By Brad Young
Posted 05/25/2007 at 12:13 AM

I have been stating for quite awhile now that the Ultimate Fighting Championship is in the American mainstream. All you have to do is pick up the latest Sports Illustrated to see the UFC on the cover, or ESPN the magazine to check out light heavyweight champion Chuck ‘The Iceman’ Liddell.

Liddell even did a recent guest appearance on the HBO show Entourage, but the UFC’s longest reigning champion will have a tough year ahead of him. First is his highly anticipated fight against Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, the last man to beat him. ‘The Iceman’ has cleaned out the light heavyweight division, but Jackson can strike with him and dominated their first fight back in 2003.

Plus, the UFC just signed who I consider the best light heavyweight fighter on the planet, Brazilian Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua that has been overlooked by most of the media. The Pride superstar is the next big thing in the light heavyweight division, and will be Saturday night’s big surprise announcement.

I was on a conference call with UFC President Dana White early Thursday, and there were a few interesting tidbits that I’ll break down in this blog. It’s refreshing to hear about five-year plans in sports organizations working, I wonder how the Chicago Cubs’ latest five-year plan is working out?

White had an interesting angle on the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight, while stating correctly that boxing is all about the money. The UFC President said that Golden Boy Productions should have invested in a topflight fight card with some other notable boxers such as Bernard Hopkins or Winky Wright to give them increased exposure for further pay-per-view specials.

I was at the fight, and couldn’t name one person on the undercard or identify them in a police lineup. Boxing continues to cannibalize itself, and has nobody to blame but its own organizations.

The other big story to come out of Thursday’s conference call was the status of welterweight fighter Diego ‘Nightmare’ Sanchez heading into his UFC 69: Shootout showdown with Josh Koscheck. Fighters have to go through a pre-fight physical and blood check to make sure they’re alright to beat each other up in front of thousands of adoring fans.

The doctors thought Diego had hepatitis c, and he was contemplating retirement. It turned out to be a staph infection, which would explain his lackluster performance and loss to Koscheck.

Staying in the stacked welterweight division, White discussed Georges ‘Rush’ St. Pierre who is one of the most gifted athletes and the future of the division. White questioned the Canadian’s mental approach to fighting, since he has all the physical tools to completely demolish the likes of Matt ‘The Terror’ Serra.

Finally, I’m looking for an entertaining holiday weekend by attending UFC 71: Liddell vs. Jackson. The main event will be a slugfest with two strikers testing each others chin, but I think the fight of the night is going to be the middleweight bout between Terry Martin and Ivan Salaverry.

I’m not too excited about the Karo ‘The Heat’ Parisyan vs. Josh ‘The People’s Warrior’ Burkman. Parisyan is the huge favorite, but has no knockout power so this fight will be decided by a three-round decision. Burkman is cursed with possibly the worst nickname in sports, but at least I can take solace in the fact that he’s fighting for average joes like myself.