMMA before parting ways with the British promotion based on the company’s overall inactivity. “Nate the Great” holds an overall record of 31-10 with 23 stoppages while only having been finished a single time himself in more than seven years. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC

Posted in: ufc, year, nate, marquardt, tyron woodley

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After being released from the UFC last summer, and a failed stint with BAMMA that never saw him fight, Nate Marquardt has returned to Zuffa – with Strikeforce.

Posted in: strikeforce, zuffa, marquardt, zuffa signs, zuffa –

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Onetime UFC middleweight challenger Nate Marquardt is back in the fold, under the Zuffa banner. Eight months after he was released from his UFC contract, Marquardt has signed with the Zuffa-owned Strikeforce, as announced on the Tuesday edition of "UFC Tonight" on FUEL TV. Additional MMAjunkie.com sources indicated that Marquardt will likely make his Strikeforce debut as a welterweight against contender Tyron Woodley. Verbal agreements are in place for the matchup, though a date has yet to be set.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, nate marquardt, marquardt, tyron woodley

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#BREAKING: @arielhelwani announced on #UFCTONIGHT - former #UFC Middleweight @NathanMarquardt has signed to @Strikeforce.about 4 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite@FUELTVFUEL TV Dana White has had a change of heart about Nate Marquardt. Well, sorta. Marquardt is officially back in the Zuffa fold, just not in the UFC. Ariel Helwani reported earlier this evening on FUEL TV’s UFC Tonight that Marquardt has signed with Strikeforce to compete in their welterweight division. The news was confirmed by Dana White. Shortly after the announcement, Marquardt thanked Dana and Lorenzo Fertitta for giving him another chance. @danawhite @lorenzofertitta thanks so much for the opportunity to prove myself!! I can’t wait!!! Marquardt signed with the UK BAMMA organization shortly after his controversial UFC firing, but eventually got his release after his first two fights were delayed. Marquardt hasn’t fought since he defeated Dan Miller at UFC 128 nearly a year ago. Marquardt’s signing will undoubtedly beef up Strikeforce’s welterweight roster that includes the likes of Paul Daley, Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos, Tyron Woodley, Tarec Saffiedine, Kazou Misaki and Roger Bowling. Interestingly, Daley just recently proclaimed that he would have the vacant Strikeforce welterweight title belt over his shoulder in six months time. Unfortunately for him, his competition for that title just got much stiffer.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, welterweight, marquardt, lorenzo fertitta

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Nate Marquardt is finally making his return to MMA. After being released by the UFC last June, Marquardt was set to return to action with England’s BAMMA organization. However, after multiple delays, Marquardt was released from the organization. Now he is set to return to Zuffa, but this time under the Strikeforce banner. Marquardt was released last June just hours before he was set to make his welterweight debut at UFC on Versus 4 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Marquardt was unable to gain clearance to fight due to his hormone replacement therapy use. After the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission announced the decision, UFC President Dana White released Marquardt from the organization. He last fought at UFC 128 in March 2011, defeating Dan Miller via unanimous decision. The veteran of 14 UFC fights, Marquardt debuted for the organization at Ultimate Fight Night in August 2005. His UFC career got off to a rocky start, with Marquardt testing positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, following his debut. But he never failed another drug test following his first issue, and did not run into any problems until his release from the UFC. Marquardt is expected to make his Strikeforce debut against Tyron Woodley, with the matchup expected to be for the currently vacant Strikeforce welterweight championship. Stay tuned to MMAFrenzy.com regarding the full announcement of Marquardt’s signing with Strikeforce.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, return, organization, marquardt

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MMA Fighting reports that Nate Marquardt has returned to fight under the Zuffa banner with Strikeforce. The welterweight’s signing ends an exile that began last June when he was dismissed on the eve of his main event against Rick Story. Post-UFC Marquardt signed with UK promotion BAMMA but never fought for the company. His last fight was a win in the UFC last March. Adding Marquardt to the Strikeforce roster provides some notoriety and depth to the company’s welterweight division. Marquardt’s return was announced on Fuel TV’s “UFC Tonight.” Payout Perspective: Marquardt’s dismissal was due to elevated testosterone levels claimed to be related to hormone replacement therapy. While Marquardt’s departure from the UFC was somewhat messy, his return to Zuffa is beneficial for both. For Strikeforce, it provides the roster with a notable figure that can spark the welterweight division. For Marquardt, its a second chance with Zuffa and leaves open the possibility of returning to the UFC. The one issue that may hinder Marquardt is the potential stigma that he was terminated from the UFC due to PED use. Marquardt has not had a fight since last March so no one knows how he will be when he returns.

