Saturday's card is called the tripleheader because we're supposed to be chuffed that we're seeing three fights on one show. Oh la de da, a whole two less than normal? Exciting! The good news is the UFC has learned it's lesson after the first FOX show featured 59 minutes of talking and 1 minute of fighting. If the main card fights go fast, they will jam an undercard fight or two onto the show. This is especially cool because there's some awesome talent tucked away in the prelims. Checkit:

Evan Dunham - Van Ham. Dunny Boy. The Dun-meister. Maybe if Evan Dunham had one of these totally bitchin' nicknames it'd be easy to remember how great he is. Alas, a totally bogus loss to Sean Sherk and a quick KO from Melvin Guillard has dropped him out of the contender's pack and many fans' memories. Powerful striking, excellent wrestling, and a tricky submission game will get him back in there.

Charles Oliveira - The UFC is a crucible of competition, and if you need proof just look at Charles Oliveira's 0-2-1 record over the past two years. After a starting streak saw him go 14-0, he dropped quick losses to Jim Miller and Donald Cerrone and blew a one-sided win over Nik Lentz when he hit the guy with an illegal knee. What Charles lacks in wrestling and boxing he makes up for in jiu jitsu and crazy kicks. In another year or two, he could be competing for a belt. For now, he's being built back up against Strikeforce Challengers import Eric Wisely.

George Roop - I've always liked George Roop. I lump him into the same group as Joe Lauzon and Cole Miller: lanky dudes with bad intentions who aren't about to roll over for anyone. Roop's record over the past few years looks more checkered than Crocop's shorts, but it's hard to ignore his recent success against Josh Grispi and Hatsu Hioki. Hioki came in ranked #2 on many people's featherweight lists and Roop took the fight to him. The judges messed up and gave the fight to Hioki but that doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge Roop's performance.

John Olav Einemo - I'm not about to call Einemo the next big thing at HW. But in a division where the lower rung heavyweights often put on plodding wars of attrition, John has shown he's not afraid to stand and bang. Which is somewhat surprising since he's famous for his jiujitsu. Win or lose, if he throws out another performance like he did against Dave 'Pee Wee' Herman, I'm a fan. 

The UFC on FOX 2 prelims can be watched on FUEL TV this Saturday starting at 5PM EST. As always, we'll have the chat up so drop in and join in on the fun. 

I'm a total sucker for a good steroid excuse so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask, but I thought King Mo Lawal's excuse was pretty decent. Not only did he find the specific over the counter supplement he was taking that caused the positive test, but he's also taking the commission punishment on the chin without complaint. Well, his manager has suggested they may go after the supplement company, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

That may not be good enough to get back into the good graces of UFC prez Dana White, though. We're not the only ones who have noticed that everyone who pops for steroids denies knowingly taking steroids. It's enough to make you start thinking that drug testing is a farce, so...

“If you get caught doing something, admit you did it,” White told ESPN.com. “This whole, ‘somebody put something in my system that I didn’t know about.’ ... Who here lets somebody put s--- in them that you don’t know about?

“I don’t buy that s---. Own up to what you did. Everybody makes mistakes.”

White went on to say that Lawal or any fighter who tests positive for a performance-enhancing drug and fails to admit the error of his ways risks never again fighting in a Zuffa-promoted event.

So what does the future hold for Lawal or former Strikeforce women’s featherweight titleholder Cristaine Santos, who also recently tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug earlier this month?

“I don’t know,” White said. “It depends on how they handle themselves. We will see.”

This all seems to be part of the UFC's recent plan to appear tough on steroids before a major scandal hits the fan. This is the silver lining in having a troll like the Culinary Union hanging around waiting for something to go awry - it keeps the UFC on their toes and proactively moving forward ahead of potentially damaging stories.

It is kinda creepy though how accused athletes must bow down, kiss the ring, and confess their sins if they want to continue their career in the UFC. Especially if you believe like I do that the real cheats are so far ahead of commission testing that it's only the innocents slipping up and accidentally injesting bodybuilder crap that are getting caught.

So how did hackers respond to Dana White's "I'm not afraid of the Internet / You are all terrorists" speech at yesterday's UFC on FOX press conference? Well, after a strange back and forth conversation with Anonymous, Dana White has been dox'd, UFC.com hacked again, and more action is being threatened.

Wait for it. Wait for it. There it is.

When hackers took down UFC.com last week in retaliation for the UFC's support of SOPA, Dana White didn't exactly help smooth things over with his response to the attack. White has had a long history of talking tough about piracy, eagerly awaiting the day the government starts 'literally going to people's homes and taking them to jail' if they don't stop all the downloading.

This time he responded to the hack on twitter by constructing well thought out ideas that encapsulated all sides of a complicated issue in 140 characters. Ha, just kidding. He said he 'didn't give a sh*t', he 'wasn't in the internet business' and told people who were concerned about their credit card info being stolen 'them don't buy it on line.' Someone get this guy a customer relations award!

The UFC followed this up with a slightly more formal press release:

"On Sunday, January 22nd, the UFC.com website was redirected by a criminal hacker to another website," a statement provided to MMA Fighting read. "The UFC website was quickly restored to the control of the UFC, and there is no evidence suggesting that any confidential information belonging to the company or its customers was compromised by the re-direction of the website. UFC representatives are continuing to investigate the matter and are working with law enforcement agents to prosecute those involved."

If the hackers didn't get at customer info or inject a virus into visiting computers via a flash or java vulnerability, then in a way Dana White is right: who does give a sh*t? All this DDOSing of websites that's been going on is tantamount to sticking gum in the lock of a door and proclaiming you brought the businesses inside down. Nope. You made a public website not load for several hours. Whoop dee doo. Defacing a webpage is cool I guess, but it's not the same as cracking it open and scooping out all the code and confidential information inside.

That possibility is why it's probably not a great idea to encourage the hacker community to come at you, bro. At today's UFC on FOX 2 press conference, White challenged hackers to attack UFC.com again, saying it would "make them look like terrorists. Knock it down again tonight. Do it. I could care less."

Good response or GREATEST response? As someone who's given UFC.com my personal info and credit card information, I'd say GREATEST.

“Of COURSE it’s mine; I spent my very own $400 on it!”

Chael Sonnen went on the Dan Le Batard is... Highly Questionable show on ESPN yesterday with a highly questionable wardrobe of his own. In a move reminiscent of the greatest triumphs of artists such as Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, Sonnen went on Amazon.com and bought a replica UFC belt. He slung it over his shoulder like a feather boa and patted it repeatedly during the interview while calling himself the “smartest man in the world”. The burgeoning Dadaist Sonnen also had lots of other interesting things to say:

DLB: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Silva the champ?

CS: I will correct you. You are wrong.

DLB: But that's not your belt.

CS: Well whose do you propose it is? What do you think, I just woke up and went and took it from him? Of course it’s the belt. It says it right on there. You don’t think the belt would lie, do you? It says ‘UFC Middleweight Champion’ on there.

DLB: Chael, you tapped. I saw you tap. I couldn't believe that I saw you tap because you were crushing him for four rounds, but you tapped. I saw it.

CS: Well, there seems to be a misunderstanding and a misapplication of the rule process. I thought it was, somebody had you in a tight hold, you could just rub his leg a couple of times and your tag team partner would step in there and help out a little bit. Then they bring me to and they try to explain the rules and there was some kind of confusion and he ended up getting his hand raised in an extremely tainted victory. But as I said to you before, the real champion sits before you today, undefeated and undisputed.

DLB: You're not undefeated and it's not undisputed. Who would be your tag team partner in WWF, old school? If you needed to pick a partner, who are you picking?

CS: So how's everything with you today? How is your day going? Are you doing alright out there? You're out there in like New Mexico or Montana or something like that? Some godless part of the country? Where are you guys located?

DLB: Miami. It's not godless. Where are you?

CS: Right, that's right. Going to Miami, da da da da da da da. Yeah, that's a good song. Good for you, man. You made it on the radio.

DLB: How did you get like this?

CS: Man, I'm from the mean streets of West Linn, Oregon. You gotta look over your back. You don't know what it's like out there. I'll tell you about it someday, but it's rough.

DLB: I just imagine it being a lot of ducks.

CS: A lot of ducks? ... Oh, I'm sorry. Is this where I laugh? Is this your attempt at humor? I didn't know that. Was I supposed to... Ah ha ha ha. Hahaha. Ducks. Ha ha ha.

The only other person I’ve ever known who bought one of those fake championship belts was my friend whose initials are BC and whose dad always called him “Buttcrack”. When he found out that the drug-addled gentlewoman he sheltered in his filthy trailer was bringing in trains of other guys while he was away at work, stroking the belt while listening to Linkin Park’s “I’m About to Break” brought him precious moments of comfort. So Sonnen is in very good company here.

The entire interview after the jump!

After weeks of dodging questions relating to his lawsuit against former camp Golden Glory and nearly having his Brock Lesnar money seized, Alistair Overeem is finally making an official statement regarding the situation.

This is Alistair Overeem's first formal public comment on his ongoing litigation with Golden Glory. He has avoided comment up to now for many reasons. First, Alistair believes that the split between himself and Golden Glory should be kept between the parties. Although he has been tempted to expose ongoing problems with Golden Glory's business, its poor relationship with some of its remaining fighters, and the deep betrayal he has experienced in recent years, he has chosen not to air the specifics of those facts.

