Last but not least, I'm very happy to announce that after an immensely successful test marketing of the "Mjolnir Gear" clothing line at Franco Kickboxing/Pankration, we've secured a distribution agreement with the Combat Athletics shop at 2072 W. 4th Ave. in Vancouver. They already carry some of the preeminent lines in MMA such as Jaco, Hayabusa, TapouT, and Warrior, and Chris Franco and I are very pleased to add Mjolnir Gear to their lineup. Check 'em out by clicking HERE.

I seem to have nieces popping up all over the place lately, and with one being caucasian, one caucasian/Fijan, one born to a mulatto/metis couple (I don't even know what to call that!), and now Isla being Hispanic/Italian, I figure that within a few more years I'll be buying Christmas and birthday presents for half of the damn United Nations.

The original airing included a brilliant video package by James Ladd, but unfortunately that's absent from this cut so you'll be stuck staring a my big-ass head for the full three minutes.

Oh yeah, I also learned that, like, last night? Like, there was this chick? And she was, like, SOOOOO wasted. And she was, like, leaning on this OTHER chick? And the other chick was totally, like, "Get off me".

Our society is suffering terribly from the continued illegality of judiciously-applied slaps upside the fucking head.

As I always say, you have to give credit for the good if you're going to complain about the bad, so I want to offer my thanks to the individuals on the Ontario government who finally saw things the right way. And MANY thanks to Tom Wright, Marc Ratner, Dana White and the entire UFC organization for establishing a company foothold in Toronto, which undoubtedly accelerated the sport's progress toward legal status.

Now if we could only get the same result out of those tools in the BCMA who want to ban MMA nationwide based on their vague and poorly-researched opinions that MMA is ultra-dangerous due to its allowing downed athletes to be struck.

For more details on this story, click HERE.

First of all, I want to announce the debut of a new segment on The Score network's "The MMA Show" entitled "The Mauler's MMA Soapbox". My previous "Good, Bad and Ugly" segment ended up being a little bit narrow in its parameters, and Mauro Ranallo suggested a new format that would allow me to discuss pretty much anything I want. So check it out on the MMA show airing Friday and Saturday, and feel free to let me know what you think.

Congratulations are more that due to Sarah Kaufman, whose recent Strikeforce world title defense (in which she power-bombed Roxanne Modafferi into oblivion) I was lucky enough to witness from ringside. I also want to send both congratulations and condolences to my buddy Chael Sonnen, who smashed UFC champ Anderson Silva for over four rounds only to fall prey to a triangle choke less than two minutes from the fight's end. No one has ever done to Silva what Sonnen did, and I want to add my voice to the legions of MMA fans who want to see an immediate rematch!

Congratulations also go to my longtime buddy Lance Storm, whose Storm Wrestling Academy just saw its first graduate sign a WWE contract. This was long overdue given the consistent quality of Lance's training, and I wouldn't be surprised to see many more SWA graduates making their way into the big show in the future.

I've been working a lot lately, and owe thanks to coordinators Lauro "Lash" Chartrand, Rob "Sluggo" Boyce and Dean "T-Bone" Choe for hooking me up with work on the TV series "True Justice", "The Troop", and "Human Target" respectively. I just finished shooting a machine guy battle on "Target" on Tuesday, reaffirming that I'm lucky enough to have one of the coolest jobs in the universe. It's been great to be so busy, and this is hopefully an indication that the local film and TV industry is pulling out of its latest slump.

I also received an entirely unexpected call from my old broadcast partner Col. Bob Sheridan, with whom I worked on bodogFIGHT. The Colonel and I had a rather contentious relationship at first, mainly due to my anger over his being brought in to replace the extremely capable Lon McEachern in spite of having zero knowledge of the product. However, one thing that I have to give the Colonel is that, whatever his initial failings may have been, he worked to expand his knowledge and actually requested that I join him on the commentary team of the Ray Mercer vs. Kimbo Slice bout in Atlantic City. The recent call was simply to touch base and thank me once again for helping him to learn about the sport, which was extremely cool of him, especially considering how unashamedly vocal I was during the Bodog days. It was a classy move to call and I definitely appreciate it, so if you're reading this, then thanks very much, Colonel.