Posted in: ufc, return, zuffa, marquardt, marquardt returns

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Middleweight mixed martial arts fighter Nate Marquardt has signed with Strikeforce.

Posted in: strikeforce, middleweight, art, marquardt, strikeforce middleweight

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Middleweight mixed martial arts fighter Nate Marquardt has signed with Strikeforce.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, star, marquardt, strikeforce signs

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Get ready, Paul Daley and Tyron Woodley because former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight number one contender Nate Marquardt has been added to the Strikeforce welterweight roster. The announcement was made tonight (Feb. 21, 2012) on Fuel TV's weekly "UFC Tonight" program. An opponent and a date for his long-awaited 170-pound debut has yet to be announced, but now it appears that it will finally happen after months on the sidelines and between mixed martial arts (MMA) promotions. Marquardt, who just last month requested and received his release from the U.K.-based UK BAMMA organization after never stepping foot inside the cage, was fired furiously from the UFC in June 2010 for failing his pre-fight medical exam prior to the UFC on Versus 4. More on this breaking news shortly.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce banner, marquardt, tyron woodley, fuel tvs

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Former UFC middleweight Nate Marquardt has signed with Strikeforce. The move was announced by Ariel Helwani on tonight's episode of UFC Tonight on Fuel. Fuel TV's twitter account verified the news as well: @FUELTVFUEL TV #BREAKING: @arielhelwani announced on #UFCTONIGHT - former #UFC Middleweight @NathanMarquardt has signed to @Strikeforce. Feb 22 via web Favorite Retweet Reply Marquardt, who went 10-4 in his middleweight run in the UFC, was released by the promotion shortly before UFC on Versus 4, where he was going to make his welterweight debut against Rick Story. Marquardt had issues with his testosterone replacement therapy and couldn't get his levels under the Pennsyvlania Athletic Commission's set limit, which forced Dana White to remove him from the fight (and the company) and replace him with Charlie Brenneman. Nate had signed with BAMMA a few months ago, but card delays led to him never fighting for the organization. He was released from his contract with them a few weeks ago, and will now join Strikeforce. It is unclear at this point if he will be competing at 185 or 170.

Posted in: ufc, strikeforce, nate, middleweight, marquardt

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Nate Marquardt is back in the Zuffa family. Less than a year after his departure from UFC, Marquardt has signed a new deal with Strikeforce to compete in their welterweight division.

Posted in: strikeforce, nate, marquardt, zuffa family, ufc marquardt

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Nate Marquardt's professional purgatory is over. One of the MMA world's top free agents, the veteran has been signed by Zuffa, but in a surprise move, inked to the UFC's sister promotion Strikeforce.The signing, confirmed by Zuffa's Dana White, was reported on Tuesday's edition of FUEL TV's "UFC Tonight."Marquardt, a perennial top 10 middleweight during a six-year run in the UFC, is expected to compete as a welterweight in Strikeforce. The 32-year-old hasn't fought since last March, when he earned a unanimous decision victory over Dan Miller at UFC 128. One of the more bizarre episodes in UFC history led to his release. In June 2011, Marquardt seemed set to make his welterweight debut in a match against Rick Story, but on the day of weigh-ins, he was denied a fighter's license by the Pennsylvania state athletic commission after failing to satisfy the requirements for a therapeutic use exemption for hormone replacement therapy. He was immediately cut from the organization by White.Just about one month later, Marquardt signed with UK promotion BAMMA, making him the highest-profile fighter in the organization's short history. As it turns out, he never actually fought in their cage.After Marquardt's BAMMA debut was delayed twice by the promotion, the two sides parted ways in January, allowing Marquardt to explore other opportunities. While UFC president Dana White said in the aftermath of the Marquardt firing that Marquardt would never fight for the UFC again, he never closed the door on a possible Strikeforce signing. Just last month, White seemed to acknowledge that he was open to a Marquardt return, saying "I don't dislike Nate. I like Nate very much. We'll see what happens."What happened is a return into the Zuffa family, where Marquardt will be a welcome addition to a division that is clearly lacking in veteran star power. Aside from Tyron Woodley, top fighters in the division include Tarec Saffiedine, Jordan Mein and Jason High.

