Filed under: Strikeforce, NewsMuhammed “King Mo” Lawal gave Lorenz Larkin a one-sided beatdown on Saturday night’s Strikeforce card, looking very impressive with ground and pound to finish the fight.
The victory improves Lawal’s record to 9-1, and he …
Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal gave Lorenz Larkin a one-sided beatdown on Saturday night’s Strikeforce card, looking very impressive with ground and pound to finish the fight.
The victory improves Lawal’s record to 9-1, and he said he’s hoping to re-take the Strikeforce light heavyweight belt in his next fight. That belt is currently vacant, but it would make sense for Lawal to get one of the two spots in a fight for the vacant title.
“Next person is taking a beating like this, too,” Lawal said.
Lawal took Larkin down less than 30 seconds into the first round and stayed on top for about three and a half minutes, easily controlling the fight with ground and pound that Larkin couldn’t answer. The fighters were only brought to their feet because of a highly questionable stand-up by referee Kim Winslow, but Larkin failed to do anything with that gift from the ref.
It was the same story in the second round: Lawal grabbed Larkin’s leg and worked for the single, needing less than a minute to get the fight to the ground and get into control on top. But this time Lawal did a lot more than just control from the top. He began pounding Larkin’s head with big right hands, and Larkin simply had no answer. After a bunch of rights connected to Larkin’s eye, Winslow had no choice but to step in and stop it.
This is the Strikeforce live blog for Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal vs. Lorenz Larkin, a light heavyweight bout on tonight’s Strikeforce on Showtime event from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Lawal (8-1), a former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion scored a knockout against Roger Gracie in September. Larkin (12-0) earned this spot on the card by winning three times last year on Strikeforce Challengers cards.
King Mo’s entrance is rather mellow, as he makes his way towards the cage with his crown on.
Kim Winslow is the referee.
Round 1: Lawal throws first, a jab that comes up short. Lawal follows with a takedown and he’s on top 30 seconds into the round. Lawal pounds away with Larkin trapped against the cage. Larkin tries to scoot out but Lawal steps over into Larkin’s halfguard. Larkin turns towards Lawal and eats shots. Larkin tries to sit up only to have Lawal return him to his back. Lawal carefully scores with punches. Despite Lawal staying active, Winslow has seen enough and stands them up with 66 seconds remaining. Lawal tries to fool Larkin by keeping his lead left hand by his side and his right hand up, only to shoot out his left hand. Still, Larkin avoids it. MMA Fighting scores the round 10-9 for Lawal.
Round 2: Lawal throws an overhand right to try to set up the takedown but Larkin sees it coming. Lawal shoots again and lifts Larkin’s left leg high. Larkin tries to stay balanced but Lawal powers him down. Lawal peppers Larkin with punches inside the guard of Larkin. Lawal then postures up and drops down big right hands over and over (and over) for the referee stoppage.
Lawal gets up a little ticked off for what he seems to think was a late stoppage. In the post-fight interview, Lawal confirms he was upset but that Winslow explained to him that she wanted to give Larkin a chance to fight back. Lawal said he respects her decision since he would have wanted more time too if he was the one in Larkin’s position.
Muhammed “King Mo”Lawal wins via TKO – Round 2, 1:32
This is the Strikeforce live blog for Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal vs. Lorenz Larkin, a light heavyweight bout on tonight’s Strikeforce on Showtime event from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Lawal (8-1), a former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion scored a knockout against Roger Gracie in September. Larkin (12-0) earned this spot on the card by winning three times last year on Strikeforce Challengers cards.
King Mo’s entrance is rather mellow, as he makes his way towards the cage with his crown on.
Kim Winslow is the referee.
Round 1: Lawal throws first, a jab that comes up short. Lawal follows with a takedown and he’s on top 30 seconds into the round. Lawal pounds away with Larkin trapped against the cage. Larkin tries to scoot out but Lawal steps over into Larkin’s halfguard. Larkin turns towards Lawal and eats shots. Larkin tries to sit up only to have Lawal return him to his back. Lawal carefully scores with punches. Despite Lawal staying active, Winslow has seen enough and stands them up with 66 seconds remaining. Lawal tries to fool Larkin by keeping his lead left hand by his side and his right hand up, only to shoot out his left hand. Still, Larkin avoids it. MMA Fighting scores the round 10-9 for Lawal.
Round 2: Lawal throws an overhand right to try to set up the takedown but Larkin sees it coming. Lawal shoots again and lifts Larkin’s left leg high. Larkin tries to stay balanced but Lawal powers him down. Lawal peppers Larkin with punches inside the guard of Larkin. Lawal then postures up and drops down big right hands over and over (and over) for the referee stoppage.
Lawal gets up a little ticked off for what he seems to think was a late stoppage. In the post-fight interview, Lawal confirms he was upset but that Winslow explained to him that she wanted to give Larkin a chance to fight back. Lawal said he respects her decision since he would have wanted more time too if he was the one in Larkin’s position.
