Filed under: StrikeforceWho will advance to the finals of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix? Can Luke Rockhold shock everyone and take the middleweight belt from Jacare? Will King Mo Lawal come back after more than a year off and defeat Roger Grac…
Who will advance to the finals of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix? Can Luke Rockhold shock everyone and take the middleweight belt from Jacare? Will King Mo Lawal come back after more than a year off and defeat Roger Gracie? We’ll attempt to answer those questions as we predict the winners of Saturday’s fights.
What: Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix Semifinals: Barnett vs. Kharitonov
Where: U.S. Bank Arena, Cincinnati
When: Saturday, the HDNet undercard begins at 8 p.m. ET and the Showtime main card begins at 10.
Predictions on the five Showtime fights below.
Josh Barnett vs. Sergei Kharitonov This is Barnett’s biggest fight since losing to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at Pride Shockwave 2006, and maybe his last chance to return to relevance and get back some of the respect in the MMA world that he lost when his positive drug test caused his fight with Fedor Emelianenko to be canceled two years ago. It’s huge for Barnett.
It’s a big fight for Kharitonov, too: Although he’s had a long and impressive fighting career, he’s an unknown outside hard-core MMA fans in the United States. And given that Kharitonov’s management in Golden Glory is butting heads with Strikeforce parent company Zuffa right now, Kharitonov needs to impress if he wants to stay in Zuffa going forward. Beating Barnett in the main event could set Kharitonov up for a lucrative fight in the Grand Prix finals, and potentially some very lucrative fights in the UFC after that.
Kharitonov is a better striker than Barnett, and Barnett has struggled at times with good strikers. But I don’t think Kharitonov has good enough defensive wrestling to stay off his back in this fight, and on the ground I see Barnett as having a significant advantage. I like Barnett to win this fight from the top. Pick: Barnett
Antonio Silva vs. Daniel Cormier Those Zuffa-Golden Glory problems cost us what should have been a great fight between Silva and Alistair Overeem. Instead we get Bigfoot against Cormier, who’s a world-class wrestler and undefeated fighter but hasn’t faced anything close to Top 10 competition until now.
So is Cormier ready for it? I don’t think so. Cormier is such a good wrestler that he has a chance of getting Silva down and getting on top of him, but I think it’s much more likely that the bigger, stronger Silva will batter Cormier with punches and end up finishing him with ground and pound. Pick: Silva
Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza vs. Luke Rockhold As the Strikeforce middleweight champion, Jacare is in a tough position: He wants big fights that give him a chance to prove he’s among the best in the world, but Strikeforce really doesn’t have a middleweight division that can offer him that kind of competition. Rockhold is a 26-year-old who has shown some promise on his way to building up a 7-1 record, but he’s never fought anyone whose skill even approaches that of Jacare. It’ll be a big shock if Jacare doesn’t win this fight by submission. Pick: Souza
Muhammed Lawal vs. Roger Gracie This is a fascinating stylistic matchup because King Mo’s favorite tactic is to use his wrestling to take his opponents down and beat them from the top, while Gracie’s world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills make him a threat to anyone off his back. King Mo has been out the last year with a knee injury he suffered when losing the Strikeforce light heavyweight title to Rafael Cavalcante, so we don’t know what kind of shape he’ll be in. But if Mo is healthy, I like him to show off good enough submission defense to handle Gracie on the ground and win by decision. Pick: Lawal
Pat Healy vs. Maximo Blanco Healy took this fight on short notice after Josh Thomson dropped out with an injury, and that should make things easier on Blanco, a Venezuelan who has had a lot of success fighting in Japan and is now making his U.S. debut. Blanco is a very good wrestler and devastating striker, and he should put Healy away quickly. Pick: Blanco
You didn’t really think that “King” Mo Lawal — he of Team GDP, he of Team Thirsty — was going to return to action against Roger Gracie on Saturday’s Strikeforce card without some new nickname at his disposal, did you?
Oh, no. That wouldn’t be Lawal’s style. Not after being out of the cage for over a year. Not when he’s taking on a member of the famed Gracie family. As he told Ariel Helwani on Thursday’s edition of The MMA Hour, he’s come up with the perfect moniker to mark his return: Blackuraba.
As in, the black Sakuraba. “Hell yeah, ‘the Gracie Hunter,’ fool,” Lawal explained.
The former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ even has a new team to match his new nickname, but will it be enough to knock off the ring rust and get back in the win column?
The last time we saw Lawal in the cage was August of 2010, when he lost his 205-pound title to Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante via third-round TKO. Since then he’s had surgery, he’s done his rehab, and he’s relocated his training camp to the friendly confines of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif., where longtime friend Daniel Cormier makes his home.
