Bloody Elbow Radio, presented by Bad Boy, will be LIVE! at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT for another edition of the show. Join hosts Matt Bishop and MMA Mania's Brian Hemminger as they discuss all the latest news in mixed martial arts, including the ongoing Carlos Condit/Nick Diaz rematch saga, Bellator's recent card updates and we'll also follow up on Tuesday's topic of "What Made You An MMA Fan?"

We'll be joined by Titan Fighting featherweight Anthony "Sharkbait" Gutierrez to discuss his upcoming bout with Brandon Pfannenstiel at Titan Fighting 21 on March 2. Gutierrez is the No. 6 featherweight prospect on Leland Roling's 2012 World MMA Scouting Report and is someone to watch out for. We'll chat with him about his fight, his rise in the sport and much more.

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Judging and refereeing has always been near the center of combat sports controversy and discussions, recent UFC history is no different. UFC 143 saw a mildly controversial decision in the main event with Carlos Condit taking the win over Nick Diaz as well as odd refereeing in the Josh Koscheck vs. Mike Pierce and Alex Caceres vs. Edwin Figueroa bouts.

While Dana agreed that Condit had earned the win over Diaz, that didn't stop him from talking about the state of judging and reffing in the sport today:

Transcription (via MMA Mania):

I've said it many times. In the evolution of this sport right now, one of the big problems we're having right now is judging and reffing. It's one of the things that drives me crazy and attention needs to be paid to scoring and reffing. First of all, it affects guys careers as far as legacies go. Jon Jones? Jon Jones should be undefeated right now but he's not, he's got a loss on his record and there's tons of guys in the UFC that have those. There's guys who've absolutely, clearly won fights and lost on the judges' scorecards. Nobody's perfect. There's always gonna be problems. But the judging and the reffing is so bad in mixed martial arts, it drives me crazy. The fans hate it too and it hurts the sport. These athletic commissions really need to tighten up and start working on educating their refs and judges.

After reading a Forbes.com profile of Tucker Max, a controversial Internet star who'd turned into an absurdly successful book author, I noticed that a very brief quote about the good qualities of MMA was almost buried into the piece. I reached out to Tucker in hopes of getting a few quick blurbs about the positive mention of MMA in a mainstream media publication and then mashing the whole thing together as a short post here on Bloody Elbow.

Tucker ruined those hopes by bouncing back and forth with me in a nearly 4500 word Q&A session, which is now the five part interview being featured here on Bloody Elbow. The back and forths that we went through showed that Max views MMA as a source of physical betterment, complex and useful techniques, great friends and astonishing personal growth - which should be surprisingly universal to combat sports followers and participants reading this.

The first part of this interview dealt with Tucker Max's discovery of Brazilian jiu jitsu, subsequent humbling and the transition into training MMA. The second gave us the surprisingly good methodology of his training with MMA hillbilly Reggie Warren and moved us to Max's present day training in Austin, Texas. The third part essentially asked Tucker why he does all of this and why he is willing to stand up on this platform and talk about MMA. At this point, I'm tossing him as many questions as I possibly can and he's fielding them with ease.

This interview is done partly in support of his latest books, Hilarity Ensues and Sloppy Seconds, yet the interview is 100% Tucker, 100% relevant to MMA and there is no advertising or review thing going on here. Max was genuinely surprised by me reaching out and by my questions and welcomed the chance to talk about something other than his debauchery. I present his answers exactly as written (minus the bleeping out of a few cuss words). The books hit stores today and can be ordered online as well.

Hit the jump for Part Four.

Part One: Discovery of BJJ, The Jump to MMA, Training at Legend's in Hollywood, CA.

Part Two: How Reggie Warren Buit a Passable Sparring Dummy and Present Day Training in Austin, TX

Part Three: Swimming in Deep Waters and Coming Out Alive

Part Five: The Inside Story on Jeremie Myers and What Max Wants From MMA

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The rumors have been swirling that someone on the UFC 143 card failed his post-fight drug test. Now we have confirmation via an email from Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Keith Kizer that SOMEONE on the card did indeed fail a drug test.

Here's an email sent from the NSAC commission to members of the MMA media:

From: Keith Kizer
Date: Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 12:16 PM
Subject: UFC 143

Thank you for the many email and phone calls. I am still waiting for all the steroid and drug test results to come back. We did have at least one positive test. I will send out an email later today on that matter.

Keith Kizer
Executive Director
Nevada Athletic Commission

Things to keep in mind:

1. There is no indication as to who is the fighter in question.
   
   
2. There is no indication as to whether the drug test failure is for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) or drugs of abuse.

Here's another clue for you all, SI reporter Josh Gross tweeted this earlier:

Early indications have UFC 143 doing better on pay-per-view than many expected heading into the event. The event, which was main evented by an interim welterweight title fight between Carlos Condit and Nick Diaz, appears to have gotten a boost due to the involvement of Georges St. Pierre in the overall "storyline."

At least that's what Dave Meltzer thought in his Wrestling Observer newsletter (subscription required):

Based on preliminary trends, the show looks to have done in the range of 400,000 buys, which is more than I would have predicted. The key seems to be the Prime Time show, with so much talk stemming in particular from episode two, but also episode three. Most of our indicators, from the web site poll, to the newsletter poll, had a higher volume than expected as well. Because the show had no undercard, and really nothing was even promoted hard but the main event, it's clear that Diaz's win over B.J. Penn and his antics involving GSP have made him a draw. The interest in this fight was because people smelled GSP vs. Diaz and saw this as step one in the story. The strongest markets per capita look to have been Edmonton, Las Vegas, Calgary, Albuquerque (Condit's home city), Vancouver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Toronto, San Francisco (Diaz is from Northern California), Montreal (GSP's home market since he was to face the winner), Halifax (GSP strong market), Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego.

