It is 2012 and somehow Strikeforce has been able to stay alive and keep breathing.Now fans get to see the first event of after the new year and predict where the company will end up.The first card of the year is still strong, though lacking a few names…
It is 2012 and somehow Strikeforce has been able to stay alive and keep breathing.
Now fans get to see the first event of after the new year and predict where the company will end up.
The first card of the year is still strong, though lacking a few names, which means some unknown fighters are getting the chance to square off against more established fighters.
If any upsets occur it could introduce fans to some fighters whom they might want to keep tabs on.
So the question is, who could gain the most from a win this Saturday?
A great case could be made for Lorenz Larkin, who is going to be facing Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal. After all, Lawal is a former Strikeforce champion and is coming off a win against Roger Gracie.
Up until now Larkin has only fought on Strikeforce Challenger cards against limited opposition. A win against Lawal, who is very vocal and has made himself a name in MMA, would get him instant exposure and get fans buzzing.
And if Strikeforce still had most of it’s champions he would be the fighter with the most to gain.
As Strikeforce has lost a bunch of marquee talent to the UFC recently, there is one fighter who could benefit more from a dominant win.
If Jardine can beat Luke Rockhold for the Strikeforce title it would send a message to his employers that he deserves to be back in the UFC.
He was cut after getting four losses in a row. That says a lot as most fighters get two to three losses in a row before getting the ax. Dana White, the head of the UFC, is a fan of Jardine’s and that saved Jardine from getting his pink slip so quickly.
White has also pulled almost every single Strikeforce champion into the UFC fold within a short time after buying the company. White is a fan of Jardine, and though he might be coming off a draw against Gegard Mousasi that many thought he lost, it might be enough to get him another shot in the company.
Jardine just has to beat Rockhold and do it in a manner that leaves few disputing the decision.
It is Jardine’s last real chance to get into the UFC again as a loss would send him to the end of the line. At 36 years old it might be too late for him to give it one last go if he doesn’t win this fight.
So not only does Keith Jardine have the most to gain if he wins his match, he has the most to lose.
In the end, that might add more pressure than fighting for the title does.
Filed under: StrikeforceMo Lawal can admit it now: things didn’t go the way he thought they would when he first walked though the doors of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif. in the spring of 2011. What happened was simple, really. He c…
Mo Lawal can admit it now: things didn’t go the way he thought they would when he first walked though the doors of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif. in the spring of 2011. What happened was simple, really. He came in with all the swagger you’d expect from a man who goes by the moniker of “King” Mo, and then he found out the hard way that he wasn’t the only MMA royalty on those mats.
Or as he put it: “I got beat up.”
And we’re not talking just normal bumps and bruises, either. We’re talking good old-fashioned butt-whoopings. One right after another, after another, after another.
For the former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, a man who had racked up seven straight wins in just a year and a half of professional competition, this wasn’t just a surprise — it was a travesty. It was a challenge to everything he thought he knew about himself and his abilities. It was unacceptable. And he had his best friend and former Oklahoma State wrestling teammate, Daniel Cormier, to thank for it.
Cormier convinced Lawal to come up to the Bay Area gym after he heard that his old friend wasn’t totally satisfied with the training he was getting down in Orange County. Lawal had recently suffered the first loss of his career in a Strikeforce 205-pound title defense against Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante in August of 2010, and now he was looking for a new home after rehabbing a knee injury.
“I was asking him to come up here,” said Cormier. “I heard he was looking to move and we talked a lot. I told him it was the best place for him.”
After weeks of going back and forth, Lawal finally made the move. But when set foot on the mats after being out of action for a while, he was in for a rough welcome.
“I remember him struggling early on,” Cormier said. “His timing was off. He hadn’t fought in almost a year. He just wasn’t himself.”
His first day of sparring, as Lawal remembered it, he went up against his buddy Cormier. He started off getting the worst of it, and things only deteriorated from there as his cardio showed the effects of his injury layoff.
“I was kind of getting beat down,” Lawal said. “I’m not going to lie.”
The next day of sparring, Lawal got matched up with a tall, lanky surfer kid by the name of Luke Rockhold — a middleweight who Lawal took one look at before deciding that his fortunes in the gym were about to change.
“I was like, yes! I’m going to smash him!” Lawal said. The way he saw it, Rockhold was a pretty boy who wasn’t going to like getting hit in the face. He was, in Lawal’s eyes, “a fake Ken doll.”
