Author: Ben Fowlkes [ben-fowlkes]

Former UFC welterweight Frank Trigg has a running joke with Zuffa matchmaker Sean Shelby, who also happens to be heavily involved in putting together the UFC’s highlight reels.

It’s a familiar routine that often plays out via text message right before the UFC runs it’s pre-event video package of great moments from fight cards past, all set to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”

“Before it starts I say, ‘Sean, are you about to hurt my feelings again?'” Trigg told MMAjunkie.com.

The sport of mixed martial arts still isn’t sure what to do about the pot smokers in its midst, which is bad news for them.

It means they continue to get tested for a drug that remains in their systems far past the point of being active. If they get caught they’re subject to punishments that don’t fit the crime, all while the issue at the heart of the debate goes unexamined.

Just ask Matt Riddle if you don’t believe me.

When trying to gauge the enthusiasm level of the crowd at a UFC event, I find it’s helpful to measure the reaction by what I like to call “The Buffer Index.”

It’s not exactly scientific, but what it lacks in technical expertise it more than makes up for in pure simplicity.

It all boils down to how much of Bruce Buffer’s pre-fight introductions you can actually hear over the noise of the crowd before the main event. If you can hear it all, that’s zero Buffers. Every other word? Half a Buffer. Almost none at all? That’s your rare Full Buffer.

For all the things Georges St-Pierre does well, absorbing blows without showing damage isn’t one of them.

It’s easy to forget that, because the man usually just doesn’t get hit all that often. Most of the time he shows up to the post-fight press conference looking like, at worst, he’d stumbled into a prickly bush while cutting across someone’s lawn on the way over here.

This time was different. By the time the third round of his title fight with Carlos Condit at UFC 154 had ended, St-Pierre’s face had already begun to resemble a Rubik’s Cube left out in the rain.

Following a 19-month injury layoff, a subsequent ACL surgery, his recovery and a grueling fight camp, UFC welterweight Georges St-Pierre plans to take a well-deserved vacation.

Few could deny he earned it after a bloody five-round victory at this past Saturday’s UFC 154 event in Montreal.

But at the same time, his victory only seemed to fuel speculation about whom he’ll face next, and when.

As long as you don’t have to do it very often, it’s fun to wake up to MMA fights early on a Saturday morning.

Even this particular Saturday, when I fell out of bed with a NyQuil hangover and a pounding congestion headache, the novelty of enjoying the UFC on FUEL TV 6 event along with my morning coffee was enough to make me briefly forget how crappy I felt.

Up at 7 a.m. (Mountain Standard Time, of course – the one true time zone) and done by 10? I could get into this.