Edited and promoted to the front page by Tim Burke

Light middleweight Paul Williams reportedly was in a motorcycle crash, potentially leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. I'm no doctor, but the prognosis sounds bad.

Williams' scheduled surgery is said to "stabilize the healthy upper half of his spine by putting a protective wall around it," WRDW says

— Luis Ortiz (@Ortiz_BoxingNBA) May 28, 2012

Paul was still an active, high level fighter and is only 30 years old. But his career and accomplishments are not really important right now. Plain and simple, this sucks. If you're a praying kind of person or not, I think we all wish the best for Paul and his recovery.

Bad Left Hook has more coverage and info and more discussion. The initial report came from WRDW TV in Augusta, GA.

Bloody Elbow's Josh Nason today mentioned an oft repeated tautology of sports; a win is a win. There is no doubt that the logic of that statement is rhetorically and philosophically true . However, when context is provided, rhetorical value is fundamentally undermined.

Enter Stephan Bonnar. A long time staple of the UFC who has competed for the promotion fourteen times professionally and twice in exhibition bouts in the Ultimate Fighter house. He is best known for his "American Psycho" fighting style and career defining moment in 2005 in a spirited and ugly brawl with Forrest Griffin. A fight that he lost unanimously. In the year between that fight and their rematch, it was clear who became a better fighter. It was a showcase that the work ethic and determination of Forrest Griffin made him into an ever improving fighter while Bonnar stagnated and tested positive for performance enhancing substances. Since then, he has gone 1-1 with the only opponent that even hardcore fans could pick out of a lineup and lost to Mark Coleman who was decade past his expiration date.

For the conclusion, crack a fresh brew and go to Head Kick Legend. You know you want to see where this is going and beer is good.

You know, there's all these deal makers makin' deals and shit and I just wanna fight the best but George is, you know, he's scared to... GSP he's making a couple fuckin' million dollars to fight and then doesn't want to show up and fight. I wanna get paid and he's scared because he doesn't need to fight me or whatever because he made a deal with Dana White to fight Conduit instead of me. It's whatever you know, I don't like doing this shit, I'd rather go box and make some real money or swim or something if they aren't gonna fuckin' pay me. Getting hit by BJ Penn and ummm... Paul Daley is... and Robbie Lawler. I don't wanna be taking more punches from BJ Penn. It's not good for... your head. Then you got guys like George St Pierre who just hide from fighting and try to have the judges say they won and get paid you know? I made a deal to get paid and then they didn't want to because I wasn't at some fuckin' beauty pageant and George gets millions of dollars to be there but not at the fight? It's, you know, that's not how a fighter acts if they aren't scared. It's whatever though, I got bills and shit and I just wanna fight and get paid.

-Respectfully Yours,
 Fake Nick Diaz

Van Halen is awesome. They had musical talent, understood the value of showmanship, and they raised the bar for lavish excesses and rock and roll lifestyle. Nothing was done in moderation. Live performances, guitar solos, big hair, and drinking all were grossly exaggerated for the era. And they hated brown M&Ms.

One of the most publicly discussed and infamous riders in contract history is Article 126 of Van Halen's concert agreements, which stated "There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation." It is frequently cited as evidence of the ridiculous demands that celebrities can force upon normal working folk. Brown wasn’t even a different flavor. It was a trivial and meaningless stipulation.

The parts of the contract that really mattered were the other fifty plus pages of the contract which detailed the technical needs for the show. Since Van Halen did everything more extravagantly than their contemporaries they needed greater attention to detail for lighting support, load bearing girders for the massive stage, availability of electricity at specific amperage and locations, and all the other things that made their concerts run. So it was more than colored candies when they saw brown M&Ms in their dressing room. It was a warning that the venue hadn't read the contract and met the specifications to ensure that the show could go on.

What does all of this have to do with Nick Diaz and Dana White? Read the conclusion at Head Kick Legend and tell me what you think.

The world of MMA is missing a critical point regarding the sport they so love. Lost in the rationalizations of safety, comparisons to boxing and football, and emotional reactions toward Bob Reilly's statements is that the sport serves a purpose to all multicultural societies.

Summarily, MMA began as a spectacle intended to prove superiority of one art taught regionally in Brazil. The sport was literally meant to be an infomercial for dojos, and it was quite an effective one for the Brazilian Gracie family. Although they had success in three of the first four events via Royce, the dynasties of styles were short lived in the early days with each one passing the torch once a critical weakness was discovered. Grapplers with bad takedowns got smashed by the strikers, the strikers would get brought to the ground and worked over by wrestlers.

Frank Shamrock went on to become the first well rounded reign of terror thanks to the "Alliance" team featuring his Pancrase oriented catch wrestling, Maurice Smith's kickboxing, and Tsuyoshi "TK" Kohsaka's instruction on how to survive and fight off your back. He submitted elite wrestler Kevin Jackson, used a wrestling slam to retire kickboxer Igor Zinoviev, and out-lasted the much larger Tito Ortiz to a TKO victory.

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Demian Maia is doing a grappling seminar tomorrow at 10:30am PST. That doesn't mean a whole lot to the broader audience normally, he does tons of seminars all over the world and most of you don't live exactly where he's going to be. But this is different.

The Arena MMA is putting up a free live stream of Demian's no-gi seminar so you can soak up all the grappling goodness without getting off your cozy desk chair. And since the Night Crew is all going to be nursing bootleg Four Loko hangovers, you might as well spend the morning checking this out. Registration for the stream is free and takes OpenID as well as a billion other things, and there's even clothing giveaways for online viewers. Check it out, and discuss live with fellow BElitists here.

A few weeks ago, Bad Left Hook featured a fanpost listing who, in the author's opinion, were the heaviest punchers of each division. It got me thinking what a similar list would look like for MMA. Who do you simply not want to lay leather on your chin, at any costs?

The issue that arose quickly to mind was what heavyweight hits the hardest... Shane Carwin or Alistair Overeem? I think Carwin clearly throws heavier hands, but Overeem's knee is possibly the most powerful single strike in MMA. In the spirit of being to lazy to reconcile that line of thought, I decided to make two categories; one for punching and one for overall striking.

My thoughts on power are not that the greatest technique gets you ranked, but the ability to turn lights out. You'll notice fighters who are not highly regarded on here, but simply hit really fucking hard. That's all I'm looking for.

This list is a rough draft off the top of my head, with a few options in each category ranked loosely. If you all would be so kind as to provide suggestions of guys I missed, I'd love to have us come to a borderline consensus and have a workable final product.

UPDATE: The original list is in block quotes. The update is above it. Let me know what you guys think!

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Yes, Bloody Elbow has jumped the shark ladies and gentleman. Nobody says a single ill word about Strikeforce and Scott Coker because they are too busy complaining about how they hate Dana White. And all they ever do is harp on [Dana White lying about Tito, the CGJJ/Mayhem fiasco, Anderson Silva’s 112 performance] and never cover anything else. They no longer talk about the substance of fights because they are too busy covering TMZ drama. This site is done and blows… but I’ll keep commenting forever and harping on that one time an editor, staff writer, or moderator responded negatively toward me. Because your site is bad and you should feel bad.

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