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Shine Fights COO Jason Chambers told MMA Fighting on Wednesday afternoon that neither he nor his fighters are terribly worried about the Oklahoma Athletic Commission's threat to deny a license for the next 60 days to any man who competes in the non-sanctioned event at the First Council Casino in Newkirk, Oklahoma this Friday night.

Despite the "major concerns" voiced by the commission's director, Chambers insisted that every fighter is "exceedingly comfortable" with participating in the event on Otoe-Missouria Tribe land, and that all of them had been made aware of the potential consequences from the commission.

"We've communicated to them what's been said, but that's coming from second-hand information from the internet," Chambers said. "Are we going to go tell them, the forums are saying you guys are going to have this or going to have that? Our matchmaker is very open with them and communicating with them. That's a non-issue, the suspensions and stuff. They're well aware of what the possibilities could be, absolutely."

So much for that.

A day after we noted that DirecTV, alone among major carriers, had chosen to offer Friday night's Shine Fights pay-per-view card but not Saturday night's Shark Fights card, DirecTV has changed course.

With Shine Fights' event moving from a sanctioned show in Virginia to an unsanctioned show on a tribal territory in Oklahoma, DirecTV decided not to offer Shine Fights anymore.

Just because two men are looking at the same problem, it doesn't mean they're going to come up with the same answer. It's an obvious lesson, but one we learned again this week thanks to Dan Hardy and Kenny Florian.

The (perceived) problem? All these knuckleheaded wrestlers are coming into MMA, taking people down, and then just holding them there until time runs out and the judges declare them the winner.

The solution? According to Hardy we need to make some rule changes, maybe give the referees more authority to put a stop to these grapple-happy shenanigans. But according to Florian, who this week told Sherdog.com that he's hired Boston University assistant wrestling coach Sean Gray to help him in training, the answer is to add more arrows to your own quiver rather than trying to take them out of someone else's.

I think we already know which strategy will prove more successful.

Kendall Grove's next opponent will be former title contender Demian Maia on Dec. 4 at the TUF 12 Finale in Las Vegas, the TUF 3 winner revealed late Tuesday on his social networking pages.

The fight is a huge opportunity for Grove to rise into middleweight contention as well as to ensure an extended career with the UFC, especially after Grove was punished for criticizing Spike TV and The Ultimate Fighter show, prompting the demotion of his most recent fight at UFC 116 against Goran Reljic from the Spike TV broadcast to the untelevised undercard.

Most combat sports fans know Mauro Ranallo as the former voice of PRIDE FC and/or the current voice of MMA on Showtime and CBS.

But did you know that the Canadian-born Ranallo began broadcasting at just 16 years old or that he was in a hospital battling depression two weeks before his PRIDE debut?

In the latest installment of our Backstage series, we sat down with Ranallo hours before August's Strikeforce: Houston event to discuss the trials and tribulations he's experienced over the past decade and the many highlights, as well as a few lowlights, he's endured throughout his career.

Check out the two-part series below.

K-1 President Sadaharu Tanigawa revealed two fights for the K-1 World GP FINAL 16 to be held on October 2 in Seoul, South Korea.

Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem will face Ben Edwards who tore through this year's Oceania GP, scoring three first-round knockouts and Jerome Le Banner, who recently claimed the WPMF Muaythai Super Heavyweight World title will take on current K-1 Heavyweight Champion Keijiro "Kyotaro" Maeda.

Bouts for the K-1 MAX Final 16, which is to be held the following day also in Seoul are to be announced this weekend and more Super-Heavyweight GP bouts are to be announced next Tuesday.

Tanigawa was this week quoted as saying that the much needed financial partnership with Chinese investment bank PUJI has been pushed forward to begin at the end of September and so PUJI money will be supporting the Korean Final 16 events.

DEEP has announced five more fights for their 10th Anniversary DEEP 50th Impact event, confirming some of the bouts leaked by ticketing service E-Plus,

Ryo Chonan vs Jung Hwan Cha, Hidetaka Monma vs Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Ryuta Noji vs Hiroshi Nagao, Isao Terada vs Yoshiki Harada and Shoji Maruyama vs Tatsunao Nagakura have all be added to the mega-card with the only change from the leak being Jung Hwan Cha stepping in for the Bellator bound Yoshiyuki Yoshida. Chonan will get a shot at revenge after he suffered a shock KO loss to Cha at Astra back in April.

Shinya Aoki, Ikuhisa Minowa, Kazuo Misaki, Won Sik "Parky" Park, Akira Shoji, Daiki "DJ Taiki" Hata and Kazunori Yokota are among the names that were originally leaked as participants by E-Plus but have not yet been made official.

The full announced and rumored cards after the break.

As a lead-in to premiere of The Ultimate Fighter 12 featuring Georges St-Pierre and Josh Koscheck, a UFC Fight Night card will air live Sept. 15 on Spike TV from the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas.

Middleweights Nate Marquardt and Rousimar Palhares will battle in the main event of UFC Fight Night 22 with three other bouts rounding out the televised portion of the card. The event airs at 8 p.m. ET and TUF 12 will follow it at 10 p.m. ET.

The fight card is below.

LATE UPDATE: A day after this was published, DirecTV changed course and decided not to offer Shine Fights on pay-per-view.

We have a weird weekend in mixed martial arts ahead of us, with two different pay-per-view shows even as the UFC is sitting the weekend out. But if you're a DirecTV subscriber, you have only one fight card available to you: DirecTV is offering Friday night's Shine Fights event, but not Saturday night's Shark Fights show.

DirecTV has decided not to give its customers the chance to purchase the Shark Fights card, which is headlined by Keith Jardine vs. Trevor Prangley. Unsurprisingly, Shark Fights is disappointed.

MMA referee Yves Lavigne said he wanted to clear the air regarding some inflammatory quotes attributed to him in a Canoe.com story by Vincent Morin recently, so he put it as plainly as he possibly could.

"I did not give him an interview on or off record," Lavigne told Ariel Helwani during Tuesday's episode of "The MMA Hour." "Those are not my quotes. This is not me. Is that enough?"

Lavigne found himself at the center of the controversy after the story quoted him as saying that UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre will dominate Josh Koscheck in their rematch at UFC 124 in Montreal this December, and that Koscheck was scared to exchange punches with Paul Daley in his last fight in Montreal.

But Lavigne, who's a regular at UFC events and may have likely been slated to work the main event bout in his home province of Quebec, insisted that he never spoke with Morin, nor does he have any idea where the quotes came from.