With the growth in popularity mixed martial arts has experienced over the past few years, promoters and fighters have fought to overcome regulatory hurdles and encourage athletic commissions to sanction events. Following a July decision by the athletic commission, Maryland has become the 35th state to legalize and sanction mixed martial arts competition. The state's first event, put on by new organization "Shogun Fights," was held on October 24 in Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena. Both the event and the movement supporting regulation were lead by local trainer John Rallo who has a long history in the sport. "I have been involved in MMA since 1998. It is a great sport, with great athletes."

For me, every time I upgrade wordpress I get the same error. I don't have wordpress in my website's root; it's actually called from an index in my root, which calls the index in a /blog/ folder. This produces the following:

The problem comes from the fact that wordpress assumes it's in root, and if you reassign wordpress to a directory (which I did in the settings) it will assume the function calls are coming from that directory. This is not the case when you're me and you want your index to be separated from wordpress, in the root, in case I decide one day to have a homepage that doesn't reference the wordpress installation. (For example, I may decide to throw a full page announcement one day, or I use a mobile homepage which ignores the blog and just uses the menu at the top and the search box)

So, the solution for me is very simple. I open /blog/index.php and change the following line:

require('./wp-blog-header.php');

to:

require('./blog/wp-blog-header.php');

Since index.php is really only called when I call the root index of the whole site, i.e. it's called from a directory above the wordpress installation, it creates no issues for me unless you go to http://www.surfrock66.com/blog/ which, for my site, no one does.

As with past UFC events, MMA Spot will be bringing our readers round by round coverage and post-fight press conferences for tonight's pay-per-view broadcast of UFC 104: Machida vs Shogun. The event will be taking place from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and features a light heavyweight title bout between former PrideFC champion Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua and undefeated current champ Lyoto 'The Dragon' Machida. Also on the card, heavyweights Cain Velasquez and Ben Rothwell battle to see who stays line for a potential shot at the heavyweight title.

This amendment, attached to a defense spending bill which was guaranteed to pass, extended the definition of a hate crime to cover crimes against LGBT people. The people who opposed this somehow believed that the bill would prevent people from having the religious freedom to oppose homosexuality. If the only way you can express your opposition to something is by acting in such a way that would be otherwise classified as a hate crime, your argument is invalid and you're a fucking toolbox that needs to be slaughtered, but that's just my passionate support for equal rights speaking.

This is the list of people who voted against the bill. Democrat Russ Feingold said he voted against the bill because he opposed the spending bill as a whole for what it would mean for extending the time in Afghanistan. Noble idea, but given the bill was guaranteed to pass it seems that this was a wasted opportunity to do something positive when something you disagree with was resigned to happen. All of these people's names should be published and I encourage you to re-post this list.

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
Bennett (R-Utah)
Brownback (R-Kan.)
Bunning (R-Ky.)
Burr (R-N.C.)
Chambliss (R-Ga.)
Coburn (R-Okla.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Corker (R-Tenn.)
Crapo (R-Idaho)
DeMint (R-S.C.)
Enzi (R-Wyo.)
Feingold (D-Wis.)
Graham (R-S.C.)
Grassley (R-Iowa)
Inhofe (R-Okla.)
Isakson (R-Ga.)
Johanns (R-Neb.)
Kyl (R-Ariz.)
LeMieux (R-Fla.)
McConnell (R-Ky.)
Risch (R-Idaho)
Roberts (R-Kan.)
Sessions (R-Ala.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Thune (R-S.D.)
Vitter (R-La.)
Wicker (R-Miss.)

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00327#position

Former IFL champion Chris "The Polish Hammer" Horodecki (13-1) is expected to sign with Zuffa owned World Extreme Cagefighting according to trainer Shawn Tompkins. Currently on a two-fight winning streak, Horodecki would be joining the organization as a lightweight. While no deal has yet been inked, Horodecki is looking to join with a major promotion after his first win following a year-long layoff due to injury.