Remember this? Stanazolol can take months to clear your system, but maybe now it's explained by more than sweat equity:

Chris Leben became the first high-profile fighter suspended by the Ultimate Fighting Championships for failing a drug test, when results came back positive on Monday for the steroid Stanazolol in a test administered after his three-round loss to Michael Bisping on Oct. 18 in Birmingham, England.

The UFC suspended Leben for nine months and fined him one-third of his undisclosed fight purse.

Several UFC fighters, including champions like Tim Sylvia, Sean Sherk and Josh Barnett, had been suspended and forced to relinquish their championships after positive tests administered by both the Nevada and California State Athletic Commissions.

Because UFC events held in the United Kingdom are not under the auspices of a commission, the UFC’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Marc Ratner, who for years headed the Nevada commission, performs many of the duties normally associated with an athletic commission for those events.

"I am obviously disappointed with Chris, who has made great strides getting his life back on track," said UFC president Dana White. "To his credit, he has taken responsibility for his actions and is accepting the punishment that has been handed down. But as always, the UFC puts the safety of its athletes first and foremost, and we won’t tolerate anyone using performance enhancing drugs in our organization."

"I’ve really done everything I can to turn my life around," said Leben.

"And this is a huge setback for me. But it’s something I will have to deal with. During my time off from fighting, I want to speak to kids about the dangers of using performance enhancing agents and let them know it just doesn’t get you ahead in life. Of course, this is a hard hit for me monetarily, but more so this is embarrassing for me and for all my fans."

There's not much to add here about Leben. He deserves whatever punishment he gets, but I can say it's good of the UFC to test, punish and publicize when it comes to drug testing overseas. This demonstrates a committment to transparency and accountability they are not legally obliged to follow. I applaud their efforts.

Video after the jump.

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This installment of the Bloody Elbow Judo Chop is a little less defined than previous installments. Instead of talking about a specific technique, I'm waxing rhapsodic about a little discussed aspect of the game -- the scramble.

This weekend's UFC 89 match between Jim Miller and David Baron featured several tasty escapes and reversals that I found to be far and away the highlight of the event.

The instance pictured here is from the 2nd round of the fight. Miller starts out in side control but Baron powers out. Baron briefly regains his feet, but only just in time for Miller to grab his head and get an underhook on his left arm. From there Miller drops into a guillotine and rolls Baron back to his back. He didn't finish, but he maintained top control for the rest of the round.

Baron reversed Miller at least four times in the fight, this being the last. But Miller's scrambling is so good he quickly re-established control each time. Against a dangerous fighter like Baron that makes a huge difference. Many times a wrestler will lose top control and never get it back. Miller's combination of good wrestling and killer jiu jitsu is a very dangerous one. See Shields, Jake.

This is the kind of action that makes me love the WEC so much. Uriah Faber's fights are full of these action packed scrambles. When people bitch about fights featuring wrestlers being exciting they're usually referring to matchups like Tyson Griffin vs Frankie Edgar or Clay Guida where both guys can wrestle. Matchups those same wrestler can just as often be accused of boring layNpray fights -- Edgar vs Fisher or Guida vs Danzig but IMO its their opponent who's boring -- dude can't get out of bottom position. Mark my words, Sean Sherk vs Tyson Griffin could be a scorcher for this very reason.

In the case of Miller vs Baron things were especially tasty because of Miller's wrestling + BJJ background up against Baron's mainly judo-based grappling. More on that, and 3 more animated gifs from the fight in the full entry.

An utter failure to appreciate the beauty of this aspect of the MMA game was behind the failure of EliteXC. Fans don't mind groundfighting, they just want to see action packed ground fights.

About the name of this feature: I chose Judo Chop because it’s an utter misnomer that is sometimes used by poorly informed MMA commentators during fights. It’s also from the Austin Powers movie. I chose it because it reflects my own lack of expertise and what this column is, my stumbling along in the dark trying to get a handle on the technical aspects of the fights. The techniques featured here will sometimes involve judo but not always. Sorry if that's confusing.

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via sherdog.com

"I’m not seeing what I expected from Brandon Vera. It’s like he’s lost something.

"He doesn’t have that killer instinct since he took that year off. He doesn’t go after people. He used to be so cocky. He wanted to fight everybody.

"We tried to get him on one of the seasons of The Ultimate Fighter and he turned that down and said he wanted to fight Chuck Liddell and that he would knock him out.

"I hear that seven days a week so I told him to go on TUF and we’d find out how good he was.

"He was good, he used to walk through heavyweights earlier in his career.

"But he took a year off and we had all the issues with his contract and he hasn’t been the same since.

"I don’t know what’s wrong with him."

-- Dana White talking Brandon Vera after Vera's loss to Keith Jardine at UFC 89.

HT: Steve Cofield

Pic via photos.mmaweekly.com

Brandon Vera put in a solid performance last night against Keith Jardine, but the decision against him was valid, and he has now lost three of his last four fights, with one win coming against middling competition in Reese Andy.

People talk a lot about the "old" Brandon Vera, but I don't buy it.  The old Brandon Vera never fought guys like Tim Sylvia, Fabricio Werdum, and Keith Jardine.  He just has not been able to put things together against high-end talent.

This isn't to say he has no future.  It's just that he is not an elite fighter right now, and would be well served to spend a few months fighting low level guys to regain his confidence and hone his skills in preparation for another run at the top.