But before they strapped on the gloves, Cormier tried to warn his friend that it might not be as easy a sparring session as he thought.
“I told him, Luke is a guy you have to watch out for. He goes a thousand percent all the time.”
Lawal wasn’t convinced. This guy? The one who looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog? He was the one who was going to give a former Strikeforce champ and NCAA All-American a hard time? Please.
“I was like, I can’t wait till I spar with Luke,” Lawal said. “I’m going to put them thangs on him.”
A few rounds later, Lawal found out what Cormier was talking about. Rockhold popped right back up after Lawal took him down. He fired off kicks that seemed to come from odd angles and yet always found an open target. Lawal found himself getting punched, kneed, and kicked in places he thought he’d been defending well.
“I got beat up,” Lawal said. “…I got exposed. Because I came from training in Orange County, which was a good camp, some good guys out there, but the whole level of intensity, I felt like I was in Holland or something. I was like, these guys are trying to knock me out.”
Cormier had tried to tell him what he was in for, but maybe it was something he had to experience for himself to understand. That’s how it was for Cormier when he first joined the team, he said.
“Other guys may train hard and spar hard, but it’s different here, where you have so many top guys and they’re all there every single day. I think that’s probably the biggest thing. There’s a core group of guys who are here every day, and they’re all mostly top ten in the world. It’s a daily grind. You don’t go to the gym and not have to deal with Luke Rockhold, [Josh] Koscheck, [Jon] Fitch, Cain [Velasquez] — they’re all there every time you step on the mat. There’s no easy days.”
Cormier knew his old friend would benefit from those daily battles, but he also had selfish reasons for enlisting him, he admitted.
“I just know that my best years, whether it was wrestling or whatever, Mo was right there close to me. The comfort that I have training with that dude, his ability to talk you up when you’re having bad days, just having a friend around helps so much.”
Still, it wasn’t just himself he was trying to help by bringing Lawal onto the team, Cormier said.
“I knew it would be good for him, but I also knew it would be good for Luke. We didn’t have that many smaller guys for him, so Luke had been sparring me and Cain. That’s not a good day for any [middleweight].”
With Lawal now on the AKA roster, Rockhold had a sparring partner closer to his size who could help him improve his wrestling, and Lawal had one who would force him to work on his stand-up skills. It was a symbiotic relationship that benefited them both, even if it resulted in the two of them showing up places with matching cuts and bruises when they traveled together to promote their respective fights on Saturday night’s Showtime card in Las Vegas.
“I’m going to be real with y’all,” Lawal said while sitting next to Rockhold at a recent media Q&A at the MGM Grand. “This man right here is a top three middleweight in the world. You see my eye? I’ve got a little black eye, that’s because of him. He kneed me in the face and punched me.”
Rockhold just shrugged and smiled before showing off his own battle wounds courtesy of Lawal and explaining that “iron sharpens iron.”
Which is kind of the whole point, as you can tell when you glance around the room at a place like AKA. The mats are crowded with UFC and Strikeforce fighters, former and current champions who make sure that there are no days off inside those walls. And that, Lawal said, is exactly what he needed. That’s why unbeaten prospect Lorenz Larkin is in trouble once the cage door closes on Saturday night, he explained.
“He’s undefeated. He’s a tough, young kid, hungry like me, but I’m starving,” Lawal said. “I’m an Ethiopian right now.”
That’s the good part about taking your beatings in the gym. There, no one’s watching. No one’s keeping score. There, the pounding is intended to make you better, or at the very least tougher. It’s on Saturday night, when the cameras are rolling and the crowd is cheering, that you find out if it worked.
Filed under: Strikeforce, NewsKeith Jardine will fight Luke Rockhold for the Strikeforce middleweight title on Saturday night, which is surprising for two reasons: One, Jardine’s recent record wouldn’t seem to warrant a title shot. And two, Jardine is …
Keith Jardine will fight Luke Rockhold for the Strikeforce middleweight title on Saturday night, which is surprising for two reasons: One, Jardine’s recent record wouldn’t seem to warrant a title shot. And two, Jardine is not a middleweight.
But while Jardine admits that having to get down to 185 pounds at the weigh-in on Friday afternoon makes him uneasy, he’s adamant that he’s a worthy opponent for Rockhold.
Asked how much he weighed right then, about 24 hours before the weigh-in, Jardine wouldn’t give a number but said, “I’m big.”
