Category — Strikeforce

I was only mildly interested in Saturday’s Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley card, and it had little to do with the main event (I’m not a fan of either Nick Diaz or Paul Daley and isn’t it strange that Daley, once banned from the UFC for sucker punching Josh Koscheck, is now back in the Zuffa fold).

It’s actually the lightweight title bout between Gilbert Melendez and Tetsuya Kawajiri and Shinya Aoki vs. Lyle Beerbohm that has me curious (along with a little bit of Gegard Mousasi vs. Keith Jardine).

And I really dig this Fight For Japan promo put together by DREAM to hype the Strikeforce event’s importance to the Japanese fighters on the card in the wake of the recent and ongoing devastation in that country. It’s a bit clumsy and tries a bit too hard to connect the natural disaster to the fighters (and this event specifically), but still. Granted, I know for a fact that I’d puke in my mouth if I saw a similarly patriotic video about American fighters, but fuck it, there’s something about this, the Japanese stoicism, the way their country has been ruined, it works for me. Maybe it’s just the song on the soundtrack.

What now? Seriously, what the fuck now?!  That’s the $64,000 question following the purchase of Strikeforce by UFC parent Zuffa, resulting in a seismic shift in the MMA landscape on the order of a magnitude 9.5 on the Richter scale.

It’s been over a week since the deal became official and plenty of folks have weighed in on both sides of the debate as to whether it’s a good thing or not. In the grand tradition of “nobody knows anything,” here’s my two cents.

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Fedor Emelianenko is actually considering dropping to 205 pounds to challenge newly crowned Strikeforce light heavyweight champ Dan Henderson. It’s a move I’ve hoped for – Fedor is the greatest heavyweight of all time but times have changed and opponents have only gotten bigger while he’s gotten older.The cut to 205 would be easy for the pudgy 230-pounder; he’d just need to stay away from the ice cream and vodka.

Henderson is up for the challenge and has even suggested he’d be willing to move up to heavyweight to make the bout happen. But that won’t be necessary if a report on Fighters Only that negotiations for the 205-pound superfight are underway is accurate.

More and more Dan Henderson is looking like the one who got away. The UFC wouldn’t meet his contract demands and now, three fights into his Strikeforce contract, the 40-year-old is the light heavyweight champion.

Shaking off an early knock down, the iron-jawed Hendo dropped an overhand H bomb on defending champ Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante that sent him crashing face-first into the canvas in the third round. A couple of follow-up punches later and the belt was his, while the Brazilian joins the ranks of Michael Bisping and Wanderlei Silva as fighters who wonder what the license number on that truck was.

The question now becomes – what next for Henderson? Likely the winner of April’s Gegard Mousasi vs. Mike Kyle bout, or perhaps Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal. But thos match-ups just aren’t that interesting. Sure, Hendo is the champ, but he’s in the Randy Couture phase of his career where exciting fights is far more important – and lucrative – than divisional relevance.

Why not ask, alright beg, Fedor Emelianenko to drop down to 205 pounds? After his losses to Fabricio Werdum and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva I wasn’t the only one who wished Fedor would show a little discipline around the dinner table and make the move down. Besides, Fedor is currently in limbo, presumably waiting for the loser of the Alistair Overeem vs. Werdum “grand prix quarterfinal,” which might take place in June.

But how much excitement can Strikeforce generate around a bout between two losers, even when those losers are among the top heavyweights in the world? Instead, imagine the anticipation if Fedor and Hendo squared off – it would be like a 100-metre sprint to see who could land their right hand of doom first.

If title fights were three rounds then Strikeforce would have a new women’s 135-pound champ. Liz Carmouche discovered that the hard way on Saturday when, after taking down, mounting and ground-and-pounding title holder Marloes Coenen for three rounds, she gave up a fight-ending triangle choke in the fourth round of a bout reminiscent of Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen.

Regardless of the loss, Carmouche’s dominating performance made it clear that she’s no joke, never mind that the former U.S. Marine was an eleventh-hour replacement for Miesha Tate and the bout was just her sixth since she started fighting in May of 2010. That’s right, less than a year in the cage and she gave the Strikeforce champ a serious scare and more than a few bruises, having out-struck Coenen 221-48. Sure, she punched herself out from the mount position, leaving herself open in the fateful fourth round, but she pushed the champ harder than anyone expected, and she did it on two weeks notice, without a proper training camp.

So while Coenen breathes a sigh of relief and looks ahead to a bout with Tate and a possible rematch with 145-pound champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, the rest of us can look forward to Liz Cramouche.

I forgot to post this after it happened but it’s too impressive not to post. Amanda Nunes needed just 14 seconds to pummel Julia Budd to win her 145-pound bout at Strikeforce Challengers 13. Doesn’t mean she’s ready for champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos but wow.

Consider this an early Christmas present, of sorts. MMA Weekly is reporting that Fedor Emelianenko could face Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva on a January 29 Strikeforce card. It would be Fedor’s first fight since losing to Fabricio Werdum in June while Silva just beat Mike Kyle a couple of weeks ago.

