LAS VEGAS – A torrent of mixed martial arts fans rushed to Matt Mitrione's defense after the embattled UFC heavyweight ripped into transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox on Monday, saying she had an unfair advantage competing against women.

Mitrione's unprovoked, vitriolic attack on Fox's "The MMA Hour" went largely unchallenged in the media despite the nature of his comments being so overtly obtuse.

"He's chromosomally a man," Mitrione said. "He had a gender change, not a sex change. He's still a man. He was a man for 31 years. Thirty-one years. That's a couple years younger than I am. He's a man. Six years of taking performance de-hancing drugs, you think is going to change all that? That's ridiculous. That is a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak."

His comments came Monday, a day before the UFC publicly released its official Fighter Code of Conduct exclusively to Yahoo! Sports, and proved beyond doubt why such a document is so desperately needed.

Mitrione is

Read More »from UFC hopes new code of conduct will help educate fighters like Matt Mitrione on decisions they make

LAS VEGAS – Some people go on vacation and visit historic sights or play a few rounds of golf. For her vacation, though, Cat Zingano traveled halfway around the world to learn a bit of Muay Thai boxing in the country where it originated and, despite zero experience, wound up taking a pro fight.

On Saturday, she'll face Miesha Tate on the main card of "The Ultimate Fighter Finale," with an opportunity to coach opposite UFC women's champion Ronda Rousey in the next season of TUF going to the winner.

The Mandalay Bay Events Center, where Zingano will meet Tate in the most important bout of her fighting career, is thousands of miles away and light years removed from the tiny, filthy gym in Thailand where Zingano unexpectedly took a professional Muay Thai fight last year.

Zingano, her husband, Maurice, and their son, Brayden, went to Thailand for vacation last summer. An All-American wrestler at Cumberland College and MacMurray College, Cat Zingano was going to teach a seminar on

Read More »from Cat Zingano's wild 'vacation' in Thailand shows her eagerness to face, conquer fears

It is a vastly different Nonito Donaire Jr. who will, for the second time in his career, attempt to unify the world title belts in his weight division.

In 2011, he was consumed by a desire to not only defeat Fernando Montiel, but to dominate him in their WBC/WBO bantamweight title unification bout.

Nonito Donaire Jr. (right), hammering Jorge Arce in his last bout, is no longer consumed by winning. (Getty Images)Montiel had sat atop the bantamweight division for years and he was a convenient target for Donaire, who desperately wanted to use the fight to establish himself as one of boxing's elite.

A little more than two years after knocking out Montiel to vault into boxing superstardom, he's in a similar position heading into Saturday's super bantamweight unification bout on HBO with Guillermo Rigondeaux at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

Rigondeaux is a two-time Olympic gold medalist who, after defecting from Cuba in 2009, needed only seven fights over 18 months to win a world title.

The same passion, and desire to dominate, isn't there for Donaire, though. Since that life-altering

Read More »from Boxing star Nonito Donaire Jr.'s latest obsession is to be a pound-for-pound best father

Jessica Penne will defend her atomweight title Michelle Waterson. (Invicta)Imagine it's Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and the local electronics store is having a hard-to-believe sale. High-end HDTVs are 50 percent off. Cameras, tablets and portable music players are marked down even more.

Inventory, though, is limited, and the sale lasts only as long as the supply. In addition, there is only one way in, which also happens to be the only way out.

It's going to cause a stampede.

And that, in some ways, is what happened to the all-women's Invicta Fighting Championship for its live stream pay-per-view show in January. Tens of thousands – indeed, hundreds of thousands – of people hit the system at the same time, trying to pay the $7.95 to watch the fight card.

More than 250,000 people essentially tried to squeeze their way in at the same time and the pay system collapsed. IFC president Shannon Knapp made the decision to take down the pay wall and refund the money of those who had paid.

Refunding money is never what a business wants to

Read More »from Invicta making its mark in MMA world

Brian Viloria is a 32-year-old American, a former Olympian and a pro's pro. He's had three stints as a world champion covering two divisions. He's one of the most fun fighters in the world to watch.

