I don’t know if you remember, but it was just over a year ago when the UFC was being shoved down your throat by someone besides me. Light heavyweight champion, Chuck Liddell was being pushed as the face of mixed martial arts. Liddell was all over ESPN and even guested on Entourage. ESPNews even televised the weigh-ins for UFC 71. The UFC had arrived.

Then Quinton Jackson walked into the octagon and knocked Liddell on his ass. I said before that fight that a Liddell loss would slow the rocket-fueled-pace the UFC was on at that time; Liddell was the poster boy after all…

About a month later, Forrest Griffin, the man who put the UFC on the map with the most important fight in UFC history, (This is not hyperbole.) bounced back from a loss with an impressive win over Hector Ramirez.

A year later, Griffin and Jackson are set to fight for the lightweight championship. ESPN and other major media outlets are strangely quiet.

It’s a shame because Jackson and Griffin are owners of two of the best personalities in all of sports. Forrest and Rampage are two comedians in the bodies of fighters. If the mainstream was looking for a star to sell to the American public, they’d find it in this fight.

Jackson, as we learned a few months ago is a tremendous interview. His “confessionals” highlighted many episodes of this season’s The Ultimate Fighter reality series. Personally, he reminds me of a shorter, scarier Shaq. (I can now count TBL as a fan.)

As for Forrest, he’s a fan-favorite for his always-entertaining fights as well as his self-depreciating post-fight-in-octagon interviews. In his last two fights he’s waxed poetic about getting sad after a loss and eating a lot of cookies and pointed out how it was a bit awkward that one of the highlights of his fight was him spooning another dude. (See, the perceived homo-eroticism that MMA-haters love to point out isn’t lost on the fighters.)

We’ll just have to wait and see if the actual winner shows up on ESPN – or Entourage  -this year.