Roy Nelson is hammering his way to the top of the heavyweight division.

The former TUF winner has crumpled his past three opponents, leaving each lying dazed on the canvas as the result of his devastating anvil of a right hand. The momentum he’s gathered in the divisional picture has “Big Country” knocking on the door of a shot at the heavyweight title, and the Las Vegas native is determined to make the opportunity to compete for UFC gold a reality.

Following his first-round destruction of veteran Cheick Kongo this past weekend at UFC 159, the former IFL heavyweight champion used his post-fight mic time with Joe Rogan to declare he wanted to face the winner of the upcoming tilt between title holder Cain Velasquez and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva at UFC 160.

The moment was Nelson’s for the taking, but at the post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White expressed other interests for the heavyweight knockout artist. White told the media in attendance that he and matchmaker Joe Silva had discussed the next step for Nelson, and the 36-year-old’s next opponent would either be Strikeforce Grand Prix winner Daniel Cormier or former K-1 champion Mark Hunt, should the “Super Samoan” get past Junior dos Santos at UFC 160.

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MMA's Great Debate Radio returns for Tuesday's show with plenty of fallout from last weekend's UFC 159 show, and one of the biggest winners from the weekend, Pat Healy, joins us as our guest.

Healy had to sit and wait like a lot of Strikeforce fighters for most of 2012, although he did finally get a fight in early 2013 before the promotion closed its doors for good.

He made the most of that moment before making his debut against the always tough Jim Miller at UFC 159 over the weekend.

What resulted was Healy picking up a victory over Miller, while also capturing two bonuses netting him an extra $130,000.

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April is drawing to a close. It was a mixed month for the UFC, with a few critically acclaimed and exciting events topped off by one of the strangest pay-per-view events in the history of the company.

After four events in April, the UFC dials it back a notch and presents just two cards in May. But even though we have fewer total fights to pick from, there are still plenty of intriguing matchups to look forward to.

Let's take a look at five you can't miss.

Vitor Belfort vs. Luke Rockhold (UFC on FX 8)

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Over the last three years, Chael Sonnen went from midcard journeyman to main-event draw, all because he figured out how to catch lightning in a bottle.

When I first interviewed Sonnen in 2006, he was 25 fights into his professional MMA career and was generally regarded as a solid middleweight, but by no means a top-tier fighter. He was 16-8-1 at the time, hadn't really beaten any big-named fighters and was mostly known for tapping out in a submission quicker than Calista Flockhart at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It was ahead of his bout against Alexey Oleinik in a Bodog Fight that I first spoke to Sonnen, and back then he was a well-spoken fighter, knowledgeable on the sport, but not the promotion machine that fans have come to know in the last few years.

In that first interview back in November 2006, Sonnen was competing in Bodog Fight's middleweight division, and when a controversial subject came up during our chat, he said something nobody that's followed his career lately would recognize.

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In a sport as rigorous as mixed martial arts, where a fighter's physical and mental mettle is tested in constant fashion, the ability to bounce back from adversity can either define or break an athlete's career.

It just so happens resilience is a something Frankie Edgar carries in large supply. 

The former UFC lightweight champion's battles are well-noted, and his countless displays of heart and grit are stamped into the history of the sport itself, but despite the accomplishments of his impressive resume, these days "The Answer" finds himself in a situation far different than he's ever known in his professional career.

After an impressive run atop the highly competitive 155-pound division, the 31-year-old has experienced a tough run of setbacks inside the Octagon, coming out on the losing end of his past three showings on the sport's biggest stage—each time with championship gold on the line.

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In the sport of MMA, there are no rules or regulations on what makes a fighter popular or connect with fans in a positive manner.

The perfect case example of this phenomenon is UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones.

As dominant a fighter as there is in the entire sport this side of Anderson Silva, Jones has never been able to gain favor with fans in the same way fighters like Georges St-Pierre does every time he competes.

Last Friday at the UFC 159 weigh-ins—which were held in New Jersey just a hop, skip and a jump away from New York where Jones was born and raised—the fanbase definitely hit a fevered pitch when he stepped on the scale, but not with the kind of favor most fighters feel competing close to home.

