Seattle Weekly cover girl and all-around badass Cindy Hales will be on tomorrow's Ron and Don show on KIRO 710 at 5 PM. Having spent about six weeks following her around and generally pestering her, I can tell you that Cindy's a pretty entertaining talker, so tune in if you can.

Also, for those looking to keep up on the local fight scene, Ballard High grad and Megumi Fujii trainer Josh Barnett--a very accomplished fighter in his own right--recently did an interview here. Barnett was once UFC champion

You may remember Bob Sapp--he was a star football player for the Huskies in the 90s, winning the Morris Award as the PAC-10's top offensive lineman. After his gridiron dreams failed, he became "The Beast," a mixed martial artist, professional wrestler, and all-around celebrity phenomenon in Japan. Steve Kelley did a great piece on Sapp's story here.

Today, Sapp is fighting Kinniku Mantaro as part of the Fields Dynamite! New Year's Eve promotion. Mantaro is actually an anime character from the series Ultimate Muscle, though he'll be played by a Japanese wrestler named Akihito Tanaka. I'm still trying to figure out if this is history's first live man vs. anime character fight. Either way, it's impressive. Go get 'em, Beast!

Local sports fans casting about for potential ways to while away the hours during a dreary winter have one less option on the television as CBS is canceling its contract with Elite XC, one of the myriad of alphabet soup mixed martial arts leagues.

And if you can't tell the MMA leagues apart, remember that Elite XC is the one that hitched its financial wagon to YouTube bum fight phenomenon Kimbo Slice, in a sort of pugilistic theatre of the grotesque.

Of course the end for Elite XC came in the very beginning. Earlier this year, on May 31, when MMA was put on primetime, the plan was to showcase Slice, a sort of real-life Clubber Lang, against the unremarkable Brit, James “Cauliflower Ear” Thompson.

This fight was supposed to put ultimate fighting on the map, showing the blood sport was not only as legitimate as its predecessor, boxing, but filled with more action. Instead, viewers were treated to a pair of men, on the mat, grappling with each other in an indecisive standoff that ultimately would have resulted in a loss for Slice had not the match been called because a lucky punch erupted Thompson’s ear in a spray of blood in the final round.

As a sports fan, watching the match with buddies at home over beer and pizza, that was the first and last time this writer wasted his time with Elite XC. This is the complaint with every MMA match I’ve watched. Instead of standing up and duking it out, the fighters wind up on the mat like two turtles dry-humping each other for ten minutes until one fighter’s endurance eventually gives out.

If you can't even get single guys working on a buzz interested in your product, then you didn't learn the lesson of the XFL.