Now, Curran is set to make his return when he faces Scott Jorgensen Saturday night at UFC 137 from Las Vegas, Nevada. The Curran-Jorgensen bout has been added to the PPV portion of the card due to all the recent changes with the lineup due to injury.

Curran, however, almost didn’t accept the fight with Jorgensen due to his coaching obligations. One of Curran’s students, Bart Palaszewski, was also placed on the UFC 137 card and would be forced to go to war against Tyson Griffin without his friend and mentor if Curran took the fight. So, the coach was forced to make an unwanted phone call.

“I’m Bart’s coach, his mentor, his leader, his best friend, and I’m a lot of roles with him. Even though this is the biggest opportunity of my career, of course I’m hoping he says, ‘Yeah, man, do it.’ And I know Bart well enough to know that, but I still give that respect to say, ‘If this is not gonna fly with you, I won’t do it,’” said Curran, in a recent interview with UFC’s website. “It’s really nice to kinda know where my opportunity lies and not be wondering what’s next and all that kinda stuff, so everything starts to fall in place.”

Palaszewski, of course, said yes, and the two have been working side-by-side in preparation of bringing two wins back home with them to Island Lake, Illinois. The Palaszewski-Griffin fight will be part of the Spike TV “UFC Prelims” special that airs an hour before the PPV begins.

After years of working to get back to the UFC, Curran knows that this fight with Jorgensen is a sink-or-swim situation for him, saying, “I’ve got everything to gain and everything to lose from it, so I’m gonna let it all hang out.”

PHOTO CREDIT – WEC/UFC

According to an initial report from MMAJunkie.com, 33-13-1 Jeff Curran has inked a deal with the UFC, while a follow-up story from MMAFighting has stated former title-contender Scott Jorgensen will welcome Curran back to the organization at some point this fall.

Curran has won four of his last five fights but holds a 1-5 record under the Zuffa banner including a quartet of consecutive losses in WEC. However, the submission savvy 33-year old was competitive even in defeat and has beaten a number of tough draws throughout his career like Charles Bennett, Wagnney Fabiano, and Raphael Assuncao.

If he does indeed face Jorgensen later this year Curran should have his hands full considering “Young Guns” past performances. The 12-4 Jorgensen is coming off a knockout victory over Ken Stone at the Ultimate Fighter 13 Finale after going the distance against 135-pound champ Dominick Cruz six months earlier, a loss snapping a five-fight winning streak including success against Takeya Mizugaki, Antonio Banuelos, and Brad Pickett.

PHOTO CREDIT – UFC

FiveOuncesofPain.com has been able to confirm the bout through sources close to the fight.

The event is set for November 7 from the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, IL., airing live on CBS.

The bout between Curran and Thao will take place as part of the preliminary portion of the card.

Sporting a career record of 29-12-1, Curran will be looking to bounce back from a four fight losing skid that included defeats at the hands of top rated fighters in Urijah Faber, Mike Brown, Joseph Benavidez and Takeya Mizugaki in the WEC. During the course of his career, the “Big Frog” has notched wins over the likes of Wagnney Fabiano and Raphael Assuncao.

Thao will be moving up from 125 pounds to face off with Curran, who recently dropped down to 135 from 145 pounds. Holding a professional record of 4-1, Thao is known as a heavy handed knockout artist, with three of his four wins coming via TKO.

Curran broke the news on Facebook, also confirming November 7 as the date for his promotional debut.

“Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers” is set to take place from the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, IL., just outside of Chicago.

Curran will be looking to place himself back inside the winners circle following a succession of defeats running four bouts to the likes of Urijah Faber, Mike Brown, Joseph Benavidez and Takeya Mizugaki.

During his career, “Big Frog” holds victories over FiveOuncesofPain.com’s #8 and #10 featherweights, Raphael Assuncao and Wagnney Fabiano.

During a recent C3 Full Contact Fighting event in which Curran was inducted into the promotion’s Hall of Fame, the former featherweight-turned-bantamweight competitor responded to a question about what his goals were for the upcoming year by indicating that he wanted to win the WEC 135 pound title currently held by Miguel Torres.

With several thousand fans on hand to witness the comments in Torres’ hometown of Hammond, Indiana, some took them out of context and began to claim that Curran “called Torres out” during posts on the legendary Underground forum at MixedMartialArts.com.

The thread exploded when Curran responded to comments in which some fans expressed that they believed Curran’s comments were disrespectful and that he wasn’t “in the same league” as the incumbent champ.

Curran, one of the greatest lighter weight fighters to ever compete in MMA, took great offense to some of the remarks made.