Posted in: ufc, promotion, nate, zuffa, marquardt

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Posted in: strikeforce, division, lb, marquardt, sutmy

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UFC president Dana White told reporters at the UFC on Fox 2 post-press conference media scrum that he is not ready to reconsider Anthony Johnson in the UFC or Strikeforce but he appeared to be slightly more open to a return by Nate Marquardt. MMA Fighting got White's statements: "(Johnson) needs to go fight somewhere else, get some wins, come in on weight," White said of Johnson. "He needs to prove to me that he can be a professional, show up on weight and do the things he needs to do. If he does, we can talk." When asked about Marquardt, however, White sounded open to the possibility that he could re-sign with the UFC. ... White was furious at the time, but several months later he sounds willing to forgive and forget. "I don't dislike Nate," White said. "I like Nate very much. We'll see what happens." Johnson was fired from the UFC after missing weight by 11 pounds at his UFC 142 co-main event bout against Vitor Belfort. Ironically that was Johnson's first fight at middleweight after struggling to make the 170lb welterweight limit in several previous fights. It was the third time Johnson missed weight for a UFC bout. Marquardt was fired from the organization right before a scheduled UFC on Versus 4 bout against Rick Story due to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission refusing to license him for the fight. The PSAC's actions stemmed from Marquardt failing a blood test commissioned by the New Jersey State Athletic Commission who were following up on Marquardt's previous bout against Dan Miller at UFC 128. Marquardt had been allowed to use Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) before that bout and the commission was following up to monitor his hormone levels. Ironically Johnson and Marquardt were originally scheduled to meet at UFC on Versus 4 but Johnson had to drop out due to injuries. Marquardt signed with the UK's Bamma promotion but they were unable to put a fight together for him and he has been released from his contract.

Posted in: ufc, fight, bout, johnson, marquardt

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Filed under: UFCCHICAGO -- UFC President Dana White confirmed on Thursday that Anthony Johnson has been released from the UFC and won't be welcome back until he can prove that he has put his weight problems behind him. But White wasn't quite so adamant that another fighter he released, Nate Marquardt, wouldn't be welcome to return to the Octagon. With Johnson, White said missing weight by 11 pounds at UFC 142 made it clear that he doesn't belong in the UFC. White also specifically ruled out the possibility of Johnson fighting for Strikeforce, and said that Johnson needs to go to another promotion, make weight and win fights before the UFC would consider giving him another chance. "He needs to go fight somewhere else, get some wins, come in on weight," White said of Johnson. "He needs to prove to me that he can be a professional, show up on weight and do the things he needs to do. If he does, we can talk." When asked about Marquardt, however, White sounded open to the possibility that he could re-sign with the UFC. Marquardt last fought at UFC 128 in March, defeating Dan Miller, but was cut by the UFC after his testosterone replacement therapy resulted in a high testosterone count, causing the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission to cancel his fight. White was furious at the time, but several months later he sounds willing to forgive and forget. "I don't dislike Nate," White said. "I like Nate very much. We'll see what happens." White and Johnson were originally scheduled to fight each other in the main event of the UFC on Versus card in August, before Johnson pulled out with an injury and before Marquardt ran into his trouble with the Pennsylvania Commission. Both fighters are now free agents, which means that if another promotion wants to sign them, it could book a fight worthy of being a UFC main event. But if one of those free agents signs with the UFC this year, it sounds like it's going to be Marquardt. White may eventually forgive and forget with Johnson, but that won't happen any time soon. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Posted in: ufc, fight, johnson, weight, marquardt

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It looks like former UFC middleweight Nate Marquardt is once again a free agent after deciding to split from British organization BAMMA even though he had yet to actually fight under the company’s banner. Marquardt’s decision was the result of his debut being pushed back for a second time after the organization recently decided to move BAMMA 9 from February 11 to March 24. Marquardt, who was set to face Yoshiyuki Yoshida at the show, has not fought since March 2011 when he beat Dan Miller via decision at UFC 128. He was supposed to face Rick Story at welterweight a few months later at a UFC Live event but was unable to receive medical clearance due to an elevated testosterone level and was released from his contract shortly thereafter. The situation with BAMMA is no doubt disappointing to Marquardt who expressed his excitement over fighting in the U.K. during a recent conversation with Five Ounces of Pain. “The British fans have been very receptive to me,” explained Marquardt. “I think the fans over there are very passionate and one of the loudest crowds you’ll ever see…I went over there in August and was very well received.” The 32-year old was also itching to fight again, likely adding to his frustration over BAMMA’s delay and prompting his decision to look for a greener pasture. “I just want to fight the best in the world,” said Marquardt. “To me it doesn’t matter who it is, what organization it is, I just want to fight the best. There are a lot of guys out there who are top level fighters that I’m going to be able to fight and those are the guys I want to fight.” No news has surfaced on what Marquardt may do next. He holds an overall record of 31-10-2 including past wins in the Octagon over respected adversaries such as Martin Kampmann, Demian Maia, and Rousimar Palhares. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC (Written with the assistance of Bryan Levick)

