LONDON, Sept. 9 — The big story of the day from the Cage Rage weigh-in and rules meeting was the official confirmation of the promotion's new rules-set.

As head referee Grant Waterman explained, there are basically two rules changes. The first is the disallowing of elbows and forearm strikes to a downed opponent. The second is the introduction of the "open guard" rule. As explained previously here, this rule allows one fighter the opportunity to potentially kick or stomp the head and body of a downed opponent in a situation where the referee declares "open guard.” The referee will only declare "open guard" when one fighter is standing and his opponent is on his back and able to defend himself.

The second piece of news is that Hassan Muridi (Pictures) has withdrawn from his fight against Paul Daley (Pictures). Muridi was reportedly engaged in an incident last night involving his face and somebody else's baseball bat. The fighter had to have stitches and was not in a fit condition to compete. No replacement was available to take on Daley, so "Semtex" fans will now have to wait to see the young fighter compete at Sportfight on September 16, when he takes on Damian Hatch.

The final drama came towards the end of the meeting, as the fighters faced each other for the photographers. Andy Costello (Pictures) obviously took offense at James Thompson (Pictures)'s invasion of his personal space and reacted with an aggressive shove.

The much, much larger Thompson replied in kind, resulting in a comic, but effective, intervention by the Cage Rage promoters, Andy Geer and Dave O'Donnell. As Geer restrained the angry Costello, Thompson was "held back" by a relatively diminutive O'Donnell hanging off his arm. Fortunately Thompson seemed to take the incident in jest and Costello left soon afterwards.

It's also worth noting that the wags were out in force tonight, and as Thompson (he really is very large) came out, one wit asked: "Where's his opponent — did he eat him?" I thought that was quite funny.

The official weights were (in reverse fight order):

Mark Buchanan (103 kg) vs. Kuljit Degun (Pictures) (112 kg)
Tulio Palhares (Pictures) (83 kg) vs. James Nicholl (Pictures) (83.5 kg)
Alexandre Izidro (70.3 kg) vs. Abdul Mohamed (Pictures) (70.3 kg)
Dean Bray (76 kg) vs. Jeremy Bailey (Pictures) (74 kg)
Ozzy Haluk (65.8 kg) vs. Brad Pickett (Pictures) (65.8 kg)
Remus Ciobnu (91 kg) vs. Antony Rea (Pictures) (92 kg)
Darren Little (92 kg) vs. Evangelista Santos (Pictures) (92.5 kg)
Marcelo Azevedo (82 kg) vs. Jorge Rivera (Pictures) (83.9 kg)
Kyosuki Sasaki (81 kg) vs. Mark Weir (Pictures) (83 kg)
Fabio Piamonte (Pictures) (92.5 kg) vs. Melvin Manhoef (92 kg)
Andy Costello (Pictures) (102 kg) vs. James Thompson (Pictures) (125 kg)
Jean Silva (Pictures) (70 kg) vs. Vitor Ribeiro (Pictures) (70 kg)