Damn

Sam Caplan has an article up about fighters who may breakout in the upcoming year (I'm guessing he didn't mean actually break out of jail, like Krazy Horse or something was going to hide in a laundry bag), and suggested I look up Ed "9mm" Ratcliff, a fighter I was aware of (he fights out of San Diego). I did...WOW. Keep an eye out for this guy. Let the vid load and pull it forward to about the 6 minute mark if you want to see something keen. Otherwise watch the whole thing, it's a good fight. Bret Cooper's a tough, tough dude, too.
Other stuff to watch out for in 2008: Jake Shields may take over America, and force a showdown something like Fedor-Randy and Liddell-Silva with GSP in the coming years. Shields is the real deal, and would give about any welterweight fits right now. Brian Bowles in the WEC is going to get a couple more quality wins and maybe a title shot. Kieth Jardine will continue to win and lose to quality opponents. Randy and the UFC will not come back together, and Randy will be 46 before he fights again after a crazy-assed court battle. HDnetfights will eventually partner or merge or whatever with EliteXC and Showtime will start showing regular events from Cuban's arena. They'll get a major basic cable deal as well.
Melvin Guillard will destroy people in some small-time promotion, win 14 in a row in 9 months, then get choked out by a mid-level BJJ player in the first minute of his return to the UFC. Dana White will not learn. Cung Le will hurt Frank Shamrock, then get taken down and bloodied for most of the rest of the fight. at the start of a round he'll knock out Frank with a crazy-assed roundhouse kick and Jean Claude Van Damme's reanimated corpse (he's been dead for five years) will be all like "Motherfucker!"
Maybe not the last one. Well, not the Van Damme part.