Posted in: ufc, fight, decision, bamma, marquardt

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Former UFC middleweight contender Nate Marquardt will not begin his career outside the UFC with BAMMA. The England-based promotion has released him from his contract.

Posted in: ufc, nate, bamma, marquardt, englandbased promotion

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Nate Marquardt and British promotion BAMMA have parted ways before they ever actually started to work together.

Posted in: way, nate, nate marquardt, bamma, marquardt

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As reported by MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani, Nate Marquardt has cut ties with UK-based BAMMA and, in so doing, has stepped away from his fight with fellow UFC veteran Yoshiyuki Yoshida. The bout would have served as Marquardt's first with the organization. Marquardt and Yoshida were slated to face off at a BAMMA event this February 11. However, with news that the event would be pushed back to March, organization officials and Marquardt, whose promotional debut was already once delayed, have decided that free agency would be in the best interest of the perennial contender. From Helwani's piece, BAMMA CEO David Green gives comment: "It is important to note that the decision to remove Nate from the BAMMA 8 card and to reschedule BAMMA 9 in no way is a result of any actions taken by him. Nate was originally to feature on the BAMMA 8 card in December and with this current date change it is only fair for us at this stage to honor Nate's contract agreement and allow him to look for fights outside of the BAMMA promotion. "I cannot speak highly enough of the professional manner in which Nate Marquardt and his team have conducted themselves. They have been an absolute pleasure to work with and we are just disappointed that we have not been able to work out a way to seeing Nate take his place on the BAMMA 9 card." Marquardt last fought in March of 2011, earning a unanimous decision over Dan Miller. An anticipated welterweight debut last year ended in disaster when he was cited by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission for abnormally high testosterone levels. As a result, Marquardt was removed from his headlining spot at the eleventh hour and dismissed from the UFC. He hasn't fought since the release. With BAMMA off the agenda, and Strikeforce now a Zuffa promotion that isn't likely to recruit the embattled Marquardt, there aren't too many more options for the former UFC title challenger. At this point, it seems that Bellator is Marquardt's best option. Between the likes of Hector Lombard, Alexander Schlemenko, and Bryan Baker at 185, and Ben Askren, Jay Hieron, and Douglas Lima at 170, I'd say the organization plays host to a strong cast of both middleweight and welterweight opposition, and it likely offers the best chance for Marquardt to regain his relevancy in the sport.

Posted in: ufc, nate, bamma, marquardt, pennsylvania state

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Well that was quick and painless. Nate Marquardt has been released from his BAMMA contract. He requested the release and it was granted immediately. This means "The Great" accumulated an outstanding record of 0-0 in his time with the promotion. MMAFighting.com helps us out with some of the details: According to Marquardt's manager Lex McMahon, the UK-based BAMMA has agreed to release Marquardt from his contract following the organization's decision to delay their ninth event from Feb. 11 to March 24. Marquardt was scheduled to fight Yoshiyuki Yoshida in the main event of BAMMA 9 for the organization's welterweight title. This marks the second time BAMMA has delayed Marquardt's promotional debut, as he was originally scheduled to fight for BAMMA in December. Can't blame the guy for not wanting to wait around for a fight any longer. After all, he hasn't competed professionally since March 19, 2011, when he earned a unanimous decision victory over Dan Miller at UFC 128. Speaking of the devil, this opens the door to the return of the "Bring Back Nate" campaign, initially started in an attempt to convince UFC President Dana White to forgive Marquardt for his transgressions and allow him back into the world's largest fight promotion. Possible? Sure. Likely? No. If you remember, Marquardt was released after it was determined his testosterone levels were too high and he was pulled from the UFC on Versus 4 main event just one night before it was scheduled to go down. A sh*tstorm ensued and White angrily released him from the promotion, claiming we would never see him inside the Octagon again. Time heals all wounds and all that, so stay tuned for any updates on Marquardt's mixed martial arts (MMA) status.