Given his popularity in the Philippines, he will not be cut, but he needs to put some wins together in a hurry to salvage his status as a future star. 

UFC.com has up their now standard extra fight from yesterday's action and it's Jim Miller vs. David Baron.  This is a very good example of Miller's smothering ground game as he just owns the fight on the ground.  His striking game is tight but you don't get to see too much of that in this fight.

Still, I like that the UFC has taken to showing an extra free fight.  Maybe eventually they can get to the point where they can get all the undercard sponsored so that it can be put on the website for 2-3 days after an event ends before it goes into the "Members Only" vault.

Regardless, check out the fight and get a glimpse of one of the future stars of the UFC lightweight division.

Micheal Bisping d. Chris Leben (Unanimous Decision)
Keith Jardine d. Brandon Vera (Split Decision)
Luis Cane d. Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou (TKO 4:15 2nd Round)  
Chris Lytle d. Paul Taylor (Unanimous Decision)
Marcus Davis d.  Paul Kelly (Submission 2:16 2nd Round)
Dan Hardy d.  Akihiro Gono (Split Decision)
Shane Carwin d. Neil Wain (TKO 1:31 1st Round)
David Bielkheden d.  Jess Liaudin (Unanimous Decision)
Terry Etim d.  Sam Stout(Unanimous Decision)
Jim Miller d. David Baron (Submission 3:19 3rd Round)
Per Eklund d. Samy Schiavo (Submission 1:47 3rd Round)

BONUSES -- $40,000 Each

Knockout of the Night — Luis Cane
Submission of the Night – Jim Miller
Fight of the Night — Chris Lytle vs. Paul Taylor

Notes about the event

Decisions Decisions At least Bisping over Leben was a clear cut choice, the inconclusive nature of the Jardine/Vera fight left me hanging as a fan, disappointed by both fighters performances. Nevertheless, its not a prime UFC when the two headlining fights go to the judges (unless its a total war ala Liddell/Silva).

So much for Sokoudjou Or "SokoIdontusemyjudo" as he's been named by BloodyElbow poster KneesnBows. He threw everything he had at Luis Cane, landing some very hard shots but hardly managed to back Cane up. I'd say the Sokoudjou hype train has left the station. IMO he needs to find a new camp, one that will help him apply his judo skills to MMA. His brawling style would be so much more effective if opponents had to be worried about getting thrown too. Maybe we should take up a collection and buy Sok a copy of Karo Parisyan's Judo for Mixed Martial Arts.

Cane let me down too I was hoping for some more outrageously unsportsmanlike antics from Cane. The guy had been building a reputation as a true heel, an increasing rarity in the sport but now I guess he wants to be a nice guy like everyone else. Either that or he genuinely respects Sokoudjou in a way he didn't respect Lambert or Irvin.

Greg Jackson strikes again From my vantage point it looked like Greg Jackson put together a great game plan for Jardine. Taking a page out of GSP's book (or Chuck Liddell vs Wanderlei Silva), Jardine surprised Vera with an early take down that seemed to take Vera out of his game. This was the second time in two weeks that Jackson has come out ahead of come at Team Lloyd Irvin with a clever and unexpected game plan. This time his fighter did enough to convince two judges, unlike the UWC where Irvin's man convinced two of his home town judges.

Lytle vs Davis, Battle of the UFC Gatekeepers Talk about a fight that needs to happen. Paul Taylor hung much tougher against Lytle than Kelly did against Davis, but I still find a Lytle/Davis matchup intriguing. The winner could get one last shot at contention while the loser can stick around beating UK fighters as long as he wants.

Shane Carwin, Jim Miller rumbing from the undercard In an undercard otherwise stuffed with euro-fighters who won't be fighting top competition anytime soon, heavyweight Shane Carwin and lightweight Jim Miller impressed. Carwin destroyed Brit brawler Neil Wain and IFL vet Jim Miller beat the internationally known David Baron what sounds like a tough match. I expect both of these guys to be on contender tracks in 2009.

Join us tonight for "live results" of UFC 89.  As I'm not in England we will only be providing results during the Spike TV broadcast.  So not exactly live, but the best we can offer.  For the sake of avoiding any sort of "spoilers" and ruining the show for anyone DO NOT POST SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS HERE!

If you want to discuss results before the Spike TV broadcast then there will be a live spoiler post up come fight time.  Just keep any of those spoilers out of this comment section.

Make Bloody Elbow your home tonight for live thoughts and results from the Spike TV broadcast.  And make sure that you share your thoughts in the comments section as the show goes down.

The US broadcast is getting underway, the first fight will be up shortly and I'm stoked.

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MMA Weekly has nice reporting on the undercard fights.

Quick undercard results from MMA Mania are in the full entry.

ALERT: THIS IS A SPOILER THREAD. KEEP ALL SPOILERS HERE. DO NOT POST ANY RESULTS IN THE LIVE BLOG POST THAT BRENT BROOKHOUSE IS RUNNING.

DO NOT CLICK ON THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE RESULTS. CLICK AWAY IF YOU DO.  PLEASE KEEP ALL DISCUSSION OF RESULTS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION ON THIS POST.

IF YOU POST RESULTS OF ANY UFC 89 FIGHT BEFORE IT AIRS IN AMERICA ON ANY OTHER POST, YOU WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY BANNED.

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