Strikeforce Heavyweight Tournament: Heavyweight Grand Prix Falters After Uninspiring Match-Ups
Bleacher Report’s Joe Schafer:
Now that Strikeforce: Overeem vs. Werdum is in the books, I think we can all agree the last two quarterfinal bouts of this Heavyweight Grand Prix were duds compared to the first two back in February.
Strikeforce’s goliath tournament continues to be an intriguing draw to MMA fans, even after Saturday’s uneventful fights between Alistair Overeem, Fabricio Werdum, Josh Bartnett and Brett Rogers, but still left spectators uninspired.
The culprit here: lopsided, stylistic nightmare matches that were heavily hyped by the press.
As soon as the brackets were announced, I felt like Barnett stood alone on his side of the table as the craftier veteran and heavy favorite to make it to the final showdown, mainly due to the fact he was the only fighter with serious wrestling skills in a pool of mediocre, yet heavy handed, strikers.