The UFC is missing out on a great opportunity with Renan Barao being forced out of his fight with Eddie Wineland at UFC 161.  Why is that? Because we could have had an interim interim featherweight champion!

You see, Barao won the interim title after Dominick Cruz tore his ACL in preparation for his fight with Urijah Faber in late 2011. Now Barao is out with injured tendons in his foot, scrapping the main event for Winnipeg’s first UFC show.

But why couldn’t we just have seen Wineland take on Faber, who is the next highest-ranked featherweight and was willing to give it a go? That would have been a great fight.

At the very least it would have been better than the new main event for UFC 161: Rashad Evans vs. Dan Henderson. Those two guys are both coming off losses – Evans is on a two-fight skid – and are past their prime. I sure as hell don’t want to watch them go at it for $60.

Think of the possibilities of having three featherweight champions. You’d have three guys walking around with belts who rightfully can say they’re champs. The storylines would be delicious. Who would fight whom first? Would you unify the interim titles, or have Cruz fight Barao? Could it be the third champ vs. Cruz? Who knows?

Of course – and this is just the WWE fan side of me talking – what if we got a three-way brawl to decide it all? How many PPV buys would that get? It is highly unrealistic and dangerous, but talk about excitement! Just thinking about Cruz vs. Barao vs. Wineland gets my mouth watering.

At least it could have played out in a tournament between the three champs and the No. 1 contender. Maybe even fought all on the same night, the way that UFC used to be back in the day.

But, instead, Winnipeg and anyone that pre-ordered UFC 161 gets the shaft. Enjoy watching two guys who collectively haven’t won since January 2012.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

It has been quite a week for homosexuals in professional sports.

In case you hadn’t heard – which might have been impossible for anybody that even looked at the Internet this week – NBA veteran Jason Collins became the first active player to come out of the closet in North American sports.

That started a whirlwind of commentary and general praise for a guy who was never really that good of a player. Let’s face it: Nobody will ever remember Collins for his play on the court. But that’s beside the point and would only diminish what he has done to break down this barrier.

Unfortunately, while there has been heaps of positivity, there have been idiotic negative comments as well. Mike Wallace’s comments on Twitter were perhaps the most well-known, but I’m sure we all had some ignorant fools on our Facebook timelines comment about Collins.

I personally saw a lot of comments like: “We’ve always known there are gays in sports, look at so-and-so.” These are the immature people that make it tough for people to come out of the closet. These are the people that need to grow up and get with the times.

And while a lot of the press went to Collins, we shouldn’t forget about Robbie Rogers either though. The MLS player came out of the closet and immediately retired back in February.

Now, less than a week after Collins’ announcement, Rogers is contemplating a comeback. After all, it was sort of weird that a 25-year-old with U.S. national team experience would simply hang them up that abruptly.

Maybe it was Collins breaking down that barrier that convinced him to give it another go.

But, the biggest news of the week may have been the report in The Guardian that eight players in England’s Premier League have come out to teammates. How much longer can those players stay in the closet with that report getting out?

We’ve also heard the story about four gay NFL players who were considering coming out during a joint news conference earlier this year. Is that the next big thing to come out on this front?

Really, now that the wall has been broken, we could start seeing a flood of players to join Collins as active homosexual athletes – and it’s about time. With gay marriage becoming legal in more places and with being gay becoming more socially acceptable, there’s no reason it should be taboo.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

Before we get into our lead up to the funnest tournament in all of sports, NCAA’s March Madness, let’s take a moment to talk about Canada’s national mixed martial arts treasure, Georges St. Pierre.

First, and this is completely aside from what this post is really about, but St. Pierre has a terrible nickname. I’m not talking about GSP, his initials, that one is fine. I’m talking about “Rush.” He should drop it altogether. Not only does it sound dumb, but it takes away from him. The best fighters have good nicknames like Jon “Bones” Jones and Anderson “Spider” Silva. We’ll never think that Georges “Rush” St. Pierre is in that category.

So, what are we really going to talk about GSP? How about the fact that his next fight could very likely going to be his first loss since Matt Serra dethroned him?

The way I see it, St. Pierre has two options for opponents: Either a superfight against Anderson Silva, or welterweight No. 1 contender Johny Hendricks.

Let’s get one thing straight, if this superfight goes down, it will either be at a catchweight, or GSP will be moving up to middleweight. Moving up would give Silva a big advantage and a catchweight bout would be still be a bit more in Spider’s favour. But either way, you can rightfully assume that Silva would emerge victorious. If I was picking that fight, I’d say either Silva wins by decision or KOs GSP in the third round.