Posted in: fight, nate marquardt, bamma, marquardt, bamma contract

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Filed under: MMA Fighting Exclusive, News, BAMMANate Marquardt's run in BAMMA has come to an end before it ever really started. According to Marquardt's manager Lex McMahon, the UK-based BAMMA has agreed to release Marquardt from his contract following the organization's decision to delay their ninth event from Feb. 11 to March 24. Marquardt was scheduled to fight Yoshiyuki Yoshida in the main event of BAMMA 9 for the organization's welterweight title. This marks the second time BAMMA has delayed Marquardt's promotional debut, as he was originally scheduled to fight for BAMMA in December. "Nate is disappointed that he has not been able to fight for BAMMA and the UK fans," McMahon said. "However, given the situation that BAMMA removed him as the headliner from BAMMA 8 and have elected to reschedule BAMMA 9 to March 24, 2012 all parties concerned feel that it is in Nate's best interest to explore other options at this stage. Nate is one of the best fighters in the world and looks forward to fighting the best competition possible. Both Nate and I wish BAMMA all the best in their future endeavors." The 32-year-old Marquardt signed with BAMMA in July, following his release from the UFC in June. Marquardt was released from the UFC one day before his main event fight against Rick Story after the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission ruled that his testosterone levels were above the approved limit. After a brief suspension by the commission, Marquardt was cleared to fight anywhere in the world, and he chose the upstart BAMMA organization. Unfortunately, Marquardt (31-10-2) never had the opportunity to fight for the promotion due to reasons beyond his control. "The decision to move the BAMMA 9 event to March 24, 2012, was taken in the interests of the BAMMA promotion as a whole and we believe that this will result in the strongest BAMMA event to date," BAMMA CEO David Green said in a statement provided to MMAFighting.com by McMahon. "It is important to note that the decision to remove Nate from the BAMMA 8 card and to reschedule BAMMA 9 in no way is a result of any actions taken by him. Nate was originally to feature on the BAMMA 8 card in December and with this current date change it is only fair for us at this stage to honor Nate's contract agreement and allow him to look for fights outside of the BAMMA promotion. "I cannot speak highly enough of the professional manner in which Nate Marquardt and his team have conducted themselves. They have been an absolute pleasure to work with and we are just disappointed that we have not been able to work out a way to seeing Nate take his place on the BAMMA 9 card." So once BAMMA informed McMahon that they would be delaying Marquardt's promotional debut for a second time, McMahon asked for Marquardt to be released from his contract, which BAMMA obliged to do. As a result of his release from the organization, Marquardt is now free to fight for any other promotion as soon as possible, and while McMahon declined to comment where and when we'll see the former UFC middleweight contender fight next, he said, "Nate's exploring his options and we're excited about the future." Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Posted in: fight, mcmahon, nate, bamma, marquardt

