Brock Lesnar felt like "The Next Big Thing" every time he stood in the center of a wrestling ring with a microphone in his massive hands. He'd snarl and bark and shout and send 20,000 people into a frenzy.

The feeling of manipulating a crowd was intoxicating.

"It feels like nothing else," he says now. "It's in my blood to stay."

The high came, however, with a price tag so steep that Lesnar ultimately decided it was worth chucking the fame, the money and the adoration he received.

The small-town farm boy from South Dakota learned after 4 ½ years as one of the biggest names in professional wrestling that a night in a Minnesota deer stand sure beat one in a hotel room on the Champs-Élysées.

Professional wrestling made him rich and famous, landed him a wife beautiful enough that she twice graced the cover of Playboy and brought him to nearly every corner of the world.

But Lesnar found himself miserable, not knowing where he was, where he was going and how he was going to survive.

He

LAS VEGAS – You probably don't want to hear that Jason Miller is in the next room asking for your daughter's hand. And despite the conservative business suit he wore Saturday, you probably don't want Miller in your boardroom making a crucial presentation to the company's executives.

But he's the guy whose name you want on the marquee if you're going to reach into your wallet and buy a ticket to a fight card. He's the rare professional athlete who makes it fun to spend your money.

Bizarre? You bet. How else can you describe a guy who says he wants to fight Jesus but is worried about His magical powers and who manages to use the words "zygote," "umbilical cord" and "poop" in the same sentence.

In need of a mental health professional? Perhaps.

But Miller actually takes seriously his responsibility to entertain the fans who pay to watch him fight. He's liable to say anything in pre-fight interviews, but what makes him worth every dollar is the approach he takes during his fights.

"Even if

Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole gave a live fight-by-fight tally of the World Extreme Cagefighting card at the Hard Rock Hotel on Saturday.

LAS VEGAS – In the card's opener, Eric Schambari spent most of his middleweight bout with Art Santore on the mat, which should have been to Schambari's advantage given his expertise as a ground fighter.

But Santore fought Schambari on even terms for most of the fight on the ground and forced Schambari to work harder than expected for a unanimous decision.

The first round was close as the men battled for control, but Schambari managed to land a few hard forearms in the second half of the fight that spelled the difference. Santore wound up with a cut alongside his left eye and a swollen jaw for his troubles.

"I knew he was tough, but I didn't expect him to be that tough," said Schambari, who improved to 6-0.

Schambari won all three rounds on the cards of judges Roy Silbert and Tony Weeks and won all but the first on the card of Patricia

LAS VEGAS – Doug Marshall can't wait to talk about the 40-some pounds he's lost in the last year.

He's not pitching the latest diet fad or a sandwich shop.

Rather, Marshall speaks of his weight loss with a pride that comes from having blown up in weight to be able to face – and beat – the biggest and baddest guys on the block.

But the 30-year-old Marshall, who stands just 5 feet 10, is a lot badder himself when he's fighting in the proper weight class. And though he'll be at an eight-inch height disadvantage when he defends his WEC light heavyweight title against 6-6 Justin McElfresh on Saturday night at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, that's a fair fight as far as Marshall is concerned.

"I've been beating guys bigger than me my whole life," snorts Marshall, dubbed the "Rhino."

"Been there, done that."

Indeed, he beat 6-4, 270-pound Lavar Johnson and 5-10, 255-pound Anthony Arria in back-to-back fights in 2004.

But Marshall is better suited for the light heavyweight division and its

UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell said he isn't buying Tito Ortiz's argument that the reason he withdrew from his boxing match with company president Dana White last month is that he wasn't satisfied with the contract terms.

Liddell, who has two victories over Ortiz, said he believes Ortiz realized nothing good could come out of fighting a promoter.

When Ortiz signed a contract extension with the UFC in 2006, he had it included in his contract that he would get a three-round boxing match with White, his former manager with whom he frequently has been at odds.

The story was first reported in the Las Vegas Review-Journal but was not taken seriously. But once it became apparent that White, a former amateur boxer who had aspirations of turning pro, was serious about preparing, the UFC brought in Spike TV to do a documentary on their preparations for the bout and then to show the fight itself.

But when White made weight, Ortiz didn't show and the bout was canceled. Ortiz has said

Everyone connected with last week's pay-per-view blockbuster at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas, is quick to point out that no movie ever made as much in one night as the fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Oscar De La Hoya.

HBO executive Mark Taffet last week used baseball analogies to describe his expectations for the fight.

A home run was a million buys, he said. Setting the non-heavyweight pay-per-view record was an upper-deck shot. Reaching 2 million buys would have been a home run out of the stadium, Taffet said.

What he got when the numbers were counted was a grand slam out of the stadium in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series.

De La Hoya-Mayweather did a record 2.15 million pay-per-view buys. Total revenue, adding the $120 million from pay-per-view to the $19 million in ticket sales to the millions in closed-circuit sales to sponsorships and merchandising and all other sources will wind up at, or perhaps slightly above, $150 million.

But the

A few days before he was to fight Kenny Florian for the vacant UFC lightweight championship, Sean Sherk could barely use his right arm to butter his toast, let alone to pick up a man and slam him to the mat.

But as badly as his shoulder ached, Sherk knew he had to keep his mouth shut.

He'd been in mixed martial arts for 13 years, and knew he might not get another shot at the belt for a long time if he withdrew from the Oct. 14 fight at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

And so the man known as the "Muscle Shark" essentially went out and won with one arm.

Beating Florian would have been an achievement had he been in the greatest shape of his life. But as a wrestler, doing it with a shoulder so painful it made him wince every time it was touched, might have been the most significant accomplishment of Sherk's career.

"It hurt like hell and I couldn't use my right arm,” Sherk said of a tear in his shoulder which required surgery and months of rehabilitation. "But I'd been waiting for a chance to

The world's top boxer isn't planning to fight a mixed martial artist any time soon, but the IBF welterweight champion says he wants a crack at UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. dogged the UFC and its fighters in the buildup to his blockbuster pay-per-view match with Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday.

His demeaning comments towards mixed martial arts and its fighters so infuriated UFC president Dana White and owner Lorenzo Fertitta that they brought Sherk to the fight with them on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden in order to challenge Mayweather.

But before the fight, Mayweather told UFC vice president Marc Ratner he was only kidding and had respect for the UFC and mixed martial artists.

However, boxer Kermit Cintron is willing to take on Sherk.

Cintron, who will defend his championship against Walter Matthysse on July 14 in Atlantic City, said he'd be willing to fight Sherk after that.

"I want the fight," said Cintron, who is 27-1 with 25 KOs. "I can wrestle. I can