This is the Strikeforce live blog for Luke Rockhold vs. Keith Jardine, the main event of tonight’s Strikeforce on Showtime event from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Rockhold (8-1) is putting his Strikeforce middleweight belt on the line for the first time after beating Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza last September by way of unanimous decision. Jardine (17-9-2) made his Strikeforce debut last April, battling Gegard Mousasi to a majority draw. Jardine will be making his middleweight debut.
Round 1: Jardine is very active, alternating between inside and outside leg kicks. Rockhold comes over the top with an overhand right. Jardine clinches with Rockhold and looks for a single-leg takedown. Rockhold turns Jardine around and scores with knees. Rockhold breaks out of clinch with an elbow. Rockhold lands a nice spinning back kick to the body. Rockhold lands a right hook. Rockhold hits the mark with a left hand. Rockhold connects with a kick to the body. Jardine’s most effective strikes have been leg kicks. Rockhold drops Jardine to his knees with a right hand but Jardine quickly recovers. Rockhold hurts Jardine with a right that backs Jardine. Rockhold throws a flurry of punches and Jardine is trying to recover. Rockhold drops Jardine with right hook. More punches and finally referee Herb Dean stops the fight when Jardine goes limp.
The finish was quite the beating. Rockhold retains his Strikeforce middleweight strap.
Luke Rockhold wins via TKO (punches) – Round 1, 4:26
In his post-fight interview, Rockhold brushed aside a question about contender Tim Kennedy to instead call for UFC fighters to come over to Strikeforce because he wants to fight the best. Time and time again, you really get a sense that the top Strikeforce guys would rather be in the UFC.
This is the Strikeforce live blog for Luke Rockhold vs. Keith Jardine, the main event of tonight’s Strikeforce on Showtime event from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Rockhold (8-1) is putting his Strikeforce middleweight belt on the line for the first time after beating Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza last September by way of unanimous decision. Jardine (17-9-2) made his Strikeforce debut last April, battling Gegard Mousasi to a majority draw. Jardine will be making his middleweight debut.
Round 1: Jardine is very active, alternating between inside and outside leg kicks. Rockhold comes over the top with an overhand right. Jardine clinches with Rockhold and looks for a single-leg takedown. Rockhold turns Jardine around and scores with knees. Rockhold breaks out of clinch with an elbow. Rockhold lands a nice spinning back kick to the body. Rockhold lands a right hook. Rockhold hits the mark with a left hand. Rockhold connects with a kick to the body. Jardine’s most effective strikes have been leg kicks. Rockhold drops Jardine to his knees with a right hand but Jardine quickly recovers. Rockhold hurts Jardine with a right that backs Jardine. Rockhold throws a flurry of punches and Jardine is trying to recover. Rockhold drops Jardine with right hook. More punches and finally referee Herb Dean stops the fight when Jardine goes limp.
The finish was quite the beating. Rockhold retains his Strikeforce middleweight strap.
Luke Rockhold wins via TKO (punches) – Round 1, 4:26
In his post-fight interview, Rockhold brushed aside a question about contender Tim Kennedy to instead call for UFC fighters to come over to Strikeforce because he wants to fight the best. Time and time again, you really get a sense that the top Strikeforce guys would rather be in the UFC.
Tonight, Luke Rockhold will be looking to defend his belt for the first time against Keith Jardine, a veteran of the sport who is making his first appearance at middleweight.While Jardine may be trying to reinvent himself at a new division, he will not…
Tonight, Luke Rockhold will be looking to defend his belt for the first time against Keith Jardine, a veteran of the sport who is making his first appearance at middleweight.
While Jardine may be trying to reinvent himself at a new division, he will not find much more success than he did at light heavyweight.
Jardine is 36 years old and well out of his prime. After pulling off the upset by beating Chuck Liddell at UFC 76 in 2007, he went 1-6 in the organization and was eventually dropped.
His lone win came over Brendan Vera, who was on a similar losing streak.
