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Wow, Mark Strand and now Philip Levine. Both excellent selections…

Philip Levine was named the 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States, it was reported on August 9, 2011.^[7] Levine will succeed W.S. Merwin, who was the country’s seventeenth Poet Laureate. Former Poets: Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, Joseph Brodsky, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Hass, Donald Hall, Robert Pinsky (three terms), Mark Strand, Audre Lorde and Maxine Kumin, among others.

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(Askren's most recent fight vs. Matt Delanoit, 8/28/09. Props: Pure Fight.)

Ben Askren was a four-time All-American wrestler at the University of Missouri and an Olympic hopeful at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. He came home without a medal, his dreams temporarily dashed, and has since turned his focus toward MMA, racking up a 3-0 record in smaller promotions. But now the former wrestling standout has signed on to compete in Bellator’s welterweight tournament in the spring of 2010, though that doesn’t mean he’s forgetting all about his goals in the world of wrestling. Far from it, in fact. He seems to think he can someday be the best in the world at both MMA and wrestling, and nobody can talk him out of it.

CagePotato.com: You’re one of the more well known wrestlers. You were a two-time national champ at Missouri and you got a lot of press heading into the Olympics. What made you decide to sign with Bellator?

It’s the best offer I had right now. They made me a good offer and they said they’d let me keep wrestling on the side, so that played a big part in my decision.

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After scoring one of the biggest upsets of the year in August — knocking out the seemingly-indestructible Miguel Torres in the first round of their bantamweight title fight at WEC 42 — Brian Bowles is ready to defend his crown. The WEC announced yesterday that Bowles (8-0) will next compete at WEC 47, which is slated for March 6th at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. His opponent will be 15-1 contender Dominick Cruz, who has won his last four WEC fights by decision, and whose only career loss came in a featherweight bout against Urijah Faber back in March 2007. Cruz most recently won a unanimous decision over much-hyped up-and-comer Joseph Benavidez at WEC 42, earning the event's Fight of the Night award.

Miguel Torres is also slated to compete on the card against a yet-unnamed opponent. And even though he basically retired in June, Jens Pulver will be fighting at the Columbus event as well. WEC 47 — which will take place during the weekend of the annual Arnold Sports Festival — will mark the organization's first show in Ohio.

Semi-related: No matter how his fight against Ed Ratcliff turns out this Saturday at WEC 45, Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone plans to drop to featherweight for his next fight.

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One thing that M-1 Global does seem to have succeeded in doing is making Fedor Emelianenko much better known in his Russian homeland. Fanhouse reports:

In a ceremony to honor Russia's top athletes, Fedor Emelianenko was honored as the best male athlete alongside top-ranked tennis player Svetlana Kuznetsova, who was the best female athlete of 2009. Over 500,000 votes were cast for the awards, according to Russia Today.

More on Fedor's exposure in Russia from Sherdog:

"The main event of Fedor vs. Rogers reached an impressive 5.46 million viewers in the United States on the CBS Network," said the release. "The fight was also broadcast in Fedor's native Russia by ‘Channel 1,' Russia's largest television network, and reached 16 million viewers in Fedor's home country. In addition, ‘Fedor vs. Rogers' was broadcast to millions of viewers in Korea on SBS, one of the three major national South Korean networks, as well as television networks in China, Latin America, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ukraine, Finland, Africa, Turkey, Israel, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Malta. Live internet streams of the ‘Fedor vs. Rogers' bout generated ground-breaking viewer numbers in Japan and all over the world and these numbers continue to grow through Video on Demand."

In Russia, Emelianenko's bout was broadcasted on a four-hour delay at 12:00 p.m. by the free, government-run channel, which reaches approximately 120 million homes.

Jake Rossen rightly pointed out that there is some fudging of the numbers going on, but it's indisputable that Fedor is better known in his homeland only a few months of working with M-1 and Strikeforce than he became in a decade of fighting in Japan.