So again, it appears that GSP being set to return against the winner helped move the needle a little bit. But there is also something to how engaging of a personality Diaz is and he has really grown as a draw over the past few years between Strikeforce and his move to the UFC.

SBN coverage of UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit

We've been pretty focused on the Nick Diaz vs. Carlos Condit results and ensuing fallout, rumors, denials, hopes and disappointments that some news has slipped past. Here's a quick round up of the latest UFC news you might have missed.

• Dana White bringing UFC to Hawaii, wants BJ Penn to headline - MMAmania
  "We're still working on that, but we want to do it. I was kind of hoping to go to Hawaii again and do a B.J. (Penn) fight at the Aloha Bowl, but B.J. wants to take some time off. He's going to relax for a while. We're coming regardless, but that was the fight I really wanted to do there."
  
  
• Donald Cerrone vs. Yves Edwards Set for UFC on FX 3 - MMA Fighting
  The two veteran lightweights will get their chance to bounce back from losses on FX.
  
  
• UFC on FOX 4 set for Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 4 - MMAmania
  It's official UFC on Fox is coming back to SoCal, this time to the Staples Center instead of Anaheim's Honda Center. Anyone care to look up the relative capacities of the two joints?
  
  

• Anderson Silva and Cung Le lead latest UFC Twitter bonuses award winners - MMAmania
  Check out the complete list of UFC/Strikeforce fighters who shared $60,000 in Twitter bonus award money for the last quarter of 2011. I was kind of surprised at some of the winning fighters.

• Spike TV To Counter Program UFC on Fuel TV With Diego Sanchez Marathon - MMAmania
  Spike TV continues to play bare-knuckle hardball with the UFC. Dave Meltzer expects the Spike TV reruns to beat the live fights by anywhere from 400,000 to 600,000 viewers.
  
  
• Jason Mayhem Miller Wants a Fight, Tells Fans To Tweet Dana White - MMA Fighting
  Mayhem wants to get the taste of his performance against Michael Bisping out of his mouth. Who's a good opponent for the high-profile, low performance Miller?
  
  
• Anderson Silva paints his body, wrestles Amazonian tribesmen (Video) - MMAmania.com
  Worth a watch if you want to see a UFC champ muck-wrestling with native peoples.
  
  
• Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua parts ways with longtime manager Eduardo Alonso - MMAmania.com
  It's been a rough week for managers of Brazilian fighters.
  
  
• Ranking The Fight Camps - Head Kick Legend
  HKL's new editor-in-chief Luke Nelson uses the USA TODAY/MMA Nation Consensus Rankings to evaluate which fight camps are hot, and which are not.
  
  
• The Fighter We'd Most Like To Get Into A Twitter Beef With - Gals Guide To MMA
  The Gals look at who can throw down on Twitter, who plays too rough and who folds like a tortilla.
  
  
• Tattoo Of The Week: Brandon Saling - Gals Guide To MMA
  "White Steel" across a man's belly. Thumbs up or thumbs down?
  
  
• Pushing Nick Diaz: A Study in Match Making - Head Kick Legend
  HKL's Jack Slack looks at the process of building Nick Diaz.
  
  
• Joe Rogan re-watched UFC 143, now believes Diaz beat Condit (Video) - MMAmania.com
  Rogan is man enough to change his mind. How about you? I re-watched the fight twice yesterday and am further away from making a decision than ever. Might give it to Diaz by a hair based on the first two and fifth rounds, but Condit handily won 3 & 4.

When you look back at the post-2005 boom period in mixed martial arts, it's pretty incredible that Matt Hamill didn't get more national recognition for what he accomplished as a deaf professional athlete.

Over a 14-fight career spent almost completely in the UFC, Hamill competed against and beat some of the best the sport had to offer -- all while working with a disability.

Even with that incredible story that outlets like ESPN eat up and fans usually rally behind, Hamill was popular but never to the extent of a Chuck Liddell or Randy Couture. I think many thought of the college wrestling star as a gimmick of sorts, a fighter that was good enough to win some fights but could never get over the hump to true MMA greatness.

Fans and media alike treated him as a normal fighter, giving him the same praise and scrutiny as his peers, which if you ask Hamill, is probably exactly what he wanted.

Last year, The Hammer was released, a movie about Hamill's life, struggles and rise to fame. I had heard of the film several times, but for whatever reason, I wasn't that jazzed about seeing it because like many others, Hamill was kind of cold product as compared to his UFC peers. But when the film's producers offered to send me a copy to review recently, I was intrigued and put my aversions aside to give an unbiased review. I'm glad I did.

Had The Hammer (available on DVD/VOD) been released during the middle part of Hamill's career and if the UFC had got behind it as a must-see, I believe he would be a mega-star. While there isn't a doubt that some of the details were embellished for the big screen, Hamill's story is one that anyone that enjoys sports movies and tales of adversity will really get into.

If you're expecting Warrior, this ain't it. The only references to the UFC are in the beginning and end and there's nothing on why he went into MMA, outside one of the disc's special features. The main focus is on Hamill's upbringing and his struggles in an environment that wasn't hearing impaired friendly. The filmmakers do a great job at instantly making Hamill (amazingly played by Russell Harvard) a sympathetic figure and his grandfather (played by Raymond J. Berry, aka Arlo Givens on Justified) into a grizzled father figure who struggles to admit Hamill is different.

Read the rest of the review after the jump.

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