Since leaving the UFC, he has gone 2-1-1 against far lesser competition.
At one time, Keith Jardine was one of the better fighters on the planet.
While he has always suffered from having a weak chin, he had an unorthodox style that got him wins over Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin and fought to a reasonably close decision against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
But those fights were a long time ago, and the one-sided beatdown Gegard Mousasi handed Jardine proved that Jardine can no longer compete with upper-level fighters.
Jardine should have been given a fight against a lower-level middleweight for his debut. Perhaps against someone like Tim Kennedy, against whom he’d arguably have a striking advantage.
But he should not have been given a fight against Rockhold.
Rockhold is a dynamic striker, an above-average wrestler and a good submission fighter.
Jardine is at a disadvantage on his feet and on the ground and doesn’t have the wrestling skills to choose where he’d rather be outperformed.
As long as Jardine doesn’t get knocked out in the opening few minutes, his job with Strikeforce is almost certainly safe. He’s a recognizable fighter and can give upcoming middleweights a good fight.
But his skillset has not improved enough since leaving the UFC to compensate for his bad chin and the effects of age.
Against any upper-level fighter, Jardine is doomed to fail.
But the truth is that Showtime subscribers (and you filthy, rotten streamers) can rightfully expect a night of action packed fights. This card has a great mix of seasoned veterans and wildly unorthodox strikers, and last night they all hit the scales. We won’t dangle any false promises of funny weigh-in costumes or pushing-and-shoving; there was little in the form of excitement at these proceedings. On the bright side, everyone (eventually) hit their mark.
Weigh-In results after the jump. Make sure you come back tonight—we’ll be liveblogging this card like nobody’s business.
But the truth is that Showtime subscribers (and you filthy, rotten streamers) can rightfully expect a night of action packed fights. This card has a great mix of seasoned veterans and wildly unorthodox strikers, and last night they all hit the scales. We won’t dangle any false promises of funny weigh-in costumes or pushing-and-shoving; there was little in the form of excitement at these proceedings. On the bright side, everyone (eventually) hit their mark.
Weigh-In results after the jump. Make sure you come back tonight—we’ll be liveblogging this card like nobody’s business.
Strikeforce middleweight championship
Luke Rockhold (185) vs. Keith Jardine (185)
Main Card Robbie Lawler (186) vs. Adlan Amagov (186)
Mo Lawal (205) vs. Lorenz Larkin (206)
Tyron Woodley (171) vs. Jordan Mein (169) Tyler Stinson (170) vs. Tarec Saffiedine (170)
Prelims
Nah-Shon Burrell (171*) vs. James Terry (171)
Gian Villante (206) vs. Trevor Smith (205)
Ricky Legere (171) vs. Chris Spang (171)
Estevan Payan (160) vs. Alonzo Martinez (160.5)
*Burrell initially weighed in at 172 lbs, but was given an hour to lose the extra pound.
Filed under: Strikeforce, NewsWhen former UFC light heavyweight contender Keith Jardine first started telling people that he wanted to drop to middleweight, the response was, shall we say, not terribly enthusiastic. He got polite nods from reporters an…
When former UFC light heavyweight contender Keith Jardine first started telling people that he wanted to drop to middleweight, the response was, shall we say, not terribly enthusiastic. He got polite nods from reporters and raised eyebrows from fans and fellow fighters. One prominent trainer who had worked with him in the past even asked me privately, “How? Is he going to cut off a leg?”
And yet, at Friday’s Strikeforce weigh-ins he stepped on the scale weighing 185 pounds on the dot for his title fight against Luke Rockhold on Saturday night. Like many fighters these days, he has nutritionist Mike Dolce to thank for it.
Dolce first met Jardine in 2009 when he was helping Quinton “Rampage” Jackson prepare to fight him at UFC 96. Though they were in opposing corners then, Dolce said, “I was impressed with his professionalism leading up to the fight and the way he conducted himself as a person.” So when Dolce saw that Jardine had quietly purchased his first “Dolce Diet” book — Three Weeks to Shredded — online, he reached out to the fighter to find out what he was hoping to accomplish.