Muhammed “King Mo”Lawal wins via TKO – Round 2, 1:32
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.
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: StrikeforceIf you’re tired of all those UFC events loaded with nothing but competitive fights, Strikeforce has got some good news for you. Saturday night’s Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine event features no shortage of long odds and lopsi…
If you’re tired of all those UFC events loaded with nothing but competitive fights, Strikeforce has got some good news for you. Saturday night’s Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine event features no shortage of long odds and lopsided match-ups, complete with a title fight that oddsmakers seem to think will be among the biggest mismatches of the night.
Let’s jump right into it and see which big underdog has just enough of a chance to convince us to do something stupid with our hard-earned cash, shall we?
Honestly, I’m a little surprised the line is this close. In Jardine’s last performance he fought to a draw against Gegard Mousasi in a fight that left his face looking like a watercolor painting gone wrong. The odds for that fight looked exactly the same as they do here, and yet I can’t help but feel like Jardine has even less of a chance this time. Rockhold is a better defensive wrestler than Mousasi was then, so Jardine probably won’t be able to score with takedowns as easily. Rockhold’s also a little more unpredictable on the feet, and I can’t think that losing a significant amount of weight at this point in his career will do much to help Jardine’s already suspect chin. Really, the only thing Jardine has going for him here is the fact that he has no business in this title fight at all. That means he has nothing to lose, but more importantly it means that Strikeforce is tempting the MMA gods, and they have a way of punishing matchmaking hubris like this. It would almost serve Strikeforce right if it ended up with a 36-year-old middleweight champ who had only one middleweight fight on his record. Then again, you really want to bet on a cruel twist of fate to catapult an aging journeyman over a rising young star? My pick: Rockhold. Barring anything totally weird — though, let’s face it, some nights this is a really weird sport — I don’t see how he doesn’t win this. At these odds, it’s prime parlay material.
Amagov may not be a household name in MMA just yet, but believe me when I tell you that he’s no joke. He can grapple and he can bang, and his record reflects both. But then, there’s a big difference between fighting Ronald Stallings and fighting Robbie Lawler. It’s easy to look at Lawler’s record and come away thinking that the hard-nosed brawler is falling off. He’s lost four of his last six, after all, and he’s currently on a two-fight skid. Then again, look at who he’s been losing to: Tim Kennedy, “Jacare” Souza, Renato Sobral, Jake Shields. Any one of those guys would be the test of Amagov’s young life, but for Lawler it’s just a normal couple of years. That experience matters, as does Lawler’s ability to knock your fondest childhood memories out of your brain with one punch. Amagov is a serious fighter and he may be on his way up the ranks, but he’s never fought anyone quite like Lawler before. As long as Lawler doesn’t let that fact go to his head, he should bounce back here. My pick: Lawler. Assuming he’s more or less healthy and doesn’t fight a dumb/reckless fight, I like his chances to find Amagov’s chin sooner or later.
On paper, Larkin looks like an impressive fighter, but it’s what you don’t see on his resume that could make all the difference. He might be undefeated in MMA, but he’s lacking two things: 1) a serious wrestling pedigree, and 2) experience against high-level opponents. Lawal has both, which should help explain why he’s such a heavy favorite. The question here is whether Lawal will approach this fight with the right temperament, or whether he’ll let his considerable ego get the better of him. His striking has come a long way in recent years, but that doesn’t mean he has to rely on it here. He can probably take Larkin down at will beat him up on the mat; he just has to believe that this is the right way to go and stick with it. Reasons to think he’ll do that: Lawal’s no dummy, and the AKA crew he’s working with knows how to put together a game plan and drill it into a fighter’s head. Reasons to think he won’t: Lawal is a showman, and he’s got just enough of a chip on his shoulder to want to do whatever his haters think he can’t. My pick: Lawal. It’s entirely possible that he could get himself into a boxing match that doesn’t favor his skill-set, but even then he always has wrestling to fall back on. I’ll put him right next to Rockhold in the parlay.
As anyone who saw him turn on the go-go-gadget elbows against Evangelista Santos already knows, Mein is for real. He’s got a six-fight win streak going, and the last few have come against increasingly challenging opponents. Woodley, however, represents a different kind of test altogether, and it’s the variety that Mein has yet to prove he can pass. We all know what the former Mizzou wrestler brings to the table. His stand-up game might be coming along, but it’s not what he relies on to win fights, as his takedown-heavy performance against Paul Daley showed. Mein has shown in the past that he can be outwrestled, but Woodley’s shown that he doesn’t always have much of a plan B when he faces someone who can stuff a takedown or two. The line here seems to suggest that Woodley will stomp all over Mein, but I’m not sure that’s the case. If Woodley wins, it’ll probably have to be via decision. That gives Mein plenty of opportunities to figure something out and exploit an opening. Or maybe it just gives him plenty of chances to get taken down. My pick: Mein. Of all the big underdogs on this card, he’s the one with the best chance to surprise some people. Woodley has looked a little too one-dimensional lately, and Mein is undervalued. That’s all a riverboat gambler like me needs to know.
Saffiedine is one of those fighters that Strikeforce has been grooming in its Challengers shows for a while now, but those days are done. He looked solid while out-pointing Scott Smith in his last outing, but his game is not without its holes. The question is, can Stinson exploit those holes before Saffiedine goes upside his head with a flashy combo? Probably not. Stinson’s been in with some tough customers during his time, and he’s come away with wins over a few of them. Still, Saffiedine seems more polished. Anybody who has a 15-second knockout of Eduardo Pamplona on his record — as Stinson does — needs to be taken seriously. But if Saffiedine plays it smart and keeps this from turning into a streetfight, he should take this. My pick: Saffiedine. I’ll admit that I was tempted to leave Mein alone and take Stinson as my big underdog, but I just don’t see it here. He’s been too up and down, and the ups haven’t been quite high enough to make me a believer yet.
The ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only’ Parlay: Rockhold + Lawler + Lawal.
Filed under: StrikeforceCan a move down to middleweight revitalize the career of Keith Jardine? Or will Luke Rockhold simply be too much for the Dean of Mean? Will King Mo Lawal make a case that he’s the top light heavyweight on the Strikeforce roster,…
Can a move down to middleweight revitalize the career of Keith Jardine? Or will Luke Rockhold simply be too much for the Dean of Mean? Will King Mo Lawal make a case that he’s the top light heavyweight on the Strikeforce roster, or is Lorenz Larkin set for the biggest win of his career? Can Tyron Woodley, Jordan Mein, Tarec Saffiedine of Tyler Stinson put on the kind of performance that gets people interested in the Strikeforce welterweight division again?
We’ll attempt to answer those questions and more as we predict the winners of Saturday night’s Strikeforce event below.
What: Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine
When: Saturday, the undercard will be televised by Showtime Extreme starting at 8 p.m. ET and the Showtime televised main card begins at 10.
Where: Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
Predictions on the five Showtime televised fights below.
Luke Rockhold vs. Keith Jardine Giving Jardine a Strikeforce middleweight title shot is an odd move: Jardine left the UFC on a four-fight losing streak, fought to a draw with Gegard Mousasi in his only Strikeforce fight, and has never fought at middleweight before. So, yes, the matchmaking here is a little strange. But Rockhold is the promotion’s middleweight champion, and Strikeforce needs to find him high-profile opponents, and given the current middleweight depth in Strikeforce, Jardine was about as good as it was going to get.
So how does this fight go? I have a feeling Jardine is going to be weakened by the weight cut, and that Rockhold will have better cardio and have his way with Jardine on the ground. Eventually I like Rockhold to finish Jardine on the ground. Pick: Rockhold
Robbie Lawler vs. Adlan Amagov The matchmaking here is a little strange, too, but the fight itself should be a lot of fun: Lawler and Amagov are both heavy hitters with exciting styles. Lawler has lost four of his six fights since signing with Strikeforce in 2009 and may be fighting for his job, and I think he’ll come out focused and ready to finish Amagov quickly. Pick: Lawler
Muhammed Lawal vs. Lorenz Larkin Larkin is one of the most fun fighters to watch on the entire Strikeforce roster, as evidenced by a cult following he developed while winning three straight Challengers Series fights. But while Larkin has a 12-0 record with eight wins by knockout or TKO, he’s never faced anyone even remotely as good as King Mo. Lawal is so much better a wrestler than Larkin that he can easily grind out a decision on the ground if he chooses to, and the biggest question may be whether Lawal decides to keep it safe and win a decision or take some chances and try to put on a show. I expect Mo to take the latter approach, which means there’s a chance Larkin catches him with one of his patented unorthodox strikes, but the much more likely result is that Mo proves he’s simply too skilled a mixed martial artist for someone as raw as Larkin. Pick: Lawal
Tyron Woodley vs. Jordan Mein Woodley is a great wrestler who’s getting better standing up and is now 9-0 in his professional MMA career. Mein has looked good recently and is on a six-fight winning streak, and he might test Woodley’s chin. But Woodley shouldn’t have much trouble clinching with Mein, taking him down and winning a decision. Pick: Woodley
Tarec Saffiedine vs. Tyler Stinson Saffiedine lost to Woodley a year ago and then bounced back with a good win over Scott Smith. Stinson won his Strikeforce debut with a 15-second knockout of Eduardo Pamplona in July, but he’s going to struggle trading strikes with Saffiedine. Pick: Saffiedine
Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal gave Lorenz Larkin a one-sided beatdown on Saturday night’s Strikeforce card, looking very impressive with ground and pound to finish the fight.
This is the 
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 
If you’re tired of all those 
Can a move down to middleweight revitalize the career of