Burkman’s contract was not renewed by the UFC in November and now recent reports are stating that the relationship has been temporarily severed.

The Team Quest fighter put together a record of 5-5 during his time in the octagon, notching wins over Josh Neer, Drew Fickett and Forrest Petz in the process.

His most recent three consecutive losses to the likes of Mike Swick, Dustin Hazelett and Pete Sell were definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as Burkman’s time with the UFC goes.

A well rounded fighter with strong wrestling and impressive striking, Burkman should have no problem finding work with an organization such as Strikeforce in the near future.

Burkman has lost 3 of 4 bouts since cracking some journalists’ top 10 lists and a loss here could very well send him out of the UFC. Sell, 0-4 in his last UFC appearances, will be dropping down to welterweight to take the challenge. This seems to be a do or die bout for both fighters as the UFC has recently shown no problems in cutting fighters they don’t find exciting (Burkman) or fighters that don’t win (Sell). While on the undercard, this could be a major fight in the UFC’s welterweight division.

UFC 90, on October 25th, is set to be headlined by a middleweight title bout between Anderson Silva and Patrick Cote. Also on the main card is reported to be Diego Sanchez vs. Thiago Alves, Sean Sherk vs. Tyson Griffin and Melvin Guillard vs. Spencer Fisher.

FiveOuncesOfPain.com is continuing our next level event coverage during UFC Fight Night 12! We will be hosting another LIVE CHAT so you can talk about the fights with some 5 Oz. staff members, as well as other 5 Oz. readers and MMA fans.

To add to the success of our first live chat at UFC 80, ECKO has provided us with some T-shirts signed by Nate Diaz and Corey Hill to give away in our live chat! Show up early, because Adam Morgan and I will be giving out some contest information for you to participate in so these ECKO shirts can be yours. We will also be giving out some of the new 5 Oz. t-shirts as well!

The preliminary bouts will begin between 7:30 and 8pm ET. The main card begins at 9pm ET/PT. Make sure to show up early so you can participate in our ECKO contest! Adam and I will stop taking submission at the end of the first televised bout!

WHEN: Wednesday, Jan. 23 @ 8pm ET, broadcast begins @ 9pm ET/PT
WHAT: Five Ounces of Pain LIVE Results and Chat

Click here for UFN 12 Quick Results!

Over the weekend I attended the U.S. Grappling Championships in Delaware to support my wife and her teammates from her school, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu United. She ended up competing in the Advanced Absolute Division despite only being a white belt. One of her competitors was none other than BodogFIGHT Women’s Champion Tara LaRosa.

I chronicled the experience of my wife competing against LaRosa in an article titled “Grappling with the Champ.” After LaRosa was finished competing, she was gracious enough to grant me an interview in which she discussed her current contract status, whether she’s in fact had negotiations with EliteXC, and her feelings on Gina Carano.

Sam Caplan: You’ve competed at Abu Dhabi and you obviously compete in professional MMA as the BodogFIGHT women’s champion, but you’re here today at the U.S. Grappling Championships in Delaware. It’s not a small tournament, but not as big as some of the others out there. What brought you out to compete today?

Tara LaRosa: I had nothing to do today and I got off work at 4 o’clock in the morning and I figured, “Alright, let’s come on down and do it,” because one of our guys (from the Fight Factory) is fighting on a card right near here (Andrew “The Crow” Staiger on a Combat in the Cage amateur MMA event).

Sam Caplan: Ed Hsu’s show?

Tara LaRosa: Yes. So I thought I’d come on down here and hit up the tournament and that it would be a good time.

Sam Caplan: Are you training full-time at the Fight Factory now?

Tara LaRosa: Yep, I am a full-time member of the Philadelphia Fight Factory and I’m on the fight team.

Sam Caplan: What’s your status with BodogFIGHT right now?

Tara LaRosa: I’m in negotiations for a new contract with Bodog and I’m also in negotiations with some other organizations as well. So we’re trying to work something out where everybody is happy.

Sam Caplan: Can you talk about some of the other organizations that have approached you about a contract?

Tara LaRosa: EliteXC has approached me with a contract and we’re trying to iron out some of the wrinkles and see if we can work together. I’ve been approached by Fatal Femmes Fighting, which, at this time we’re not going forward with negotiations.

I was also supposed to fight on the Platinum Fighting Productions card in the Philippines and what happened with that was I was technically still under contract to Bodog until December 24. Even if my fight had passed they still have me for a few months so I needed to get a permission slip, if you will, to fight on the other show.

Well, I had to go through a lot of red tape and different people in the company to get that and I didn’t get it in time so they had to replace me on the card. At first I was mad about it but they replaced me with Amanda Buckner, who I think definitely deserved the spot and hasn’t fought in awhile. So I was happy with the replacement, and thus had no problems with that.

Sam Caplan: With EliteXC approaching you, at any point did they mention a possible match in the future with Gina Carano?

Tara LaRosa: We’ve discussed it (but) they don’t seem to be optimistic on me fighting her right now. I’m really not sure what they want to do with me since their weight classes are kind of skewered and I’m not going to fight at 140 and I’m not going to fight for three minute rounds. So I really don’t know what we can do but we’re trying to work things out.

They’re trying to build their women’s division so I may meet up with some of the people that I’ve seen before and they may bring in some new people as well.

Sam Caplan: If they were going to offer you a match with Gina Carano would you move up to 140 just for that match?

Tara LaRosa: I’m not sure if I’d move up to 140 or not. It’s of my personal opinion that 140 is not a weight division. 140 is a special division set up for one particular girl who can’t make weight and everybody else that has fought in EliteXC, outside of fights with Gina Carano, (such as) Shayna Baszler, they fought at 135, which is a true weight class. So I’ll fight at 135 if I’m fighting for EliteXC.

Sam Caplan: She’s (Gina Carano) been promoted as the face of women’s MMA but a lot of pundits consider you the number one pound-for-pound fighter in all of women’s MMA. Why not move up for a chance to fight her just to possibly change people’s opinions of her as the top female in MMA?

Tara LaRosa: I know I’m supposed to respond a certain way professionally and politically, but how can she be number one or even the face of (women’s MMA) when she’s been in the sport for less than two years? And she’s only got five fights against girls that are not top tier women in the world. No offense to her opponents; they are all great and they are making their way up through the ranks but they’re still not top caliber yet — not to say that they won’t be in the future.

I think EliteXC may be realizing their mistake as having promoted Gina as such (as the face of women’s MMA) because now that she’s sort of drifting off into other professions such as TV and movies and other things outside of the sport, she doesn’t seem to be taking MMA as a full-time job or as seriously as the rest of us have, as a career.

I’m disappointed that she hasn’t taken it more seriously as to be our representative.

Sam Caplan: You briefly touched on 140 not being an official weight class for women and she’s had trouble making 140, which was setup especially for her. Do you feel like maybe EliteXC is at fault for asking her to cut all the way to 140 or do you feel it’s on her to get down to that weight?

Tara LaRosa: It’s on her to get down to that weight. If she wants to be a professional fighter then she needs to treat this as a professional sport. The rest of us have all cut weight. Everybody from Randy Couture to Tito Ortiz to everyone down into the amateur divisions. Everybody cuts weight. Especially as a professional, it’s your professional obligation to make your contractual weight (the) same as everyone else, she’s nobody special.

Sam Caplan: I’m a layman when it comes to cutting weight. Is there something you see from your perspective that she’s not doing that she’s supposed to be doing in order to meet her contracted weight?

Tara LaRosa: I mean, I don’t know her personally. I don’t know her personal life. I don’t know what she does inside or outside of the gym. I’ve heard rumors that she doesn’t even train between fights so just by her physical appearance, she doesn’t seem to have the physical physique of someone that is in the gym doing cardio and watching their nutrition daily and stringently, especially for someone that should be fighting at the lower weight.

I myself at one point had hit 170. I used to walk around at 148 and fight at 135. I made weight every single time. I’ve never missed weight. And now I’m fighting at 125. I’d rather tap to strikes then miss weight. It’s embarrassing. I find it to be an embarrassment. The rest of us put it out there and the rest of us treat it as a professional endeavor. I hope perhaps that she’ll do the same in the future. Maybe she’s learned from her mistakes? She did say she was going to work with a nutritionist and something to that extent, which I really hope, especially since she’s our representative, I guess. I’d like for her to be more conscious of these such things.

When I was in journalism classes I was taught that it was always frowned upon to write articles in the first person and to write about subjects that you are too close to. Sometimes I adhere to that train of thought, and at other times I do not.