“We spoke briefly that day and he mentioned a possible drop to middleweight at some point in his career,” Dolce said. “A few weeks later he called me after hearing a radio interview I had done and said he went and did his research on me and was very impressed with my lifestyle approach to health, as well as the success of my athletes. We spoke for a few hours that night and here we are today.”
When they first began the cut, Dolce said, the 36-year-old Jardine was 217 pounds “but made the statement the he was very lean and lethargic.” With 32 pounds still standing between him and the middleweight limit, that wasn’t a good sign, according to Dolce.
“You look at a weight cut that’s 30 pounds or more and yes, that’s drastic, but Keith was doing what a lot of athletes are doing: taking supplements and eating like a bodybuilder. No disrespect to those industries, but that’s not what I do.”
Instead, Dolce said, he got Jardine on a diet of “earth-grown nutrients” to maximize lean muscle and drop body fat. For most of his training camp for the Rockhold fight, Dolce said, Jardine was “walking around at 211 [pounds]…and in single-digit body fat levels.”
After that, he said, making the weight was only a matter of “temporarily drying out those muscles” before the weigh-in, thus allowing Jardine to step into the cage on fight night back at what Dolce refers to as “the sweet weight” — roughly the same weight he was maintaining three weeks before the fight. Thanks to his knowledge and Jardine’s discipline and training, Dolce said, “the weight-cut was an easy process for us.”
Doing all that with a fighter in his mid-30s who, by his own admission, hasn’t been down to this weight “since my freshman year of high school” might seem risky, but Dolce insisted that it’s a focus on health first that makes it possible.
“I know 25-year-old athletes who have the bodies of 45-year-olds,” Dolce said. “I make sure my athletes work closely with their doctors, get regular bloodwork, and are 100 percent healthy every second of every day. Like I said, I’m a longevity advocate. My goal is for my clients to live well past 100 years old. It’s nice if they make a few million dollars between their 20s and 30s, but my true objective is for them to show their great-great-grandkids pictures of their world title belts, rather than doing whatever is perceived necessary to win one.”
Jardine will get his chance to take home a strap on Saturday night. By clocking in at 185 pounds he’s already accomplished one feat that few people thought he was capable of. Now comes the other, slightly harder part.
Filed under: StrikeforceStrikeforce returns on Showtime tonight, and thanks to the free preview weekend it’s available even for you non-subscribers out there. So what are you going to be looking at when you accidentally stumble onto the channel that yo…
Strikeforce returns on Showtime tonight, and thanks to the free preview weekend it’s available even for you non-subscribers out there. So what are you going to be looking at when you accidentally stumble onto the channel that you usually breeze right past on your way to Nat Geo Wild? Here are just a few of the major storylines and pressing concerns heading into Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine.
I. For the sake of argument, let’s try and justify the decision to give Keith Jardine a middleweight title shot:
a) For starters, there’s Scott Coker’s ‘anything can happen’ defense, which suggests that because it’s not impossible for Jardine to win, it must therefore be reasonable for him to get the chance. That has a certain simplistic beauty to it, but if you accept that you must also accept that any fight would, by that logic, be acceptable. Rockhold vs. a bloated Tyron Woodley? Yep, that works. Rockhold vs. a dangerously emaciated Bobby Lashley? That too. As long as we’re at it, I could make 185 pounds no problem. So why didn’t my phone ring with an offer, forcing me to immediately fake a staph infection? You get the point.
b) Then there’s what I like to call the ‘cumulative effect’ defense. This argues that when you look at Jardine’s entire history as a fighter — from his 2006 TKO of Forrest Griffin to his 2007 split decision over Chuck Liddell to his recent draw with Gegard Mousasi — it’s not too shabby. And that’s true. Taken as a whole, Jardine’s career is pretty solid. It’s just the last few years — including the 2-5-1 record his last eight bouts — that have been pretty dismal. But hey, if we’re giving out title shots as lifetime achievement awards now, I assume Wanderlei Silva’s shot at Anderson Silva must be coming up any day now.
