UFC 86 fight card on July 5th: Rampage Jackson vs. Forrest Griffin. Patrick Cote vs. Ricardo Almeida. Joe Stevenson vs. Gleison Tibau. Josh Koscheck vs. Chris Lytle. Tyson Griffin vs. Marcus Aurelio. Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Justin McCully. Jorge Gurgel vs. Cole Miller. Melvin Guillard vs. Dennis Siver. Corey Hill vs. Justin Buchholz.

First impressions without looking anyone up on Sherdog.com. The light heavyweight title fight is obviously interesting. I have to think Rampage will beat Griffin because Rampage has been unstoppable lately, especially the way he beat up Chuck Liddell. Griffin's claim to fame is his win over Shogun Rua, in my opinion, and I'm thinking Shogun's bad knee may have had something to do with that. But I like Forrest Griffin and I hope he does well. I also like Rampage. Two funny guys. I wonder if Shogun Rua is through as a fighter because of his injury or if it gets better.

Patrick Cote is very aggressive and all, but never cracked the upper echelons, and isn't all that compelling to me. Joe Stevenson is the guy BJ Penn recently beat up so bad. Koscheck should beat the crap out of Lytle, who probably doesn't belong in the ring with him. Tyson Griffin always stands out for me as the one and only guy to ever beat Urijah Faber, because Tyson Griffin is bigger than Urijah. Anyone who can beat Faber, even with a size advantage, has to be superstar material.

McCully may have bitten off more than he can chew with Gonzaga, or else we have a new contender in the weak UFC heavyweight division. Maybe they found someone that Melvin Guillard can beat for a change. Corey Hill is fun to watch, the tall gawky awkward screwball, and I have to assume they found him a guy who can't wrestle his way out of a paper sandwich bag, so he can win.

UFC 87 on July 19th: Anderson Spider Silva vs. James Irvin. Brandon Vera vs. Reese Andy. Frankie Edgar vs. Hermes Franca. Anthony Rumble Johnson vs. Kevin Burns. Rory Markham vs. Brodie Farber. Brad Blackburn vs. James Giboo. Dale Hartt vs. Shannon Gugerty.

First off, I resent this show because it is just an attack on Fedor Emelianenko by Dana White. Dana is so scared of Fedor that he's giving away UFC 87 for free in order to try and distract the public from the pay per view event put on by Affliction on July 19th featuring Fedor beating the living shit out of former UFC champion Tim Sylvia, or so I expect anyway, we'll see. So Dana has two happy scenarios in mind. One - that Fedor is so ring rusty that he loses to Tim Sylvia, which will make Dana White cream in his pants. Two - that his free UFC 87 fight card will cut deeply into Affliction's profits, turning them into huge losses and killing the competition.

This whole "killing the competition" aspect is despicable. It's not good for the fans. The moral is that if you don't knuckle under to Dana White, you are through in this business, kiddo. An offshoot is that it gives Dana White power to put on so-so fight cards like UFC 87 so we don't get to see great fight cards like Affliction's July 19th show. Why should Dana have to actually shell out real bucks for top stars to fight if he can just kill off the competition and then offer us fucking James Irvin. Can you believe James Irvin as a headliner? What the fuck! They're feeding their Spider a fly named James Irvin. And by doing so, Dana is saying "Look - Spider is the greatest fighter in the world, not Fedor". Why not at least show us something real, like Spider vs. Paolo Filho of the UFC-owned WEC. Call it a fucking unification fight, call it whatever the fuck you want, you own both organizations.

You have IFL stars Rory Markham and Reese Andy. They're pretty good. Rory hits a ton. The Edgar-Hermes Franca match is interesting. Anthony Rumble Johnson is always interesting, some black KO artist on the untutored side, probably not up against much competition. Half of these guys I never heard of, which is rare because I at least "heard of" most guys on most big cards. Brandon Vera is good and his stupid little victory dance isn't bad, posing like an Egyptian in a Bangles tune. Man I wish I could be on this card myself, rolling around vs. Susanna Hoffs. I think I could take her. I think I'll let her get on top. Stream of consciousness, sort of like James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist. We go from Brandon Vera to Egyptians to Bangles to Susanna Hoffs.