When UFC Octagon girl Arianny Celeste graces the cover of Playboy in November 2010, she will do so as the fictional wife of the most charismatic MMA columnist in the history of the sport’s coverage.

And since Ariel Helwani and Ben Fowlkes weren’t available, that honor is bestowed upon yours truly.

Kenda Perez and I had some good times as a fictional married couple, but when she started threatening to soccer kick my pet hippo Pride FC-style, I knew things wouldn’t work out in the long run.

From what I hear, Miss Celeste is a hippo lover, so it is a match made in heaven.

My hippo brings all the girls to the yard and they’re like…um, I am getting off-topic here. That is what 10 cups of coffee will do to you on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, welcome to the fifth installment of MMA Sweet Tweets here on Bleacher Report. You know the drill by now, every Friday I compile a list of some of the coolest MMA personalities to follow on Twitter.

Who will I mention this week?

But first, make sure to follow my fictional wife @AriannyCeleste and be sure to send her tweets about how her new fictional husband, Mitch Ciccarelli, totally reeks of awesomeness.

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Courtesy of :Bleacher Report – UFC

When Bellator hit the scene back in April 2009, they brought back something that the fans haven’t seen but a few times from the UFC in over a decade—the tournament format. 

Even with preemption problems, ratings for Bellator have been strong.

Most recently, Strikeforce Challengers 10 played host to a one-night, four-woman tournament to determine who would get the next shot at the 135-pound champion. 

The ratings for that show were up 17 percent from Challengers 9.

UFC could headline a pay-per-view with Bozo the Clown vs. Rukka Rukka Ali and still get 250K buys, so thinking of ways how they could actually benefit from the tournament format is very challenging. 

However, after countless hours of thought, a few ideas have come to mind.

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Courtesy of :Bleacher Report – UFC

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the MMA community is raising hell at the news that James Toney earned $500k for his efforts against Randy Couture last Saturday at UFC 118.

However, the MMA community is wrong.

While Toney’s performance was lackluster as expected, we all knew that was going to happen. No amount of training over the past six months was going to prepare him for what Couture — or most mixed martial artists — were going to throw at him that night.

Toney was brought in for several reasons:

• He’s a boxer of some name value that wanted to “cross the line” into MMA.
• He was bold and confident enough to think he could beat Couture or at least, talk like he was going to.
• He can sell a fight…at least to MMA fans and media.

Toney talked the talk for months, engaging reporters like Ariel Helwani early on and setting the tone for the firestorm of pre-fight build as part of the the co-main event of UFC 118. He did all the media he was asked to do and then some, all with the same tone and attitude. 

He knew his role: enrage MMA fans to the point they are willing to pay to see you get beat. Mission accomplished (or at least we think so until the PPV numbers come out). He played his hand in the mythical boxing vs. MMA debate perfectly, even though he must have known he was climbing up a steep, steep mountain in Mt. Couture.

It worked as Boston’s TD Garden was electric for the fight. Even if it was a one-sided affair, people needed to see it happen and they did, chanting ‘UFC’ as loudly as they ever chanted ‘Randy’. The UFC cooked up a marketing line and it worked to perfection.

So why shouldn’t Toney earn some money for that?

Let’s face facts here. Frankie Edgar/BJ Penn II was not carrying this event to a strong PPV number, even with Couture in the co-main event spot. There are few fighters that the UFC could match Couture up against that would still pop a solid buyrate these days and still gain the mainstream media attention in Boston.

Unfortunately, none made the right type of sense so UFC President Dana White went with what would make him dollars and cents. Can you blame him?

Suddenly, Toney came to the top of that list and Couture took the challenge of defending the sport. It’s a good thing Toney did what he did as without him, the event wouldn’t have been covered as hard as it was by the local Boston media. In addition, I will guarantee you Toney’s pre-fight media blitz did more to sell the PPV than if he wasn’t on the card.

Essentially, Toney become a marketing consultant for the night and for $500k, that’s a bargain. Say this fight does 600,000 buys. At an average of $50, that’s $30 million. You’re telling me Toney didn’t earn 1/60th of that? Please. He practically paid for himself.

Hate on Toney all you want for his comments toward MMA. Revile him for thinking a boxer could come into the Octagon and easily dispatch a Hall-of-Famer. Turn your back on him for his effort Saturday.

But don’t say he didn’t earn his money.

Josh Nason is a New England-based freelance MMA journalist that has live event coverage, has written for FIGHT! Magazine and frequently does radio/podcast appearances. Follow him on Twitter, will ya?

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Courtesy of :Bleacher Report – UFC