c) Finally, the old ‘he was the best we could find on short notice’ defense. What it lacks in poetic flourish, it makes up for with cold, hard pragmatism. Tim Kennedy was hurt, according to Coker. Robbie Lawler was coming off two straight losses. ‘Mayhem’ Miller, Jake Shields, and Dan Henderson had all fled the organization, and ‘Jacare’ Souza just fought Rockhold back in September. Who else is left to take this fight? The answer, apparently, is Jardine. And so here we are.
II. But no matter what you think of the matchmaking, don’t blame Jardine. He’s been saying he wants to drop down to middleweight for a while now, and from his perspective, why not say yes to a title shot in his first fight there? He’s got nothing to lose. If he wins, he’s the Strikeforce champ and his career is revitalized. Even if he loses he can still earn some brownie points for making a fight out of it. Really, the only way he comes off looking bad is if he gets knocked out or submitted in the first two minutes. That’s always a possibility — the old ‘anything can happen’ saw cuts both ways — but let’s just say the bar is set very low for him here. He made the weight, which is a good start. Now it’s up to him to see if he can’t justify this bizarre matchmaking and get his name back in the news for the right reasons.
III. Luke Rockhold summed up his reaction to the Jardine fight in one word: “dumbfounded.”At least he’s honest. It’s the kind of fight a rising young champ absolutely cannot lose. It’s also the kind where he can’t afford to be anything but totally and completely dominant. Basically, it’s a bad fight for Rockhold, and he knows it. But hey, what could he do besides sign on the dotted line and make the best of it? As his management no doubt told him, now is not the time to be making waves in Strikeforce. Now is the time to keep your head down and win.
IV. Number that will continue to blow my mind every time I’m given a reason to look it up: 29. That’s how old Robbie Lawler is heading into his 28th professional bout. How is that even possible? The guy’s been a pro fighter since 2001. He debuted in the UFC in 2002. He’s been doing this since back when Dana White had hair, and you’re telling me he’s not even 30 years old yet? If he were a Cuban Little League pitcher, no one would believe it. Lawler seems like he was born with a thousand-yard stare and a laconic nonchalance about his own ability to knock people stiff with one punch, and not much has changed over the years. He’s still more or less the same fighter he’s always been. His game plan for his 28th fight will probably be roughly the same as it was for his tenth. He still makes interviews more difficult than they have to be, and still has the same general disdain for all the non-fighting aspects of the fight game. At least Adlan Amagov knows what he’s up against. But then, so have a lot of people who ended up flat on their backs at the end of the night.
V. Only one person can beat Mo Lawal on Saturday night, and it’s Mo Lawal. I know, I know — anything can happen — but let’s stick to what’s likely to happen. He’s a good enough striker that he doesn’t have to dive in for a takedown right away, and yet his takedowns are such a constant threat that Lorenz Larkin will have to worry about them every time he opens up with an attack. Lawal’s best chance to lose this fight is to decide to keep it standing for too long in some misguided attempt to prove a point. That would be dumb, but it also might be the kind of thing a guy with an oversized ego would do. From the outside Lawal might seem like a Ric Flair-esque narcissist, but he’s actually a pretty savvy student of the game. At least, most of the time. Like most pro fighters, no matter how sober his analysis is when he’s watching others, his vision gets a little hazy when he turns his focus upon himself. The only way he doesn’t win this fight is if he gets to thinking too highly of his own striking skills and not highly enough of Larkin’s. Even the best wrestler is going to have trouble scoring takedowns if he only shoots after he’s been stung on the feet.
