Lyoto Machida, Chad Mendes, Matt Hamill: The Morning News Roundup – 8.4.12

It's fight day! Which means while you and I are gathering provisions for tonight's UFC on FOX 4 — you know, things like avocados for fresh guacamole, cases of TAB soda and Kleenex for the tears that are sure to come — there are twenty fighters in a hotel in Los Angeles milling about with butterflies in their stomachs, anxious to punch each other in the face. Hooray! But despite the violence that's impending on Fuel TV (the preliminary bouts start at 5:00 p.m. EST) and FOX (main card at 8:00 p.m. EST), the news cycle trudges on. Here, then, are some headlines.

• Although he's fighting in the 205-pound weight class tonight in the co-main event, the simple fact that former UFC light-heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida stepped on the scale at 201 pounds has got people speculating he could move down to the 185-pound division. My personal policy is to never fix something that isn't broke, but hey, what do I know.

• When last we saw UFC featherweight contender Chad Mendes, he was squashing Cody McKenzie like a bug at UFC 148. When the police last saw Mendes, he was fleeing a 40-person bar fight. Yikes. A 40-person bar fight? See, this is why I only hang out at Chuck E. Cheese. When little kids brawl, it's harmless.

• Fellow scribe Kevin Iole reported yesterday that UFC light-heavyweight Matt Hamill has decided to fight again. Awesome. And let's not forget, Hamill is the only person to ever defeat UFC champ Jon Jones, so be excited for that future match-up.

That's all for now. I'll be tweeting my observations of the fights tonight as they happen. Follow along if you want. A word of caution, though: as a devout Native American, I'll be undertaking a cleansing ritual at the same time (they're wheeling a TV into the sweat lodge) — but I'll try to keep the hallucinatory stuff under control.