Jardine has only fought in Strikeforce once, a draw with Gegard Mousasi last year, and his record over the last three years is 2-5-1, with the two wins coming against lightly regarded opponents on small shows. So a lot of MMA fans are questioning why Jardine is fighting for a belt. Jardine said he anticipated that reaction, but he’s frustrated by those who believe he’s unworthy of a fight against Rockhold.
“I say ‘Screw you, whoever says that,'” Jardine said. “It’s been a long trip to get to this point. I’m just so thrilled and honored to be here. I’m glad that Luke took this fight. I’m grateful for that.”
Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker defended the promotion’s decision to make Jardine the first challenger to Rockhold, who won the Strikeforce middleweight belt by defeating Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in September.
“The thing about a veteran like Keith Jardine is he’s already been in all the wars, he’s already seen all the fights, and the battles that he’s been through, to me, justify and warrant the title fight with Luke Rockhold,” Coker said. “In MMA anything can happen.”
Perhaps Coker is right: If Keith Jardine becomes the Strikeforce middleweight champion on Saturday night, that really would show that anything can happen in MMA.
Filed under: StrikeforceA few months ago, Luke Rockhold was given an opportunity to fight for the Strikeforce middleweight title, a decision that many saw as a head-scratcher. Rockhold seized his chance, out-working Ronaldo Souza to capture the belt de…
A few months ago, Luke Rockhold was given an opportunity to fight for the Strikeforce middleweight title, a decision that many saw as a head-scratcher. Rockhold seized his chance, out-working Ronaldo Souza to capture the belt despite his major underdog status. The placement of Keith Jardine as his first challenger is a similarly puzzling choice, and one that could lead to another surprising champion.
Unlike Rockhold when he got his chance, Jardine comes into the bout as a known commodity, a respected veteran who had a long UFC stint that was marked by inconsistency best illustrated by back-to-back fights in 2007. The first came at UFC 71, when he was knocked out by then little known Houston Alexander in just 48 seconds. Just four months later, he rebounded to shock Chuck Liddell in a decision win.
Jardine’s ability to surprise persists. Last April, he signed on short notice to face vaunted fighter Gegard Mousasi, a winner of 17 of his last 18 fights, and gamely fought him to a draw.
The prevailing sentiment regarding Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine is that the challenger can cause some matchup troubles for the champ due to his unique style, but Rockhold (8-1) brings with him some inherent issues to address.
For one, he is very comfortable switching stances. Against Souza, for example, he fought most of the bout as a southpaw, but one fight prior to that, he dropped Paul Bradley twice with right hooks from an orthodox stance. He also knocked down Cory Devela with the same punch, leading to the finish. That type of unpredictability adds an extra element to preparation, and gives more dimension to an already diverse attack.
Though six of his eight career wins have come by submission, Rockhold’s striking game has progressed well in his days at American Kickboxing Academy. One of his best attributes is his ability to mix things up.
Rockhold is equally adapt at punching and kicking, and often uses kicks as a lead striking maneuver instead of setting them up with his hands, a tactic that can make an opponent wary of wading forward. Against Souza, for example, he threw almost 90 kicks in the five-round bout.
Rockhold has shown an ability and willingness to trade with any of his opponents, and his chin has proven to be solid. Jacare knocked him down once, and rattled him on at least two other occasions, and Rockhold showed very good recovery skills.
On the ground, he may be at his best. The jiu-jitsu brown belt usually looks to take his opponent’s back and look for the rear naked choke. Defensively, he performed superbly against the world-class grappler Souza, never finding himself in real trouble despite being taken down five times.
Jardine, though, is a lot more interested in looking for ground strikes than a tapout. Like his standup, his ground attack is unorthodox, featuring looping right hands that come in the same motion as a pitcher throwing a fastball.
It will be interesting to see how Jardine (17-9-2) approaches Rockhold. Will he want to take him to the mat or go at him standing up? In the past, that wouldn’t have been a difficult question to answer. For the vast majority of his UFC run, Jardine rarely tried to take the fight to the mat. In his last four UFC bouts, for example, he tried only three takedown attempts total. But in his most recent fight against Mousasi, he did a complete 180, trying an astounding 13 takedowns (and completing six). That relative success largely helped him salvage a draw in a fight in which he was otherwise soundly outstruck.
Like Rockhold, Jardine is generous with his kicks, but he tends to go low and attack the legs instead of head-hunting. His punching tends to come from unusual angles and combinations conclude with him falling away from his opponent.