VI. Fun fact about Jordan Mein: seven fights into his pro career, he had a losing record. He began his pro career with a loss, in fact, to Rory MacDonald. That one must have started to look better as time went by, but Mein also dropped fights to several guys who didn’t go on to become UFC standouts. After back-to-back losses at the end of 2006 and beginning of 2007, he was a very mediocre 3-4 as a pro. A lot of guys might have quit then, maybe decided to take their family’s advice and finally entered that management trainee program at the rental car place. Mein kept at it, and just a few years later he’s poised to take the leap from Strikeforce prelim fighter to solid undercard performer. It’s almost fitting that he should take on Tyron Woodley, the former Mizzou wrestler who seemed destined for big things in MMA right off the bat, and has been groomed as such in his time with Strikeforce. You never know from its beginning what a guy’s career will look like by the end. Sometimes those early struggles prove helpful later on.
VII. Know where to find Showtime Extreme in the premium cable labyrinth? If so, then you can watch the prelim bouts before the main card gets underway. While the old Strikeforce used to treat those fights as if they weren’t even worth turning the cameras on for, the new Strikeforce seems to realize that you might as well do something with them, even if probably not a whole lot of people will be ignoring the Lions-Saints NFL playoff game to watch Trevor Smith and Gian Villante go at it. Still, it’s a step in the right direction, as is the decision to time this event to coincide with a Showtime free preview weekend. If Showtime wants to be in the MMA business, it needs to get all the way in. Just like I first made the decision to pony up for HBO so I could watch the last season of The Wire in real time, I’ll admit that I never felt the urge to get Showtime until they had Strikeforce. I can’t be the only MMA fan who feels that way, so why not get behind it and push it as the asset that it is? Besides, with the avalanche of commercials that accompany any NFL playoff game, we’ll have plenty of chances to switch back and forth and check on how Villante is doing.
Strikeforce will hold their first card of 2012 on Saturday, January 7 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The main event on the card will feature a middleweight title bout as Luke Rockhold will defend his Strikeforce crown for the first tim…
Strikeforce will hold their first card of 2012 on Saturday, January 7 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The main event on the card will feature a middleweight title bout as Luke Rockhold will defend his Strikeforce crown for the first time when he faces Keith Jardine. The bout will be a first for Jardine as well, as he has never competed professionally at the 185-pound limit.
Other fights of interest on the card will see fighters from the two weight divisions that are currently without title holders competing. Strikeforce lost their welterweight and light heavyweight champions when Nick Diaz and Dan Henderson let the promotion for the UFC. Since their departures, those two titles have sat vacant.
Fomer light heavyweight champion Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal will look to take the first step back toward the title he once owned when he faces undefeated Lorenz Larkin.
Welterweight Tyron Woodley recently told MMAJunkie.com, “Everyone knows I’m basically the uncrowned champion in this division regardless of what happened, who shifted around. I think it’s time for me to go out there and show them I’m steps above this young kid and whoop this young buck’s butt.”
The “young buck” he referred to is 22-year-old Jordan Mein, his opponent on Saturday.
Also appearing on the card will be Robbie Lawlor vs. Adlan Amagov and Tarec Saffiedine vs. Tyler Stinson.
The main card will begin at 10 p.m. ET on Saturday and will be broadcast on Showtime, which is having a free preview this weekend.
The weigh-ins for the fight card take place on Friday, January 6 at 7:00 p.m. ET.
This is the Strikeforce live blog for Luke Rockhold vs. Keith Jardine, the main event of tonight’s Strikeforce on Showtime event from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Tonight, Luke Rockhold will be looking to defend his belt for the first time against Keith Jardine, a veteran of the sport who is making his first appearance at middleweight.
When former 
Strikeforce returns on Showtime tonight, and thanks to the free preview weekend it’s available even for you non-subscribers out there. So what are you going to be looking at when you accidentally stumble onto the channel that you usually breeze right past on your way to Nat Geo Wild? Here are just a few of the major storylines and pressing concerns heading into 