While I’m not surprised, I can’t say that I’m very happy about the match-up. Fedor only has one fight remaining on his Strikeforce contract and while Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker is confidant he’ll be re-signed, I’d hate to see them waste his last bout on what appears to be a freakshow not unlike the New Year’s classics Fedor used to fight in Japan. Silva is just a slightly smaller Hong-Man Choi.

I pegged Saturday night’s Ultimate Fighter Finale as the card to watch over the Strikeforce event and boy was I wrong. Aside from Cody McKenzie’s entirely expected but still what-the-fuck guillotine win over fellow TUF 12 alum Aaron Wilkonson – and seriously, how far can one technique take you? – the UFC event was a bit of a bust,  thanks in large part to the what-the-fuck judging of the Nam Phan vs. Leonard Garcia opening bout that saw Phan pick apart Garcia for three rounds while Garcia picked up the split decision based on what? Number of punches thrown that missed wildly? No one, not even Garcia, could believe that call. Everything about that fight was entertaining as hell (just like Garcia’s bout with the Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung, which Garcia also shouldn’t have won), right up until Garcia had his arm raised. It was a horrible way for the first televised UFC featherweight bout to end.

Seriously, the level of judging exhibited in MMA is glaringly bad, which is no surprise and nothing new. But when such an obvious miscarriage takes place… This had to be the worst judges’ decision since, well, I can’t even come up with an equivalent. It certainly beats Lyoto Machida vs. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson a couple of weeks ago and is even worse than Machida vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in their first bout. What a joke. And if somebody (the athletic commissions, the UFC, whoever) doesn’t take steps to rectify the situation, to give judges and referees some, you know, actual training in how to officiate a mixed martial arts event, then the UFC might as well rebrand itself as the Ultimate Wrestling Championship.

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I don’t care about the fight that’s 10 years in the making (that would be between Dan Henderson and Renato Sobral, who first met in the finals of the RINGS‘ 1999 King of Kings tournament in Japan and who will square off in Saturday’s Strikeforce main event). And I don’t care that six of the 10 fighters on the Strikeforce main card are former UFC fighters (emphasis on former). I just don’t care. Although the idea of Paul Daley and Scott Smith throwing leather until somebody goes to sleep is very appealing. Granted, Daley’s best punch landed in the 16th minute of a 15-minute fight with Josh Koscheck and Smith’s two biggest fights saw him lose 19 of 20 minutes against Cung Le. Still, I’m expecting this one to be short and sweet.

Why does it feel like Strikeforce has completely dropped off the radar into the Bunyanesque abyss of utter irrelevancy? Does anyone still watch Strikeforce? Live, I mean, and not downloaded the next day or the Youtube highlights.

More importantly, does anyone still follow Strikeforce? It’s one thing to tune in when a card is on – although I can’t recall the last Strikeforce event I watched top to bottom. I saw Sarah Kaufman lose her title to Marloes Coenen but don’t remember much else from that card. I think I’d have to go back to June and Fedor vs. Werdum to find an event I actually sat all the way through; the rest I’ve just cherry-picked the fights that interested me. It’s quite another thing to follow the fighters and rankings and to pay attention to who’s moving into or out of title contention and to actually give a damn about who’s fighting whom and who wins or loses.

Strikeforce is not on equal footing with the UFC. It’s not a feeder promotion for the UFC – the rare acquisition/defection a la Jake Shields aside – so it’s not like anyone pays attention to Strikeforce because it’s where you’ll see the stars of tomorrow. It’s not AAA Syracuse to the UFC’s Major League. It’s the WNBA to the UFC’s NBA. Plain and simple.

And yeah, Strikeforce has a few big names, a very few big names, but not a whole lot of talent in the pipeline, at least not compared to the UFC. And that’s the thing. I’ll pay far more attention to smaller promotions knowing that the best fighters there could someday be in the UFC. It’s not like I watch a Shine or Shark Fight card and think, “He could be the next Strikeforce champion.”

This is all a roundabout way of asking who will be watching Saturday’s Strikeforce: Henderson vs. Sobral card? The headliner feels like a non-event, with Dan Henderson clinging to relevancy, which is kind of sad considering how he’d become an important gatekeeper in the UFC until he bailed for greener pastures.

Scott Smith and Paul Daley promise to be volatile (what else would you expect with two guys nicknamed “Hands of Steel” and “Semtex,” respectively?), but I can wait for the highlight reel knockout to show up online. Injury has denied us another Herschel Walker spectacle, although there’s always Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva vs. Mike Kyle. Really, though, Strikeforce is making it awfully easy to change the channel to The Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale on the same night, and that’s saying a lot when the TUF Finale’s main event is Stephan Bonnar vs. Igor Pokrajak. At least Demian Maia is on the card so there’s hopes of seeing some slick submissions.