“WOW! That’s all I can say,” an agitated Curran responded. “Suddenly Miguel Torres is God.”

“I lose one fight in 60 by a submission to Urijah Faber and I suddenly don’t transfer my BJJ to MMA as good as Torres?,” Curran continued. “That’s just ridiculous.”

Clearly feeling slighted after not being compared favorably to Torres, Curran decided to introduce some statistical information to the debate in response to his critics.

“MIguel is slick as hell, I am the first to admit,” said Curran. “I am personally a fan of his as he has claimed to be of mine. But, here are a few quick facts to ease your troubled little minds: Miguel has fought some good guys, yes, but the majority of his fight record consists of fighters that haven’t been very active overall. Meaning they are not currently fighting.

“Here are some simple numbers: my 42 total opponents total a win/loss/draw record of 479-269-25 (773 total fights). MIguel Torres has fought guys totaling a record of 204-159-7 combined record (370 total fights) out of his 35 total fights. So on an average I have seven more fights than him yet my opposition has a total of 403 more total fights.”

FiveOuncesOfPain.com contacted Curran in response to the forum post and while he has nothing personal against Torres, he made it clear that he feels some of Torres’ supporters are overlooking his credentials.

“I think I have plenty of respect. I just think that when someone doesn’t respect you, it shows up more than when people do,” he began to tell us during an exclusive interview conducted by phone. “My fans and my students and my family, they don’t go on the Underground and I’ve got a few guys that try and keep up with stuff that are backing me, but for the most part I’ve got better things to do than have all my friends go on and hype me up. There are just times in which I wish I had some people to go on there and speak on my behalf so that I wouldn’t have too.”

However, as we continued to speak with Curran, he still wanted to stress that he has a resume that is every bit as strong as Torres’ — and perhaps stronger.

“…The bottom line is that he fought a lot of guys in the bulk of his career that never really continued on to be fighters and never were really fighters in the first place,” he said. “He’s beat some good guys and he’s good, but let’s not think that he’s out of my league. If anybody thinks he’s out of my league, they are out of their mind. When he was fighting guys who were 0-2, I was in the UFC fighting Matt Serra on nine days notice even though he completely outweighed me. He couldn’t finish me off, he couldn’t submit me, and he couldn’t overpower me. And that was when my game was half of what it is now…”

While Curran indicated that both he and Torres are friends, it appears that his decision to move from featherweight to bantamweight has put a great deal of stress on the friendship.

“I talked to Miguel right after I had fought Mike Brown,” Curran began to explain. “Me and Miguel had a conversation and I said, ‘Hey, there’s a good chance now that I’m moving to the division that we’re going to end up fighting and I think it’s in our best interest to do it professionally and do it right and make sure everybody knows about it.’ And he said ‘Oh yeah, I’m all behind it.’

“I told him we could hype it up. It’s not like we’ve got to go out and trash talk each other… He was in agreement with me and it started to approach the end of the year and we saw Mike Brown beat Urijah Faber and it got my wheels turning… I sent him a text and said ‘Once you go through Tapia, you should give me a call and we’ll do this up and get something going…

“His assistant called me and said that he was training for a fight and that he would call me as soon as he got back from out of town… Then a week later his agent called my agent and started bitching about me calling and bothering Miguel and stuff and that Miguel is too good to fight me. I sort of got thinking that maybe all of this fame has gotten to Miguel’s head and that he doesn’t remember he doesn’t have as good of a shot of beating me as he thinks.”

While Curran isn’t sure when the seemingly inevitable showdown with Torres will take place, he did reveal to Five Ounces of Pain that he expects his WEC debut at bantamweight to take place on Jan. 25 in San Diego at WEC 38.

“Vaguely, in the beginning (the WEC) said they wanted to put me and Torres together but they never said whether they wanted me to win one fight or two. They never give that description,” Curran answered when asked about a timetable for a possible Torres fight, before continuing by saying, “But I am discussing fighting whoever they give me for the Jan. 25 WEC and I don’t know who that would be, but I don’t mind fighting once (before fighting Torres).”

Nicknamed “The Big Frog,” Curran is 30-10-1, according to Sherdog’s fight finder. He has competed for PRIDE, the IFL, and King of the Cage promotions in the past. Since returning to the WEC under Zuffa’s ownership, he has posted a 1-2 record.

After recording a unanimous decision victory over Stephen Ledbetter in his WEC debut at WEC 29, Curran fought WEC featherweight champion Urijah Faber at WEC 31, where he tapped out to Faber in the second round due to a guillotine choke. He returned at WEC 34 in June, where he lost a unanimous decision to Mike Thomas Brown.