The move was “a breath of fresh air,” according to Lawal. What remains to be seen is whether it’s prepared him to deal with Gracie’s submission game, which has accounted for a slew of jiu-jitsu titles as well as all four of the Brazilian’s MMA victories.
“I’m not afraid to go to the ground with him,” Lawal said. “This ain’t Abu Dhabi. This ain’t [the Jiu-Jitsu World Championships]. This is MMA. Wherever the fight goes, I’m prepared to battle.”
And while Lawal, who came to MMA from wrestling, said he still thinks high-level grapplers hold major advantages over most opponents, he doesn’t seem terribly worried about Gracie’s ground skills, saying, “It’s going to be an interesting fight, but I think I’m going to smash him.”
The question Lawal and many other Strikeforce fighters are wondering is, what then?
The current Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, Dan Henderson, seems poised to make the leap to the UFC, which would leave yet another Strikeforce belt vacant.
“If I’m going to fight for the belt, I want to fight the champ, and that’s Dan,” said Lawal, who insisted he had no interest in owning a title that’s been vacated by the previous champ.
“The thing is, what’s the point? What’s the point of having the belt when it’s been vacated, and the person who vacated it is still fighting somewhere else within the same umbrella, but not the same organization?”
At least for the time being, it’s a conundrum that’s familiar to many fighters on the Strikeforce roster. The welterweight and heavyweight champs have already been removed from the picture by the Zuffa brass, and the same seems likely to happen in Lawal’s division, leaving him wondering what’s really at stake in these fights.
“It feels a little weird, because it’s not the same,” Lawal said. “It’s like a cancer patient, like a dying cancer patient. That’s how I feel like the organization is. We’re just waiting for it to die, to pass. As long as I can get my fights in and they’re still around, I want to get them in.”
After more than a year off, he’ll get his chance to get another one in this Saturday in Cincinnati. Considering the precarious position of the promotion he’s fighting for, he’d better make them count. Who knows how many more there will be under the Strikeforce banner, particularly for the losers.
You didn’t really think that “King” Mo Lawal — he of Team GDP, he of Team Thirsty — was going to return to action against Roger Gracie on Saturday’s Strikeforce card without some new nickname at his disposal, did you?
Oh, no. That wouldn’t be Lawal’s style. Not after being out of the cage for over a year. Not when he’s taking on a member of the famed Gracie family. As he told Ariel Helwani on Thursday’s edition of The MMA Hour, he’s come up with the perfect moniker to mark his return: Blackuraba.
As in, the black Sakuraba. “Hell yeah, ‘the Gracie Hunter,’ fool,” Lawal explained.
The former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ even has a new team to match his new nickname, but will it be enough to knock off the ring rust and get back in the win column?
The last time we saw Lawal in the cage was August of 2010, when he lost his 205-pound title to Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante via third-round TKO. Since then he’s had surgery, he’s done his rehab, and he’s relocated his training camp to the friendly confines of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif., where longtime friend Daniel Cormier makes his home.
The move was “a breath of fresh air,” according to Lawal. What remains to be seen is whether it’s prepared him to deal with Gracie’s submission game, which has accounted for a slew of jiu-jitsu titles as well as all four of the Brazilian’s MMA victories.
“I’m not afraid to go to the ground with him,” Lawal said. “This ain’t Abu Dhabi. This ain’t [the Jiu-Jitsu World Championships]. This is MMA. Wherever the fight goes, I’m prepared to battle.”
And while Lawal, who came to MMA from wrestling, said he still thinks high-level grapplers hold major advantages over most opponents, he doesn’t seem terribly worried about Gracie’s ground skills, saying, “It’s going to be an interesting fight, but I think I’m going to smash him.”
The question Lawal and many other Strikeforce fighters are wondering is, what then?
The current Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, Dan Henderson, seems poised to make the leap to the UFC, which would leave yet another Strikeforce belt vacant.
“If I’m going to fight for the belt, I want to fight the champ, and that’s Dan,” said Lawal, who insisted he had no interest in owning a title that’s been vacated by the previous champ.
“The thing is, what’s the point? What’s the point of having the belt when it’s been vacated, and the person who vacated it is still fighting somewhere else within the same umbrella, but not the same organization?”
At least for the time being, it’s a conundrum that’s familiar to many fighters on the Strikeforce roster. The welterweight and heavyweight champs have already been removed from the picture by the Zuffa brass, and the same seems likely to happen in Lawal’s division, leaving him wondering what’s really at stake in these fights.
“It feels a little weird, because it’s not the same,” Lawal said. “It’s like a cancer patient, like a dying cancer patient. That’s how I feel like the organization is. We’re just waiting for it to die, to pass. As long as I can get my fights in and they’re still around, I want to get them in.”
After more than a year off, he’ll get his chance to get another one in this Saturday in Cincinnati. Considering the precarious position of the promotion he’s fighting for, he’d better make them count. Who knows how many more there will be under the Strikeforce banner, particularly for the losers.
Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse ExclusiveFormer Strikeforce champion “King” Mo Lawal thinks he did several things wrong in his loss to Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante back in August.
For one, he didn’t use his wrestling as much as he should have, he sa…
Former Strikeforce champion “King” Mo Lawal thinks he did several things wrong in his loss to Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante back in August.
For one, he didn’t use his wrestling as much as he should have, he said. For another, he was much too humble before the fight. No, that last part is not a typo.
“King” Mo – the man who is never at a loss for words, particularly when those words help him explain how much better he is than most of his peers – feels it was partly his pre-fight humility that hurt him in the cage.
“I wasn’t me,” he told MMA Fighting at last week’s EA Sports MMA media event. “I thought I was going to win, but I tried to play all that humble sh-t. What it comes to is, that’s not me. I know I’m the best, and I’ve got to be able to talk like I’m the best. I’m not going to do all that, ‘Oh, he’s a tough opponent’ stuff. Not anymore. F— that stuff. It doesn’t work for me. I tried to do that so I wouldn’t get this backlash, but it doesn’t work for me. So now, people don’t like me? F— them.”
Filed under: StrikeforceYou can learn a lot about what a fighter is made of by the way he loses. Take “King” Mo Lawal and Bobby Lashley, for instance. Both suffered TKO losses at Strikeforce: Houston, but both showed us something completely different a…
You can learn a lot about what a fighter is made of by the way he loses. Take “King” Mo Lawal and Bobby Lashley, for instance. Both suffered TKO losses at Strikeforce: Houston, but both showed us something completely different about their respective characters in the process.
Lawal absorbed some brutal knees and punches from a heavy-hitting Brazilian, and he was still scrambling for a desperate takedown right up until the end. When “Big” John McCarthy finally stopped the fight, Lawal pitched face first onto the mat, completely spent after trying everything he could to claw his way back from the brink of unconsciousness.
Lashley, on the other hand, looked like he didn’t even want to get up and walk to his corner after winning the first round. The cut under his eye clearly rattled him, and a few minutes later he was so exhausted he could barely lift his arms or defend himself.
Filed under: StrikeforceOn paper, Strikeforce: Houston looked like it would be a night where a series of favorites stampeded to easy victories. Then again, they don’t fight on paper.
“King” Mo Lawal got off to a good start in his first Strikeforce lig…
On paper, Strikeforce: Houston looked like it would be a night where a series of favorites stampeded to easy victories. Then again, they don’t fight on paper.
“King” Mo Lawal got off to a good start in his first Strikeforce light heavyweight title defense. He slammed Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante to the mat, deftly avoided most of his offensive assaults, and seemed like he was in complete control.
Then in the third round the Brazilian challenger found his range in the stand-up game and unloaded on Lawal with hard right hands and a series of knees to the head that left the champion wobbled. After dropping Lawal with a left-right combination, Cavalcante poured on the elbow strikes until referee “Big” John McCarthy called a stop to the bout at 1:14 of round three, making “Feijao” the third man to hold the Strikeforce light heavyweight strap in 2010.
“My strategy was to block his takedowns in the first and second rounds, because I knew he was going to get tired, and that’s what I did,” Cavalcante said in the post-fight press conference.
Filed under: StrikeforceHOUSTON — Usually when a guy takes three pro fights in less than a month, it means he’s either crazy or in serious debt. Former U.S. Olympic wrestling team captain Daniel Cormier insists he’s neither. He just doesn’t have any t…
HOUSTON — Usually when a guy takes three pro fights in less than a month, it means he’s either crazy or in serious debt. Former U.S. Olympic wrestling team captain Daniel Cormier insists he’s neither. He just doesn’t have any time to waste.
“There’s no substitute for experience,” Cormier (4-0) told MMA Fighting. “I don’t have the time that some of these other guys have. I’m 31. I need to progress a little bit quicker than them.”
This is why Cormier, who fought for and won the King of the Cage heavyweight title just last week, signed on to face Jason Riley (9-3) on the undercard of Strikeforce: Houston this weekend. He needs the experience, he said, and if his management thinks it’s a good idea, he’s not about to disagree.
Take the situation with his Strikeforce contract, for instance.
Who will advance to the finals of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix? Can Luke Rockhold shock everyone and take the middleweight belt from Jacare? Will King Mo Lawal come back after more than a year off and defeat Roger Gracie? We’ll attempt to answer those questions as we predict the winners of Saturday’s fights.
You didn’t really think that “King” 
Former Strikeforce champion “King” 
You can learn a lot about what a fighter is made of by the way he loses. Take “King” 
On paper, 
HOUSTON — Usually when a guy takes three pro fights in less than a month, it means he’s either crazy or in serious debt. Former U.S. Olympic wrestling team captain