Yet, he's never fought live on either of the major boxing networks in the U.S. – HBO or Showtime. On Saturday, he'll defend his WBA/WBO flyweight title against Juan Francisco Estrada as part of Top Rank's first foray into the Chinese market at the Venetian in Macau.

When Brian Viloria fights, it's usually a high-octane event. (Getty Images)The fight card will go live Saturday in Macau at 6:30 a.m. ET, but will be televised on same-day tape delay on HBO2 at 2 p.m. ET/PT, marking Viloria's big-time debut in many ways.

That it took Viloria well over a decade to get to this point is baffling. The major U.S. promoters haven't put the kind of time and money into the classes below featherweight that they have into the middle- and upper-tier classes, and, as a result, the fighters' image suffers.

The television networks haven't been eager to gamble on them,

Read More »from American flyweight champion Brian Viloria looking to strike a blow for the little guys

The most significant fight of his life is only a few days away for Ryan Couture, but considering what he's been through recently, composure shouldn't be an issue.

He'll make his UFC debut on Saturday when he takes on Ultimate Fighter Season 9 winner Ross Pearson in the co-main event of UFC on Fuel 9 in Stockholm, Sweden. 

UFC president Dana White talks frequently of the so-called "UFC jitters," that accompany a fighter's first appearance in the largest mixed martial arts promotion. Veteran Antonio "Big Foot" Silva admitted during a recent interview that he was nervous for his 2012 fight with Cain Velasquez simply because it marked his UFC debut.

But Couture has more to worry about than simply calming his nerves. The son of UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture, Ryan Couture will be forced to fight without either of his top two coaches. Randy Couture, of course, is on the outs with White and has been banned from even attending UFC events, let alone working a fighter's corner. On

Read More »from Ryan Couture mature beyond his years in handling of Randy Couture-Dana White feud

Pat Curran's cousin, Jeff Curran, had long been one of the best fighters in the world, competing in both the now-defunct World Extreme Cagefighting organization as well as the UFC. Pat Curran on his Bellator belt: “You’re going to have to pretty much kill me to take that away.

He saw his cousin defeating some of the world's elite mixed martial arts fighters and thought to himself, "I could do that."

Getting into the cage, though, was an entirely different story. 

"In the beginning, it was kind of [intimidating]," Pat Curran said. "I didn't know anything about the sport, other than what I knew from watching on TV. I saw guys getting knocked out left and right, sometimes turned into a bloody mess, and it was like, 'Whoa.' It could get to you.

"It took years of experience and getting my [expletive] kicked every day before I finally got it figured out."

Pat Curran has now become one of the world's elite fighters. He's the Bellator featherweight champion and is generally regarded as one of the world's top-five 145-pounders.

He's 18-4 and has wins over the likes of

Read More »from Bellator featherweight champ Pat Curran endured plenty of punishment on his road to the top

LAS VEGAS – Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios engaged in yet another epic match, filled with passion, fury and plenty of clean right hands. Brandon Rios lands a punch against Mike Alvarado. (AP)

Alvarado claimed the interim WBO super lightweight belt with a sensational unanimous decision victory over Rios on Saturday at the Mandalay Bay Events Center that was at least the equal of their 2012 classic.

Rios won that bout by seventh-round stoppage, so Saturday's win for Alvarado lined up what will unquestionably be a hotly anticipated rubber match.

"One thing that you know, as much as you know that the sun is coming up tomorrow morning, is that they will fight again," promoter Bob Arum said.

The battle was so fierce, each man wound up in a local hospital to receive precautionary examinations. Neither had any serious injuries.

The second round was a toe-to-toe exchange in which each landed crushing shots. It was stunning that neither went down, though Alvarado seemed to be hurt and staggered backward twice.

Read More »from Mike Alvarado levels score with Brandon Rios after 12-round war, rubber match surely on tap