Now I have to get back to work--I've got three articles for FILES magazine and a week's worth of CFOX MMA Minute segments to write, plus another day on Human Target starting this evening. Next week I'll be hooking up with Brendan Fyfe, the man behind the Score Fighting Series, to discuss plans for the next year. There are some possibilities for broadening the scope of the SFS, as well as some plans of my own regarding my possible involvement in a more active capacity.

Unlike a number of other local MMA figures who have taken issue with things that I've said, Mr. Pattenaude chose to take the bull by the horns and contact me directly. Needless to say the initial stages of our communication were slightly heated, but we soon got down to the business of discussing what it was that we disagreed upon, and I was surprised to hear some of what he had to say.

My assessment of the NVAC as a "sham" was based on my presumption (and that of many others in the lower mainland MMA community) that the announcement of that organization's resurrection after a 25-year dormancy meant that it was already overseeing events in North Vancouver.

This raised my eyebrows immediately, since North Van is where promoter Mike Hammoud, a friend of Pattenaude's, plies his trade. Hammoud is, in my opinion, one of the most unscrupulous promoters in the game, a man who has held fights with no blood tests required for which athletes had to bring their own gloves (which went uninspected); who recently booked an 8-2-1 pro fighter on an amateur card against an amateur opponent (who the pro demolished); and who allowed fighter Amber Grant to compete on one of his events with the full knowledge that she had been ground-and-pounded and armbarred into a first-round submission less than 24 hours previously (when confronted, Hammoud made a spot diagnosis of "She have no concussion, so is okay" in spite of his presumably having no medical degree and no knowledge of her previous fight prior to that moment). I could go on, but suffice it to say that these are but three of the unacceptable things I've seem Hammoud do, and that's why Mr. Pattenaude and I have very different opinions of him.

I couldn't for a moment accept the thought of a sitting commissioner giving consent to his friend's nudge-nudge, wink-wink "amateur" events (for which a number of fighters were paid), and also running a booth for his own "Spartan Fightwear" company at those same shows.

However, as Mr. Pattenaude explained to me today, although the NVAC was brought back into existence, it never actually got to the point of being able to sanction events. Apparently, work was being done to update the existing rules and regulations to reflect the existence of MMA (which obviously wasn't around during the NVAC's previous run), and that work was not yet complete by the time the plug was pulled by a North Vancouver municipal government that's as blindly MMA-antagonistic as its metro Vancouver counterpart.

In my mind, this cast a different light on things. I still disagree with Mr. Pattenaude about his participation in Mike Hammoud's events. I believe that Hammoud is such a blight on the sport that anyone who supports one of his shows in any way is hurting local MMA on the whole. I'm inclined to not look so harshly upon fans who don't know any better, officials who want to make sure that the fighters are taken care of, or fighters who want to fight so badly that they'll take whatever they can get, but over and above that I just don't see eye-to-eye with anyone who chooses to support a Hammoud-run show. However, it appears that there was absolutely no conflict of interest since the NVAC was not yet officially active, in addition to which, Mr. Pattenaude informed me that he asked the city council in advance if they saw a conflict of interest in his running a booth at the event, to which they replied "no".

To sum it all up, I feel that if I'm going to be a gadfly then I also have to give credit and the benefit of the doubt where they're due. In the light of the information to which I've just become privy, I do have to say that my initial suspicions of Mr. Pattenaude giving his buddy a pass on promotional regulations were unfounded. I'd still like to see Hammoud completely frozen out by the MMA community until he proves a willingness and ability to promote responsibly, but with that aside I do see where Mr. Pattenaude was doing work to legitimize MMA in North Vancouver, and presumably hold his friend to the same restrictions by which all MMA promoters should be bound.