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After most UFC events, I like to take a few days to reflect on what I've seen before passing any judgments. I watch the fights on my television at home, since up until that point I've only had the live experience of sitting on press row and working. And even though press row is just about the best seat you can get in any arena, you still miss things that you would normally see on the television broadcast.

I don't think UFC 159 will require many extra views. 

It's not that the entire event was bad. There were several highlights, and we'll get into those in a few minutes. But I think it's safe to say that UFC 159 won't go down in the history books as a memorable event for good reasons; rather, it will be remembered as one of the weirdest events in UFC history. It's certainly the strangest event I've ever covered live.

If you're one of those folks who believe in all good things coming to an end, well, Saturday night didn't surprise you. The UFC's had a pretty good run of entertaining events, and last week's UFC on Fox card was one of the best overall shows in the history of the company. 

So it felt like they were due for a bad card. And again, while I wouldn't classify UFC 159 as a bad card in the usual way of judging these things, it certainly wasn't good. And strange things were most definitely afoot.

Prior to the event, I tweeted the following:

When I tweeted that, I honestly believed that there was no way we would see it come to fruition. It was mostly done tongue in cheek, as a way of noting that I believed Chael Sonnen didn't stand much of a chance against Jon Jones. A freak injury incurred by Jones was Sonnen's best path to victory, and we all knew that wasn't going to happen. Right?

Right?

You can imagine the look on my face, then, when a few hours later we came just a few seconds away from Sonnen capturing the light heavyweight title due to a horrific compound toe fracture suffered by Jones in the first round. 

It was that kind of night. The weird stuff started early and never let up, all the way through the main event. 

Now that it's over, and now that I'm finally home from Newark (hands down my least-favorite city to cover a UFC event in), it's time to reflect on what I saw.

Kevin Mulhall made the correct decision in stopping the St Preux/Villante fight

When Gian Viillante suffered an eye poke from Ovince St-Preux, he stumbled backwards and held his hand over his eye. Referee Kevin Mulhall approached Villante to see how he was doing. "I can't see," Villante said. 

At that point, Mulhall waved off the fight. The fans erupted in boos, and Villante protested wildly. But the truth is this: Mulhall was right, at least according to the rules. If a fighter is asked if he can see, and he says no, the referee is obligated to stop the fight. 

The rule is dumb, of course. Eye pokes should be treated the same as groin strikes, in that a fighter should be given up to 5 minutes of recovery time before being asked to resume the fight. But eye pokes aren't treated the same way, and nobody really knows why. They're obviously just as debilitating as a strike to the groin—if not more so, in some cases—and yet the referees are often instantly in the faces of the injured fighter, asking if they can see and if they can continue.

They've just been poked in the eye, and they've been given no time to recuperate. Of course they can't see. 

This is yet another MMA rule that needs to be changed. Eye pokes are serious business, but they don't always have to signal the conclusion of a fight. In a lot of cases, a fighter can recover if given the proper time. But if the referee is immediately tasked with getting in the fighter's face and asking if they can see just mere seconds after they've been poked in the eye, well, the chances are pretty good that they cannot see. 

Fighters who suffer eye pokes should be given time to rest. The cageside doctor should be the one checking out the eye, as I can't imagine many of these referees are trained in all of the various nuances of eye injuries. If the doctor determines that they cannot continue, then the fight should be stopped. But it shouldn't be left up to the referee, and it absolutely shouldn't happen when a fighter is asked if they can see immediately after having a digit jammed in their orbital socket. 

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There has never been a mixed martial arts fighter like Jon Jones. His combination of intelligence, athleticism and skill set is unmatched in the sport's history.

Most fighters do one thing pretty well. They are specialists who get by with passable skills in other areas. The very best guys can do two or three things at a high level.

Jones is a different kind of athlete. You can't compare him to another fighter—no one has ever approached what he can do in the Octagon.

His ground-and-pound is brutal—sharp elbows and sharper angles. But he doesn't belong on the same evolutionary path as other great ground-and-pounders like Mark Coleman and Matt Hughes. His striking game is too sophisticated and slick for that. Sometimes, in fact, he doesn't even consider taking the fight to the ground. That would never have been the case with someone like Coleman.

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