(Video courtesy of DailyMotion/JMMANow) You know an intro is questionable at best when it has fans clamouring for more Stemm and a metrosexual gladiator. Saturday night the UFC debuted its new "Evolution" video montage that will kick off every pay-per-view event for the unforeseeable future, or at least until fans bitch and moan enough that Dana White gets sick of hearing them and gives in and changes it. The concept was good, but superimposing classic UFC moments over top of an industrial CGI set made it look like the outtakes from a dime-a-dozen video game. Fans have been split on whether or not they like the "upgrade," but the ones who seem okay with it are the ones who never really cared one way or the other. Dana revealed last week that the intro cost an obscene amount of money to make, but unfortunately the piece of avant-garde visual "art" ended up looking like a hot mess, rather than a Jackson Pollock. Money well spent.

(The shirt says it all.)  Roy Nelson's UFC 143 scrap with Fabricio Werdum was truly an exercise in futility for "Big Country," because it more or less showcased what we already knew about him (the man can take a beating like no other), while at the same time reinforcing the idea that Nelson has damn near refused to evolve as a MMA fighter. Yes, he has recently shown a commitment to slimming down and yes, not many of us expected him to try and submit Werdum on Saturday, but if Roy doesn't start switching up his striking routine (aka looking for anything but a big overhand right), he can expect several more axe wounds like the one above in his future. We love you Roy, but it might be time to depart from The Country Club for a while, because you can only change the tee box and hole locations for so long until you just get sick of playing the same course over and over again. Speaking of axe wounds, join us after the jump for a brief look back at some of MMA's nastiest cuts...

(When I open my eyes, I want to see that sign say 'NOT an AKA affiliate.'" If you were wondering why American Kickboxing Academy co-founder and head coach Javier Mendez wasn't in Josh Koscheck's corner Saturday night, it wasn't because he had Super Bowl tickets. Kos dropped a bombshell at the post-fight press conference that he has split from the San Jose-based camp and that he will now prepare for his future bouts in his Fresno AKA location – though he isn’t sure that he’ll keep the affiliation of the gym the same. He clarified with MMAWeekly that the decision to leave the gym was a result of a handful of slights Mendez made towards him and his teammates following losses the fighters incurred. “This goes back from quite a bit, and history repeats itself. Whenever you have a guy for example whenever I had the loss against [Thiago] Alves and I took the fight on short notice with him, and after the fight I had a lot of friends come up to me and calling me saying ‘have you read this interview with Javier Mendez?’ and talking about me and my game plan. So I went online and I read this interview and I started to notice after all my teammates lost, it was the same thing," Koscheck recalled. "[He'd say things like], 'They didn’t listen to the game plan,' -- that he deferred it away from himself, and he threw us under the bus basically, saying that we didn’t listen to him and he tries to make himself look good, so it doesn’t reflect on him us losing. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Javier Mendez as a coach, as a person, because if you go back and listen to the history of the interviews of him after AKA guys have lost, the interviews he does, go back and look at the Cain Velasquez [fight], go back and look at the Josh Koscheck [fight], the other guys on that team, and see if you can find interviews where he refers to, ‘Oh I did my job,’ to make himself look good and they didn’t do theirs. That’s not a coach.”

Here at CP, we have covered damn near every type of knockout that has occurred in the MMA world, and in fact, we pride ourselves on our devotion to the topic. And although we've seen both the double KO and the even more rare no contest due to both fighters falling out of the cage, little did we know that over the weekend, these two would meet at a shady hotel, do the nasty, forget to wear protection, and give birth to the above knockout. The event was Hardrock MMA 43, which went down on Saturday night. The place was Sheperdsville, Kentucky. In the co-main event of the evening, lightweight fighters Brandon Bishop and Braedon Ward squared off in what started as a relatively even match that saw both men struggle for superior position in the clinch. After Ward managed to toss Bishop to the mat but was unable to complete the takedown, he bull rushed ahead with a double leg, eventually slamming into to cage door, which burst open and sent both fighters crashing to the ground. As team members rushed to their aid, it quickly became apparent that both parties had been knocked unconscious in the fall, and the bout was subsequently ruled a no contest. Fortunately, both men were able to walk away on their own power after a few minutes. According to Gary Thomas of ProMMAnow.com, who was in attendance for the entire event, a hinge in the cage had been damaged in an earlier fight, but was believed to have been fixed. However, when both fighters hit the door, the pin was knocked loose, causing one of the more bizarre fight endings we have seen in quite some time. And as it turns out, this was not the only bit of controversy that went down at Hardrock MMA 43. Join us after the jump for an illegal KO from the same event that is as brutal as it is hilarious.

"I want you to hit me as hard as you can."   I am Sean McCorkle's Bruised Ego. Anymore, you learn about bruises in comic books -- all heavy cross-hatching and lilac purple contrasting American Red and Cornflower Blue.  Children today never get a chance to know hurt.  The woods are clear-cut.  Toys are shatter proof and non-toxic. The playgrounds are low.  Rounded.  Cushioned. Twenty years ago, you cut your hand open on an axe and ran a mile back home, and maybe you got stitched up. Twenty years ago, nobody knew anything about game-planning for a fight.  Men who all knew little pieces of fighting tactics -- what would they know of strategy?  To plan past the third haymaker was beyond many of them. Anymore, people fight like it's some kind of job, like they're trying to make money out of it.  People who watch these fights, they talk like it's some sort of highest form of competition with safety rules and scoring rules and "Octagon control". Not for nothing, but these guys don't want to talk about how those early days were so special.  How watching two walking slabs of beef hurl themselves at one another was like watching Wild Kingdom with people.  Survival of the fittest.  Kill or be killed.  No one wants to talk about the boner they get for names like Paul Herrera, Steve Nelmark, Jeremy Bullock.

"Where I come from, people who lose close fights retire." Props: UFC.com While watching UFC 143 from the comfort of my favorite dive bar last night, I knew that MMA fans would be waging war on the internet over the fights that went the distance. Between the two point deduction that cost “Bruce Leroy” his fight against Edwin Figueroa and Josh Koscheck’s close fight with the “undeserving” Mike Pierce, I knew that I could expect a long-winded, philosophical debate over what constitutes a fight and what doesn’t- whether abstract concepts like “control” and “aggression” mean more than punches thrown, and whether takedowns earned and stuffed negate an inferior striking display. Naturally, this debate would include a lot of ad hominems and off topic ranting, because that’s just par for the course online. And that was before the main event of the evening, which saw Carlos Condit earn a close decision over Nick Diaz. Carlos Condit used backward and lateral footwork while outstriking Nick Diaz, yet many fans felt that Nick Diaz should have won the fight. Before the fight even ended, the debate already began on whether “Octagon control” necessarily means “the guy moving forward”, and whether counter-punchers should automatically be considered less aggressive than their opponents. Judging from the comments sections of today’s articles, that debate won’t be ending any time soon. Benjamin Disraeli once said that there are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. For the time being, let’s move our arguments about last night's fights past the first two. Let’s now turn our focus towards the statistics from last night’s close decisions. FightMetric’s breakdowns of Riddle vs. Martinez, Figueroa vs. Caceres, Koscheck vs. Pierce and, of course, Diaz vs. Condit have been published, and are available after the jump.

Two kicks + two mangled testes = two points? (Photo: UFC.com) Controversial decisions weren't limited to the feature bout at UFC 143, my friends. From scrotum to scorecard, there's much to break down from the undercard action. Fabricio Werdum put on a striking clinic against the slightly less-hefty Roy Nelson. Werdum put together crisp, powerful combinations and launched a torrent of knees from the clinch to bloody “Big Country” up. It was a welcome rebound from his performance against Overeem and a promising re-introduction to the Octagon. Nelson has an incredibly tough chin—proven by the sheer number of bombs he takes fight after fight—and a heart as big as they come—what else could pump that much blood out of his face?--but that's not enough to make it in the UFC's heavyweight division. He's served as a very game punching bag for much of his post-TUF career, and it's not a good look. On the positive side, his refusal to die in the cage did help the duo score the evening's $65k 'Fight of the Night' bonus.

"Come on, Nick. Tell us how you *really* feel." (Video: ZombieProphet) Though he fought in a cage only ten yards wide, Nick Diaz must have felt like he was fighting on a football field last night. For five rounds he stalked Carlos Condit but was unable able to pin him in any of the Octagon's eight corners. In true Stockton fashion, he never stopped pressing forward and was always the aggressor, but did he exhibit 'Octagon Control'? As we generally define the term, yes. As it's actually defined, no. Diaz didn't want to keep circling and chasing Condit; he wanted to trap him against the cage and unload merciless combinations--basically, to fight him in a phone booth. The reason he didn't was because Condit executed his game plan perfectly and dictated the flow of the fight. Even if that wasn't the case and Diaz was in full control of the bout, let's not start pretending that we love nothing more than a fight full of 'Octagon Control'. As fans we value effective striking and grappling above position and pace. So too should the judges.

(Don't be a hero. Just throw your lunch money onto the stage with everybody else's. / Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle.com For more photos from this set, click here.) Tonight, the UFC is putting an interim welterweight belt on the line, to be decided by two gamebred sons-of-bitches who go out to take scalps, not win points. If Nick Diaz vs. Carlos Condit isn't a thrilling fight, I'll eat my hat. Plus: Roy Nelson welcomes Fabricio Werdum back to the Octagon, Josh Koscheck slugs it out with his evil twin Mike Pierce, and Scott Jorgenson does his best to snap the 27-fight win streak of Renan Barao. Handling play-by-play for tonight's action is interim liveblog champion Aaron Mandel. Follow us after the jump for live results from the UFC 143 pay-per-view card, beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and please use the comments section to let us know how we can better serve you.

Vera can't stand to even look at that "Juice Monkey". (Pic: MMAFighting.com) The report we filed two days ago on the Brandon Vera-Thiago Silva grudge match is already woefully out of date. According to “The Truth”, he was so eager to 'welcome' Silva back to the Octagon that he jumped the gun and accepted the rematch before discussing the bout with his coaches or doctors. A consultation with his physician revealed that he wouldn't be recovered from an injury in time for the May 15^th fight. The bad blood stems back to their UFC 125 bout. Silva showed incredible disrespect toward Vera, bitch slapping him repeatedly before playing him like a pair of bloody bongos. The humiliating loss earned Vera his walking papers, at least until he was un-fired when Silva's post-fight urine sample tested positive for steroids. Silva eventually copped to 'roiding and was himself slapped with a hefty fine and one-year suspension. The rematch with Vera, scheduled to go down on the UFC on FX 3 card, would have been his first fight back from that suspension. Following a successful nose transplant, Vera rebounded with a unanimous decision win over Eliott Marshall at UFC 137, but he'll now spend a little more time on the sidelines. Zuffa is currently looking for an alternate dance partner for the Brazilian.