Second, Alistair was singularly focused on his fight with Brock Lesnar. Third, Alistair does not want to disrupt Golden Glory's ongoing business operations. Fourth, Alistair believes that commenting on the litigation lacks professionalism. Golden Glory continues to take action by press release, through public comment and in the litigation in an apparent attempt to derail Alistair's career. Now that Alistair has defeated Brock Lesnar, he feels compelled to speak up. You will hear from Alistair on many of these topics directly.

We can say that Alistair and his legal team are very confident in the legal positions he has taken or will take in the California and Nevada litigation. Alistair is looking forward to having a judge or jury determine the merits of his position in this litigation. Although overtures regarding resolution of the lawsuits have been made by Golden Glory, Alistair believes it is important to see this matter to conclusion, not just for himself, but for other Golden Glory fighters, the UFC and its fans.

Not much new here. Mysterious mentions of 'deep betrayal' are mysterious. And I'm not sure I understand if Alistair is going to speak 'on many of these topics directly' now or if he's sticking to keeping things 'between himself and Golden Glory.' It's not really clear. The meat of the release is basically "Golden Glory are being unprofessional meanies so we might do that too." Was this written by the same doofus that messed up Overeem's Nevada drug testing? Sometimes it seems like the only competent person helping Alistair is the dude filming and editing THE REEM.

Golden Glory isn't spending all it's energy trying to get at Alistair Overeem's money. They're also trying to resurrect kickboxing from the smoldering ashes of K-1 in Japan. To do that they've sorted out a strange deal where they pay off K-1's bad debts to fighters in exchange for their contracts. The goal is to sever all K-1 ties so things can be started up again with all the major kickboxers in one organization. This ain't cheap, and while GG has teamed up with some asian sports organization, I'm sure getting their hands on 30% of everything Overeem is making wouldn't hurt.

According to Dana White, Georges St Pierre's mutant healing factor is speeding his recovery up to the point where we can pencil him in for Summer instead of Fall 2012:

"GSP's rehab could not be going better," White told FUEL TV’s Ariel Helwani. "I kid you not, he texts me every day. Tonight during the fight, he was texting me pictures of him kicking, of him doing things. He says, 'I am praying every night when I go to bed that Nick Diaz wins this fight' ...

"I've never seen him so motivated to fight somebody and to beat somebody as he is (with) Nick Diaz. He's ahead of schedule now, being the freak of nature that he is and the hard worker and dedicated athlete that he is, I think he's going to be back sooner than doctors anticipated."

As exciting as that prospect is, I dunno if ACL surgery is the kind of thing you wanna rush back from. Knee injuries are the beginning of the end for many a top athlete and rushing back into competition is a recipe for Shoguning it and re-injuring stuff / looking awful.

This is still GSP we're talking about though. If you love him, you know he's probably training harder than half the guys with fights coming up because that's just the kind of psycho he is. If you hate him, you know he's too chicken to return to action before he's 100%. So either way you look at it, he'll probably be fine.

Chael Sonnen was in fine Chael Sonnen form talking to Ariel Helwani yesterday at the UFC on FOX open workouts. From explaining why he wasn't talking smack about Bisping to ripping Kenny Rice and Inside MMA a new one for some slight (real or imagined?), it's 10 minutes of hyperbolic insanity from the guy who does it better than anyone else.

If you thought things were going to be less complicated now that the UFC-owned Strikeforce had it's deal re-upped with Showtime, think again. Following the less than excellent Rockhold vs Jardine event from a few weeks ago, Dana White had this to say about the promotion's future prospects:

"Let's just say the first Strikeforce fight didn't go the way I wanted it to go," White said. "When you get into a deal where the network controls what goes on, controls the production, controls everything – I'm working on that. I'm working on that as we speak. When these guys hand over the reigns and let me run that [expletive] thing, it will change."
...
White declined to reveal his master plan but did admit he needs Showtime to cede some power in order to execute his idea.

"I've got to get my hands on that thing," White said. "I've got to get my hands on the production and start controlling that show. If I don't, then it is what it is.

"We've got two years with these guys, but Showtime will run it (if I can't get control). We'll let Showtime run it on their own."

I don't think anyone will disagree that the product being put on Showtime could stand for some improvements. Some of the commentator booth interactions we've witnessed have been more awkward than farting during sex, and events lumber from terrible interview to terrible interview. It's enough to make you wish for the Castrol commercial waterboarding treatment we get via Spike.

But we already knew Showtime's production is kinda crappy. The UFC knew this going into their deal. But now that they've got a contract in place it sounds like they're less tolerant of what's been going on since day 1. What gives? Or is this over something larger than just production value? If you told me Showtime forced Keith Jardine into that title shot, I might get outraged. But that smells like a UFC move. So who's really to blame for that January show again?