Statistically, neither fighter has a big edge. According to FightMetric, Rockhold historically lands strikes at a 38 percent rate, barely better than Jardine’s 37 percent. Rockhold is marginally better defensively, avoiding 67 percent of his opponent’s strikes, while Jardine avoids 61 percent.
Much will depend on Jardine’s approach. Rockhold really doesn’t care to look for takedowns — he’s tried only one in his last four fights — so it’s probably up to Jardine to push the fight in a different place. If it stays standing, I’d give Rockhold the edge due to his ability to switch stances, keep a strong pace, and take a shot.
Two other things to consider are Jardine’s cut to middleweight and his conditioning. After a decade of fighting, this is his first time competing at 185 pounds, a move that may or may not agree with him. He had some stamina issues against Mousasi, and though that fight was on short notice, it was at his usual weight. The extra stress in the weight cut could negatively impact him, or perhaps his power will transfer better as a middleweight. Either is possible. Anyway, it’s not like Rockhold is a small middleweight. He’s 6-foot-3 and sturdy, so Jardine is not going to outsize him in any meaningful way.
Overall, Rockhold is a faster and more dangerous fighter than Jardine at this point of his career. In his win over Souza, he showed he can handle himself against a veteran on the ground, and his standup should have him scoring more points as the fight goes along. Jardine’s always had the upset formula in his bag of tricks, but this is a fight Rockhold should win, and I’m calling a five-round decision win in his first title defense.
After suffering a beatdown at the hands of Nick Diaz at UFC 137, B.J. Penn announced his retirement from MMA. Many fans were skeptical if Penn would remain retired for long, though, as many fighters have made impulsive decisions directly after fights a…
After suffering a beatdown at the hands of Nick Diaz at UFC 137, B.J. Penn announced his retirement from MMA.
Many fans were skeptical if Penn would remain retired for long, though, as many fighters have made impulsive decisions directly after fights and changed their minds soon after.
Look how much bigger you are in this [picture]…I thought you were gonna scrap from the beginning homie? What was that coward fence holding strategy to tire out the smaller man? Street fighter my ass! I made you fight like glass jaw @jonfitchdotnet poser! I’ll be ready for that weak bs next time we fight
The picture Penn is referring to is one of himself and Diaz taken shortly after their fight in October, where the two seem to be on good terms.
Apparently this isn’t the case.
It looks like Penn is ready to step back into the cage once again, and while he would obviously like to get a shot at redemption against the elder Diaz,it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
Penn has consistently struggled when he has fought in the welterweight division, and while he has gone just 1-1-1 since returning to 170 lbs. in 2010, Diaz is on a monster win streak and has won his last 11 straight bouts.
With Diaz getting a shot at the interim title in February, and contenders like Jake Ellenberger, Diego Sanchez and Johny Hendricks all looking to earn a title fight in the next few months, Penn is far away from getting a rematch with Diaz.
However in Penn’s former weight class, lightweight, Nick’s younger brother, Nate, has recently solidified himself as a contender by defeating both Takanori Gomi and Donald Cerrone in impressive fashion.
The younger Diaz is now sitting near the top of the 155-lb. heap with seemingly no one to fight, as all of the top contenders are locked up in other bouts.
This is where Penn comes in.
Penn has proven to be a much better fighter when he makes the cut to lightweight, and a fight with Nate would make sense on multiple levels.
Not only would it give Nate a solid fighter to try and defeat to stake his claim for a title shot, after this recent outburst of Penn’s, there is little doubt Nate would hesitate to try and defend his brother’s honor.
If Penn wants to return in the next few months, he may not get his wish in the form of a shot at Nick Diaz, but perhaps a bout with his rival’s younger sibling would suffice.
There’s a lot more that goes into the sport of mixed martial arts than the average fan may think.In fact, a single performance can define a martial artist’s career despite spending years after years training in the sport.Over the years we’ve come to re…
There’s a lot more that goes into the sport of mixed martial arts than the average fan may think.
In fact, a single performance can define a martial artist’s career despite spending years after years training in the sport.
Over the years we’ve come to realize that the sport isn’t merely about fame and fortune but dedication, desire, and the will to succeed.
These characteristics have transformed many martial artists into dominant champions at the highest stage of the sport.
In total, there are 11 champions in the UFC and Strikeforce organizations.
So, the following slides display a power ranking of every UFC and Strikeforce champion.
It is 2012 and somehow Strikeforce has been able to stay alive and keep breathing.
Keith Jardine
A few months ago, 