The Weekly Wrap: Feb. 27 - March 5

Odds and Ends

• Yves Edwards took a step forward in building another winning campaign on Feb. 26, as the veteran lightweight took out fellow vet Derrick Noble via strikes in the first round to headline the latest offering from the Maximum Fighting Championship -- MFC 24 “HeatXC” in Enoch, Alberta. Unlike the last several MFC events, the card did not air on HDNet but instead as an Internet pay-per-view stream on the MFC Web site.

The win was thought to put Edwards firmly in contention for MFC's 155-pound title. However, that belt is held by Antonio McKee, who cornered Edwards for the Noble fight.

MFC 24 also featured two emphatic head kick knockouts. U.K. fighter Tom Watson leveled Travis Galbraith with a kick from which it took Galbraith several seconds to recover. Also, Jesse Juarez crowned Nathan Gunn with a kick after Gunn dropped his left hand 11 seconds into the fight. It was Juarez's seventh straight win.

• Chuck Liddell raised some eyebrows with his role in a stealth participation in a viral ad campaign for Reebok.

A video appeared on the Internet late last week depicting Liddell and female acquaintance Heidi Northcott doing workout circuits nude -- save the Reebok ZigTechs on Liddell and Northcott's feet -- filmed by what appears to be a peeping tom looking through a window.

The video got coverage on TMZ.com, who reported the video was part of the marketing campaign. Liddell denied it when asked by Yahoo Sports, and Urijah Faber told the site Liddell told him he had no idea the video was shot. A similar video of NFL star Chad Ochocinco, who is sponsored by Reebok, has also surfaced.

• Rick Hawn, one of the highest-level judokas on the American MMA circuit, showed a well-rounded game in keeping his winning streak alive Friday in the main event of World Championship Fighting 9. The 33-year-old welterweight, who represented the United States in the 2004 Olympics, notched a workman-like unanimous decision over Tom Gallicchio, of New York’s Team Bombsquad. Hawn confirmed he would be facing grappling luminary Braulio Estima on a May 15 pay-per-view card promoted by the Shine Fight organization, headlined by boxing champion Ricardo Mayorga vs. Din Thomas.

• Two-time NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion Cole Konrad is the latest highly sought-after MMA prospect to join Bellator Fighting Championships’ growing roster of top fighters. Konrad made the revelation during a backstage interview earlier tonight following a first-round TKO (doctor’s stoppage) of Joel Wyatt during a Matrix Fights event in Philadelphia. The win improved Konrad’s professional record to 2-0.

• Less than two months after the series premiered on Spike TV, “The Best of the Pride Fighting Championships” appears to have been pulled from the network’s Friday night lineup. The show was originally set to air on March 5 but was taken off the schedule in place of CSI re-runs. Wrestlingobserver.com reported that Spike considers the series, featuring classic Pride bouts from the Zuffa library, “on hiatus” and is set for a summer return. The series did not do ratings as high as the ubiquitous UFC “Unleashed” series of archived Octagon bouts.

• One of the sport’s premiere flyweights, Shinichi Kojima, announced this week he’d vacated his Shooto bantamweight (123 pounds) title he’s held since October 2006, citing a right knee injury. Kojima suffered the injury in a non-title loss to Jussier da Silva last summer.