UFC 101: Griffin vs. Silva YES YES YES

Here's the fun thing about UFC: they take the Impossible Japanese Game show approach to fight scheduling. Breeze through a few stages with ease and guile, and the architects of the challenge will put the contestant -- in this case, Anderson Silva, whose lack of action in his last two fights earned him significant criticism and two victories -- smack dab in the path of an oncoming train.

The part of the train will be played by fan favorite and noted masochist Forrest Griffin, whose fights rarely drag thanks to his all-engines-forward attacks and thirst for being punched about the head and shoulders repeatedly. Silva/Griffin will headline UFC 101 on August 8th, and hopefully negate whatever's been going on in Silva's last two fights. Also, we would like to mention again that Forrest Griffin, despite his improved footwork and technique, will still probably get hit in the face, shake his head, and then get that sick little look of intense focus he gets after taking a vicious shot other fighters would like to avoid at all costs. That's definitely gonna happen, and you'll probably pay too much money to watch it happily (or do what most people do, which is go to the friend's house, eat their chips, and then say "how much do I owe for the pay-per-view?" before leaving without paying.)

UFC 101 will also feature BJ Penn's second defense of his lightweight championship in a matchup with Kenny Florian. This one should be double super fun, as well: the prefight trash-talking has already featured the best combination of threat and compliment I've heard in a while:

I think you're a great fighter, someone I look up to. I consider you a master. It's time to kill that master.

Florian then struck a crane pose, executed a theatrical kick, and flew off the set on a wire to the furious piping of a Chinese orchestra to meditate on a mountaintop, or at least should have after dropping a line straight out of a Chinese kung-fu epic like that.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.