Thursday, July 9, 2009

Former Playboy, ‘Girls Next Door’ star Madison to be UFC 100 Octagon Girl

Former Playboy, 'Girls Next Door' star Madison to be UFC 100 Octagon Girl

Holly Madison appears in Dana White's latest UFC 100 video blog wearing an Octagon Girl uniform and discussing an apparent guest appearance as an Octagon Girl at Saturday's UFC 100 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. (Screen capture from White's video blog)

It appears that the UFC 100 is being taken to new heights just about everywhere we turn.

There's a big list of above-and-beyonds for UFC 100, and we're promised more surprises once the weekend starts.

It looks like one of those surprises will come in the form of a guest Octagon Girl, Holly Madison. Madison appeared in UFC president Dana White's latest UFC 100 video blog, and from the conversation they were having, the cat's out of the bag.

It looks like Madison will join regulars Arianny Celeste, Logan Stanton and Edith Labelle as Octagon Girls for the historic card at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Madison also Tweeted on Sunday and Monday about the gig. Is a return appearance from Rachelle Leah in the works, too? That's another hot rumor.

Madison is the former No. 1 girlfriend of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and was the star of "The Girls Next Door," the E! series based on Hef's relationship with her, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. While Madison was never actually a Playboy Playmate, she did model for several issues. She also recently appeared on "Dancing With the Stars" and is currently working on producing her own shows. She and Hefner split last year, and she left the Playboy company, where she worked as a photo editor, earlier this year.

Madison appears with White in a UFC office wearing a red Octagon Girl uniform. White even gives her advice on wearing comfortable shoes, saying that walking outside the Octagon can be tricky because of panels on the floor. White also says the UFC will plug Madison's new show during the broadcast.

Madison is not new to the UFC — she attended UFC 98 in May, sitting in a floor seat with a friend. She also briefly appeared in White's video blog that time, as well.

Madison appears in the video blog starting around the 1:10 mark until the 3:25 mark.

Apart from having three fights that would carry by themselves any other pay-per-view, the UFC: is having its first Fan Expo; is inducting Chuck Liddell and Tapout founder Charles "Mask" Lewis into the Hall of Fame; put out its first UFC magazine, launched to coincide with the historic 100 card; is partnering with Maxim to do a model search for the next UFC Octagon Girl; brought in another big-ticket sponsor in The Weinstein Group, which will promote the new Quentin Tarantino film "Inglourious Basterds" during the event; is rumored to be giving out, appropriately, $100,000 bonuses at the end of the night for Fight of the Night, Knockout of the Night and Submission of the Night — though we'll have to wait until the post-fight press conference to hear who wins and what the amounts actually are; is giving away commemorative pieces of the Octagon canvas to 100 lucky newspaper readers, including readers of The Times and nwi.com's MMA site (click the link for the free and easy contest entry form, no strings attached); and, we've been led to believe, much more.

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