When Nate Marquardt entered Colorado's Wheat Ridge High School, he barely weighed 100 pounds. His friends knew of his athletic ability, but his high school coaches seemed to shun him because of his size.

What coach, after all, wanted to stake his reputation on a pipsqueak quarterback?

Even when he graduated, Marquardt, at about 130 pounds, was hardly what one would call imposing. And no one would have written in his high school yearbook that he would become one of the world's toughest fighters in less than 10 years – and as a 185-pounder, at that.

But that's where Marquardt has landed as he prepares to challenge champion Anderson Silva on Saturday for the UFC middleweight title in UFC 73 at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif.

Marquardt is a seven-time middleweight King of Pancrase who is no longer the tiny, shunned kid he was in high school.

"I was always small for my age and I guess I'm just a late bloomer," Marquardt , 28, said.

"I was always one of the smallest kids in my class. In

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Picks to win Saturday at UFC 73 at ARCO Arena. (Title matches are five rounds, all other matches three):

Anderson Silva vs. Nate Marquardt, for the UFC middleweight title:
In a mild upset, Marquardt by submission, probably in the fourth round.

Tito Ortiz vs. Rashad Evans, light heavyweights:
In a very tough call, Ortiz by decision.

Sean Sherk vs. Hermes Franca, for the UFC lightweight title:
Sherk by unanimous decision.

Heath Herring vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, heavyweights:
Nogueira by submission.

Alvin Robinson vs. Kenny Florian, lightweights:
Florian wins by strikes in the second round.

Mike Nickels vs. Stephan Bonnar, light heavyweights:
Bonnar by strikes.

Diego Saraiva vs. Jorge Gurgel, lightweights:
Gurgel by submission.

Chris Lytle vs. Jason Gilliam, welterweights:
Lytle by strikes.

Mark Bocek vs. Frank Edgar, lightweights:
Edgar by decision.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Anderson Silva will face Nate Marquardt in his first defense of the middleweight title. Here's what each man will have to do to win:

Keys to victory
SILVA'S KEYS		MARQUARDT'S KEYS
1. Stand at all costs. Silva is a Muay Thai expert with thunder in both hands. Though he's also a BJJ black belt, so is Marquardt. Silva can win early by standing.		1. Lose the distance. Silva is such a powerful striker, Marquardt has to make certain he's not caught at the end of one of those blows.
2. Use his knees. Silva has dangerous knees and should use them whenever they're in the clinch.		2. Shoot from angles. Marquardt has great takedowns and Silva doesn't have the best takedown defense. He does have deadly knees, though, and will use them if Marquardt gets predictable in his shots.
3. Kick sparingly. Silva is a great kicker, but with Marquardt's wrestling acumen and ground skills, an abundance of kicks could put Silva in peril. He has to kick because he can hurt

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Sean Sherk will make his first defense of the UFC lightweight title he won last year on Saturday at ARCO Arena when he faces challenger Hermes Franca. Here's what each man will have to do to win:

Keys to victory
SHERK'S KEYS		FRANCA'S KEYS
1. Get the fight to the ground. Sherk is a terrific wrestler and a great finisher and he'll benefit from taking Franca down repeatedly.		1. Use the uppercut. Sherk is going to shoot often and it may give Franca a chance to unload a heavy shot, which is one of his strengths.
2. Push the pace. Sherk has a ridiculously difficult workout regimen and Franca has been known to fade. Sherk should take advantage by making use of the entire cage and making Franca fight all five minutes of all five rounds.		2. Look for the triangle. As Sherk goes for a finish after a takedown, the triangle choke could be Franca's best weapon.
3. Be wary of looping punches. Franca has a tendency to throw hard, looping shots from unusual

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WATCH VIDEO: Dana White, Joe Rogan and UFC 73 fighters preview the event. (UFC.com)

Sean Sherk was talking on the telephone about his training routine. He was going on about his diet, about the extraordinary number of repetitions he did, about the sheer volume of time he spent conditioning his body.

Just listening was enough to make you feel sorry for Hermes Franca.

Franca will face Sherk for Sherk's Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight title at UFC 73 on Saturday at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif.

But Dana White, the UFC's president, encouraged patience.

"Wait until you see the show we did on him," White said of the All Access show on Spike TV on Monday that featured Sherk. "It's the most incredible thing you've ever seen."

Now, White is the master of hyperbole, but this might have been one of the few times in his UFC life that he was understated.

Calling Sherk's workout regimen incredible is like calling Dennis Rodman odd. It doesn't begin to describe what he does.

From

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WATCH VIDEO: Dana White, Joe Rogan and UFC 73 fighters preview the event. (UFC.com)

Jorge Gurgel is on a mission. He's speaking in his staccato, high-paced style, which could characterize everything he does.

But his mission now is to explain the definition of the word though.

"It's not easy," he says. "I asked my teachers, I asked my friends. Nobody could tell me. I was like, 'What the (expletive) does this mean?' I just had to know. It was my dream to understand it."

That may be an underwhelming dream, say, for a kid from the Bronx. But for a kid from Fortaleza, Brazil, who was dumped in Downer's Grove, Ill. as a 15-year-old foreign exchange student in high school, it was an ambitious task.

He was never intimidated, though he was frequently frustrated. "The reason Jorge is successful as a person is because of the way he approaches everything in his life," said his close friend, mixed martial arts legend Renzo Gracie. "If he wants something, he is very focused and determined, and

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Wladimir Klitschko is the best heavyweight in the world, by a long shot.

He's also its most puzzling, by a long shot.

He'll defend his IBF title against Lamon Brewster on Saturday in an HBO-televised fight from Cologne, Germany. It's a rematch of a forgettable 2004 fight in which Klitschko lost his conditioning, was knocked out by a badly outclassed Brewster and which will be remembered for Klitschko's baseless allegation that he was drugged.

Klitschko is the most graceful big man in the game, who moves effortlessly around the ring. He has the power in both hands that befits his chiseled 250-pound frame.

His jab is a weapon, let alone his right hand. When he's good, he's capable of competing on nearly even terms with any heavyweight from any era.

The problem, though, is that you only see glimpses of the dominant Klitschko. And he's had enough inexplicable defeats that he still has a lot of work to do if he someday wants to gain entrance into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Frank Edgar's mother, Mary, wasn't crazy about the idea of her son becoming a mixed martial artist.

And Edgar's first bout, a 2005 match in New Jersey against Mark Getto, didn't help assuage her fears one bit.

The one-time All-American wrestler from Clarion University won his professional MMA debut in convincing fashion, scoring a first-round technical knockout. But he was kneed in the face early in the bout, which caused an injury that, at the time, he didn't realize he had sustained.

After the bout, at a celebratory dinner with his family, Edgar went to the restroom and blew his nose. That's when he realized something wasn't right.

Turns out, he had broken an orbital bone and one of his sinus passages. So when he blew his nose, air escaped and began to seep out and collect under the skin.

It wasn't long before he looked like the Elephant Man.

"That's pretty much what it looked like," said Edgar, who will meet Mark Bocek on Saturday at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif., in the opening

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