But with Hendricks, the bout we’re most likely to see, I still don’t think that the champ has the best odds to come out with his hand raised.

As Hendricks demonstrated against Carlos Condit at UFC 158, he is the total package. He has the wrestling skills to defend against GSP and maybe even take him down, he has explosive standup power and he can take a punch – with a smile. He looks like an absolute lunatic too.

“Bigg Rigg” has been the No. 1 contender to GSP’s title for a while now as well. He is certainly deserving. Also, it can’t be overlooked that he has beaten everyone that GSP has, and has looked better than the champ in doing so. Namely, he finishes most of his fights. When was the last time St. Pierre didn’t take one to the scorecards? That was against B.J. Penn in early 2009 – more than four years ago – and that was a corner stoppage TKO.

You can easily argue that GSP was ducking Hendricks with this fight, taking on the No. 3-ranked welterweight in Nick Diaz, someone he had bad blood with.

Now, the time for running is over and GSP’s reign will never be in more jeopardy.

This might sound completely odd, but I was in awe of what I watched Sunday afternoon and it had nothing to do with football.

No, I was tuned in on my laptop watching some guy named Felix Baumgartner make history in one of the craziest ways possible. I’m sure you’ve probably heard about it by now after the many commercials and the Red Bull sponsorship tie-in, but Baumgartner flew up in a balloon literally to the edge of space and then jumped.

For those who’re counting, that was a jump from about 128,000 feet in the air. Well, you can barely even call it air at that point. That’s well past the point where you need an oxygen tank to breathe and the fluids in your body could boil. That sounds pleasant, doesn’t it?

Well, what Baumgartner did was simply amazing. He set three world records in one jump – highest free fall, highest manned balloon ride and the fastest free fall. Just how fast was he going? Well he became the first human to ever break the sound barrier without vehicular assistance.

But really, why was this jump so interesting? Why was I sitting on my laptop for almost two hours, much of simply watching a guy basically just sitting there, occasionally talking to the ground control base? I’m not actually sure, but damn it was riveting.

My guess is that it was because the potential of the whole idea was so great. How many times in our lifetimes will we ever see something like Baumgartner’s jump again? Maybe once, but probably never.

Also, how could we possibly know what to expect? Something like this has never been documented before, let alone broadcast live on TV and the internet.

Of course, there’s also the potential for disaster. Something could definitely have gone wrong and the millions (?) watching live could very easily have seen somebody die live on TV at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon.

But, whatever reason it was that you watched the Red Bull Stratos jump, it was certainly worth it. And definitely better than flipping the channel to TSN to see the Argos lose.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

This isn’t sports related, but it’s the best forum that I have so I’ll just come out and say it: I have a beef with Leap Day.

It’s not the fact that we have an extra day every fourth year because I do understand the reason for it. Because of the inexactness of the actual time it take the earth to rotate around the sun, our calendars don’t exactly match up, creating a difference of about six hours every year. Leap Day is the means to keep the two in sync.

But why did the Powers That Be have to make February one day longer?

The most common response that you’d get is that it’s the shortest month, so why not give it the extra day? Understandable, but they’re missing the point: It’s February!

Nobody wants an extra day of perhaps the worst month on the calendar. Nobody wants an extra day of cold, windy winter (although it may not be the best year to bring up bad winter weather). No child wants an extra day of school, either. Nobody certainly wants an extra day of the blahs.

Why can’t we move Leap Day to a better destination on the calendar: June.

Think about what we’d be getting: An extra day of summer; a nice gift of knowing that every fourth year, your vacation could be one day longer. It would even make Canada Day weekend that little bit more special knowing that Leap Day is involved.

Now, I know that technically, we won’t be guaranteed another actual day of summer. But this move would be a massive psychological boost to the world in a time with a ton of depression. It’s more about the mental effect than anything.

You obviously couldn’t take an extra day onto May, July or August since they already have 31 days and by the end of September, it’s already starting to get into the fall chills.

As for those born on February 29, they’d get the novelty of knowing that they’ll never age another year (technically).

So, if anyone can think of a better reason as to why we can’t move Leap Day, or at least start a campaign to have it considered, I’m all ears. And if the best reason that you can come up with is that “this is how it has always been,” well that’s just not good enough. And if you can find a person that would rather have an extra day in February than in June, well they might be just as crazy as Leap Day’s originators.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki