Tag: Luke Rockhold

Cutting 32 Pounds Off Keith Jardine Was an ‘Easy Process,’ Says Mike Dolce

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…

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Keith JardineWhen 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.

 

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Seven Ways of Looking at Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine

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…

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Keith JardineStrikeforce 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.

 

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Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine Weigh-In Results

Filed under: Strikeforce, NewsMMA Fighting has the Strikeforce weigh-in results for “Rockhold vs. Jardine” taking place Saturday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

On Friday, Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold …

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MMA Fighting has the Strikeforce weigh-in results for “Rockhold vs. Jardine” taking place Saturday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

On Friday, Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold and challenger Keith Jardine both made weight at 185 pounds to make their title fight official.

The rest of the weigh-in results are below.
Main Card
Luke Rockhold (185) vs. Keith Jardine (185)
Robbie Lawler (186) vs. Adlan Amagov (186)
Muhammed Lawal (205) vs. Lorenz Larkin (206)
Tyron Woodley (171) vs. Jordan Mein (169)
Tarec Saffiedine (170) vs. Tyler Stinson (170)

Undercard
Nah-Shon Burrell (172) vs. James Terry (171) — Burrell lost pound in an hour
Trevor Smith (206) vs. Gian Villante (205)
Ricky Legere (170) vs. Chris Spang (170)
Alonzo Martinez (160) vs. Estevan Payan (160.5) — Catchweight Bout

 

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‘Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine’ Press Conference Highlights + Smash Reel

(Props: YouTube.com/Strikeforce)

Strikeforce held a press conference yesterday plugging this weekend’s “Rockhold vs. Jardine” card at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Some highlights…

– Keith Jardine hasn’t weighed 185 pounds since the ninth grade.

– King Mo plans to “put them thangs” on Lorenz Larkin. Man, I hope that doesn’t mean what we think it means.

– Scott Coker thinks Robbie Lawler vs. Adlan Amagov won’t make it out of the second round. As usual, Lawler is as silent as a cigar-store Indian.

After the jump: A highlight reel of the fighters in action. The editor wisely chose to use a clip of Jardine’s TKO of Forrest Griffin from 2006 rather than his sole appearance in Strikeforce.


(Props: YouTube.com/Strikeforce)

Strikeforce held a press conference yesterday plugging this weekend’s “Rockhold vs. Jardine” card at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Some highlights…

– Keith Jardine hasn’t weighed 185 pounds since the ninth grade.

– King Mo plans to “put them thangs” on Lorenz Larkin. Man, I hope that doesn’t mean what we think it means.

– Scott Coker thinks Robbie Lawler vs. Adlan Amagov won’t make it out of the second round. As usual, Lawler is as silent as a cigar-store Indian.

After the jump: A highlight reel of the fighters in action. The editor wisely chose to use a clip of Jardine’s TKO of Forrest Griffin from 2006 rather than his sole appearance in Strikeforce.

The Re-Education of ‘King’ Mo Lawal

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…

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Mo LawalMo 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.

 

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Keith Jardine Gets Strikeforce Title Shot, but Weight Cut Not Easy

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 …

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Keith JardineKeith 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.

“I’ve never been down to 185, since my freshman year of high school probably,” Jardine said at Thursday’s pre-fight press conference.

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.

 

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