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June was a return to action after a May relatively devoid of in-cage action and what a return it was. MMA fans were treated to a contender-rich UFC card, the semifinals of the Strikeforce Grand Prix, a UFC on Versus card, Bellator kicking off its Summer Series and there was plenty of controversy involving Nate Marquardt and Joe Rogan that had the industry and fans talking. June 2011 - Earning Their Shots Junior dos Santos originally had been tabbed to fight then-UFC Champion Cain Velasquez, but a shoulder injury forced the champion to turn the match down. JDS then accepted a match with Brock Lesnar and they signed on for The Ultimate Fighter's 13th season as coaches but medical issues forced Lesnar to pull out of the match. Shane Carwin was asked to faced Santos in a No. 1 contender's match where Dos Santos picked Carwin apart and emphatically earned his shot at UFC gold. On that same card, Kenny Florian made his debut at 145 and won a narrow victory over Diego Nunes, earning him a title shot against Jose Aldo. Mark Munoz survived being rocked and a back crucifix attack against Demian Maia, earning a victory and entry into the upper tier of middleweights. On the Strikeforce side, Alistar Overeem won what would his final promotional match in a less than thrilling scrap with Fabricio Werdum, while in Bellator, Pat Curran dropped down to featherweight and looked like a force of nature when he slapped a Peruvian Necktie on a Peruvian fighter. **** UFC on Versus 4 was meant to highlight the UFC welterweight division, pairing the up-and-comer Rick Story against veteran Nate Marquardt who was making his welterweight debut. But the fight never happened as Marquardt failed his medical exams due to abnormal testosterone levels and was cut from the UFC. Local favorite Charlie Brenneman was called on to replace Marquardt on a few hours notice and then proceeded to upset Story. Marquardt would later break his silence on Ariel Helwani's MMA Hour show, addressing why he was cut and sparking a debate on the role of TRT in MMA. **** UFC color commentator Joe Rogan decided to weigh in on a twitter outburst of Rampage Jackson, posting on a popular online forum and using some choice language when referring to Yahoo reporter Maggie Hendricks. This situation caused enough outcry for Dana White to issue an official statement and Rogan issued an apology. **** Strikeforce heavyweight Brett Rogers was arrested in late-June and was charged with domestic assault after police accused Rogers of striking his wife and then choking her. Rogers had just lost to Josh Barnett and was out of the Strikeforce Grand Prix. His new boss White reacted quickly, releasing Rogers immediately. More on the month that was June after the jump... Other Things that Happened In an Strikeforce Grand Prix alternate bout, Daniel Cormier had an impressive decision win over Jeff Monson that would later prove to be important...Fans were once again teased by the prospect of MMA in New York as a bill passed the New York State Assembly that included legalizing MMA. Just fourteen days later, the bill was dead and all parties continue to wait for resolution. Rumors were abound that the UFC was looking to purchase the G4 Network and turn it into their own network...at the TUF 13 Finale, Clay Gudia defeated Anthony Pettis and Tony Ferguson became the season winner....Robert Drysdale notched MMA victory #3 at AFC 6...the IBJJF World Championships were held. Full archive of June stories on Bloody Elbow Past Monthly Recaps: May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

Posted in: ufc, mma, strikeforce, june, marquardt

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In this intimate portait Nate Marquardt shares his key drivers, motivation and ambitions as he debuts at BAMMA 9 against the feared striker Yoshiyuki Yoshida.

Posted in: nate, nate marquardt, motivation, marquardt, drivers motivation

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Former UFC contender Nate Marquardt has an opponent for his BAMMA debut, as “Nate the Great” will face Yoshiyuki Yoshida at BAMMA 9 on February 11 from the LG Arena in Birmingham, England. Marquardt was rumored to have been set to face Paul Daley, but terms could not be worked out between the two sides. Both have made mention of wanting to fight each other in numerous interviews and press events since Marquardt was released by the UFC and signed to the England-based promotion. After failing to receive medical clearance by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission before his UFC Live 4 main event fight with Rick Story, Marquardt was released from the UFC. It was later found out that a prescribed testosterone led to Marquardt’s positive test, but his hormone levels were higher than the commission had set for him. “Although we had planned for Nate’s first fight to be in December, we believe it is worth waiting a further eight weeks for such a great matchup,” BAMMA CEO David Green stated in a release. Marquardt is 31-10-2 in his career, including a loss to Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title. He also lost two eliminator bouts that would have led to rematches with Silva, dropping decisions to Yushin Okami and Chael Sonnen. Yoshida (13-6) competed for the UFC previously, as well, going 2-4. Three straight losses to Anthony Johnson, Mike Guymon, and Chris Lozano led to his release. The fight is expected to be for the BAMMA’s vacant welterweight title. PHOTO CREDIT – UFC

Posted in: ufc, nate, bamma, marquardt, bamma debut

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Nate Marquardt will finally make his return to the sport in February when he faces Yoshiyuki Yoshida for the vacant BAMMA welterweight title, according to a press release from the promotion. He had been expected to fight at BAMMA 8, which takes place on December 10th, but his debut was pushed back for reasons unknown. A rumored bout with Paul Daley apparently couldn't come together. Marquardt was famously released from the UFC the day before his scheduled welterweight debut in a bout with Rick Story at UFC on Versus 4 due to elevated testosterone levels. He had been on testosterone replacement therapy at the time, but something went wrong and he couldn't get his levels down to an allowable level by the time the weigh-ins rolled around. Charlie Brenneman stepped in on very shot notice and ended up defeating Story. Instead, he'll make his welterweight debut against Yoshida on February 11th in Birmingham, England.  Yoshida is coming off a decision win over Phil Baroni and the first One FC event in September.

Posted in: welterweight, bamma, welterweight debut, marquardt, yoshida

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Nate Marquardt's BAMMA debut will wait for now. Once targeted to meet Paul Daley at the upcoming BAMMA 8 event, Marquardt, a onetime UFC middleweight title challenger, will now headline BAMMA 9 opposite UFC vet Yoshiyuki Yoshida. Promotion officials today announced that BAMMA 9 is set for Feb. 11 at LG Arena in Birmingham, England, which is the site of this weekend's UFC 138 event.

Posted in: ufc, paul daley, bamma, birmingham england, marquardt

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Not so "Great" news from the United Kingdom. Former UFC middleweight number one contender Nate Marquardt will no longer be making his UK debut at BAMMA 8 from the Capital FM Arena on Dec. 10, 2011, in Nottingham, England. Says BAMMA: Top ranked fighter Nate Marquardt was originally expected to make his BAMMA debut at BAMMA 8 but is now confirmed to face UFC veteran Yoshiyuki Yoshida at BAMMA 9 on February 11th at LG Arena in Birmingham. David Green, CEO at BAMMA stated, "We are very excited to announce what we believe to be a great headline fight for the fans at BAMMA 9 for the World Welterweight Title. Yoshiyuki Yoshida is a UFC, Bellator, and One FC veteran who comes with notable wins over the likes of Dan Hardy, War Machine and Phil Baroni. Both Yoshiyuki and Nate are very excited about fighting at BAMMA 9 and although we had planned for Nate's first fight to be in December, we believe it is worth waiting a further 8 weeks for such a great match up." It may indeed be worth waiting another eight weeks for -- unless of course you already bought a ticket to BAMMA 8 in hopes of seeing him compete. Marquardt failed his pre-fight medical exam prior to the UFC on Versus 4 event last June in Pittsburgh, leaving his former employer in a last-minute scramble to find a new main event after the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission (PSAC) barred him from participating. It turns out the testosterone levels in his blood stream were too "Great" to let him compete after multiple blood tests revealed he was not within acceptable ranges for competition. The spike was blamed on Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), which Marquardt later admitted to using to combat the combined effects of his age and history of professional fighting. UFC President Dana White booted him from the Zuffa roster after he threw the June 26 fight card into turmoil just 24 hours before it was set to air live on the Versus network. Charlie Brenneman was able to step in on super-short notice to fight Rick Story, but it didn't do anything to preserve Marquardt's employment. Nevertheless, he's served his suspension and after briefly flirting with Bellator Fighting Championships following call-outs from Ben Askren and Hector Lombard, the three-time middleweight "King of Pancrase" found his home across the pond. And the promotion couldn't be happier. "As soon as we received word that the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission lifted Marquardt's suspension we jumped at the chance to sign him," said BAMMA's Liam Fisher. "He is a top ranked contender and an asset to any promotion. Words cannot express how excited we are that Marquardt is now fighting under the BAMMA banner." BAMMA is excited. Marquardt is excited. But what about the fans? Does today's announcement get you excited? Stay tuned to MMAmania.com for more details on BAMMA 9 as they become available.

Posted in: ufc, nate, bamma, marquardt, pennsylvania state

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Nate Marquardt will be making his first appearance in BAMMA a little later than expected, but he now has an opponent.

Posted in: nate, nate marquardt, bamma, marquardt, appearance

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Keith Jardine has always been known as the 'Dean of Mean' but now thanks to Nate Marquardt ratting his apparent culinary skills out to the world, mma fanson the UG have bestowed a whole new nickname upon him. Let us introduce you to a whole new image of Keith Jardine. This nipple tweaking, Techno Viking doppleganger we all have grown to enjoy watching as a violent human being, has been revealed to be a renaissance man of sorts. Welcome to Keith Jardine, the Dean of Cuisine. According to Nate Marquardt, Keith throws down in the kitchen and not just the cage. Nate had dinner at Keith's house this week and raved about it on his website: "He's a good cook! Baked chicken with paprika, cayenne and brown sugar rub, acorn squash baked with agave and cinnamon. Brown rice and broccoli." Pretty impressive. Maybe we can get him to do a guest spot along side Tim Kennedy for our 'Cooking with Tim Kennedy' feature one day. [source]

Posted in: keith jardine, jardine, nate, keith, marquardt

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