This will be one of those times. I have a story that is simply too good not to tell. It was so good that I considered writing an article for CBSSports.com about it but doing a first-person account about my wife competing at the U.S. Grappling Championships in Delaware yesterday may not make for proper “journalism.” It’s a story more appropriate for this blog and while we’re past the point of FiveOuncesOfPain.com being my personal diary, consider this a personal e-mail that I’m sharing with everyone.

What I experienced yesterday was without question one of the most surreal moments in my life and I’m afraid I may not be able to properly convey its magnitude. But I will give it a shot anyway.

Imagine you’re an amateur golfer and you decide one weekend to enter an amateur tournament in your area and either Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam show up out of nowhere because they were in the area and had nothing better do on a Saturday afternoon than compete. Then imagine you are assigned to play 18 holes of golf with one of them.

Sounds kind of far fetched?

Well, my wife has never played golf and probably never will but she is a competitive martial artist, and a pretty good one at that. And what she experienced on Saturday is probably the martial arts equivalent to the golf analogy mentioned above.

While female grappling has grown in recent years, it still has plenty of room to expand. Too often female martial artists find themselves in positions where they train hard for tournaments and travel great distances only to find that there is no one for them to compete against.

When my wife and I arrived at the tournament we soon learned that the only other white belt for her to compete against weighed 104 pounds. My wife is 5’9” and simply had too much of a weight advantage. The other white belt was also trained at a Lloyd Irvin affiliate school and our head instructor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu United, Jared Weiner, received his black belt from Irvin. Needless to say he wasn’t keen on the idea of my wife competing against another Irvin student in an Absolute (no weight class) division.

We were getting ready to call it a day at that point and head home when all of a sudden we saw a female arrive that had a purple belt hanging out of her gym bag. Jokingly, I asked Sharon, one of the instructors at BJJ United and one of my wife’s coaches, if Andria (my wife) could face her knowing that white belts and purple belts are almost never allowed to compete against each other in Gi tournaments.

After taking a closer look, Sharon responded by saying, “Well, I think that’s Tara LaRosa, actually.” Without realizing she was serious, I just kind of laughed. While the U.S. Grappling Championships had a good turnout, it’s not yet one of the bigger grappling tournaments around. If someone like Tara LaRosa was going to walk up to a grappling tournament, you’d expect it to be an event like NAGA or Grappler’s Quest.

I started focusing on the purple belt and thought to myself, “Damn, that does look a lot like Tara LaRosa.”

Wouldn’t you know, it was indeed BodogFIGHT women’s champion Tara LaRosa. The same Tara LaRosa who competed at Abu Dhabi in Trenton, NJ this summer and also regarded by many as the pound-for-pound number one female mixed martial artist in the world.

My wife and I kind of joked about her competing against Tara.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THIS ARTICLE ON SAM CAPLAN’S PROELITE.COM BLOG

I don’t know how to write this.

I talked to Adrian, my boyfriend, on Monday August 20th. He was giving me grief about not doing enough cardio, we talked about what we would do when he got home. I told him my intenerary for the coming weeks. I gave him shit for being short, he gave me shit for not being able to tap him in close to 2 years. I told him I had been playing with playing with the rubber guard, and that I was working on adding the twister into my arsenal… to which he replied “that’s great, but you have to get me to the ground first.” …LOL he’s a really good wrestler, greco mainly. He had to go, someone in the background needed help with something, he’d call again later in the week.

My boyfriend, SFC Adrian M Elizalde was killed when an IED hit his truck on Thursday August, 23rd. He was 30 years old.

I found out at 3:30pm PST on Friday, 24th. I was in my hotel room in Vancouver, Bodog had brought me up to do some promo stuff and commentary for the season 6 shoot. For those of you that were up there, this is why I had sunglasses on throughout the fights, and why I would get up and leave periodically. The only people that knew were Jessica Aguillar, who had been 3 doors down and found me in a heap on the floor of my hotel room, and the staff. I didn’t want any of the fighters to know, I didn’t want anyone upset or distracted in any way before their fights.

Adrian was my hero in so many different ways. I used to tell him he was “my superman.” Adrian meant so much to me, I loved him so much. He was everything I had ever wanted….. I had hoped we’d spend a lifetime together.

-Tara LaRosa

It’s really sad news. We’ve lost a lot of brave men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and I just hope we bring everyone home soon.