Curran is ranked as a top-ten featherweight by most of the top major websites but still believes that a move from 145 pounds to 135 pounds makes sense.

“I think that the fast pace and the real high technical level is a great fit for me,” Curran is quoted as saying. “The talent pool in that division is sick.”

The division’s talent pool currently includes WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Torres and top contenders such as former champion Chase Beebe, Brian Bowles, Manny Tapia, Yoshiro Maeda, Damacio Page, Antonio Banuelos, and Scott Jorgenson.

“I got back to Sao Paulo today; I was vacationing in California with my wife, where I also shot some Jiu-Jitsu dvds. I’ll be back at the UFC on March 8th to fight Ed Herman, who I don’t know, but my manager brought me a tape with some of his fights to analyze, but I haven’t had time to watch yet.”

On preparing for his next commitment, the black belt said: “At this moment I’m with my physical trainer putting together a training spreadsheet, since I’ll start today and starting next week training is going to be heavy, as I only have seven weeks till the fight. I’m going to put greater importance on the standup part, I don’t know if I’ll be able to practice Jiu-Jitsu the way I would like, but I will never neglect it, because that’s what resolves my fights for me.”

Maia is coming off a first-round submission victory against Ryan Jensen at UFC 77. The BJJ black belt is boasting a 6-0 MMA record with 5 of 6 of his victories coming in the first round.

Ed Herman is on a bit of a win streak, as he won all 3 of his fight in 2007. His two submissions and one knockout came against Chris Price, Scott Smith, and Joe Doerksen respectively.

An exact date and venue have not been announced by the UFC for UFC 83.

Demian Maia: There are plenty of good pure grapplers in the UFC such as Roan Carneiro, Tony DeSouza, B.J. Penn, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Ricardo Almeida, Alberto Crane, Mark Bocek and others. But there are many pundits who consider Maia to be the best currently on the UFC roster. He even won the illustrious Abu Dhabi grappling championships that were held in Trenton, N.J., this past summer, beating Yushin Okami in the 77-87-kilogram final.

While Marcelo Garcia is a prime example of how a strong grappling background is not a guarantee at success in MMA, Maia has begun his pro career with a 6-0 record. He was successful in his UFC debut at UFC 77 this past October, submitting Ryan Jensen with a rear naked choke at just 2:40 into Round 1.

There are still plenty of questions that need to be answered about Maia’s standup game, but he’s one of the brightest prospects in the UFC’s thinnest division. Maia not only has the talent but has the opportunity to rise through the ranks of the middleweights, a rise he’s likely to make in 2008.

In order to see who else made the list, just click here.

The marijuana positive still doesn’t explain the umbrella. I know that was his deal in Pride but it seemed even more out of place in the UFC. Does CSAC test for LSD?

Seriously though, I still think it’s rather silly that some commissions test for marijuana. I don’t smoke it (only because I’m already a paranoid person to begin with and I also hate cottonmouth) but even someone like me who has no use for it believes it should be legal.

Also, it doesn’t look like the results are back yet for the performance enhancers. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Other notes:

- Brazilian website Gazeta De Povo is reporting that Mauricio “Shogun” Rua had ligament damage in his knee leading up to his UFC 76 bout with Forrest Griffin and that it limited his ability to train. According to the report, Shogun will be undergoing surgery this Friday. He doesn’t expect to resume training until late-January or early-February.

So let me see, Forrest Griffin says he won’t be ready for Dec. 29; Rampage has a hand injury that could prevent him from fighting again in ’07; and now Shogun is on the shelf? What does that leave as far as big light heavyweight fights for UFC 79? You could go Chuck Liddell vs. Houston Alexander and Keith Jardine vs. Wanderlei Silva? Or, you could go Houston Alexander vs. Keith Jardine II and Wanderlei Silva vs. Chuck Liddell! I’m being serious, I think all these injuries could force the UFC to make a Silva vs. Liddell match for UFC 79.

- UFCDaily.com is reporting that Heath Herring plans to return to UFC action after some time off by early-2008.

- MMAJunkie.com broke the news on Wednesday that Ryan Jensen will be replacing an injured Marvin Eastman against Demian Maia at UFC 77 in Cincinnati on Oct. 20. It’s an Adam Morgan dream match from what I hear and the reason why he’s buying tickets to the show.

It is believed that Maia will compete in the 185 lbs. division.

There are a lot of rumors out right now about Maia’s first opponent but I don’t want to comment on anything until I hear something definitive. Once I hear something more official, I’ll have news of his first opponent here.

You can check out ADCombat.com’s story by clicking here.