If the latter is the case, as it currently appears, then this fight will more than likely be for the vacant Strikeforce welterweight title. The two heavy-handed fighters are the most recent challengers for the welterweight title, which was held by Nick Diaz. Daley lost by TKO back in April, and Santos lost by armbar back in January. Try not to act too surprised, but Paul Daley has initiated some pre-fight smack talk by promising to knock out Cyborg like Melvin Manhoef did.
As for an early prediction? On paper, there is no way that this fight ends in something other than a knockout, so expect Santos to outwrestle Daley on his way to a decision. Hey, we’ve seen stranger things happen.
The July 30th Card now looks something like this:
Heavyweight: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Dan Henderson
Women’s Welterweight Championship: Marloes Coenen vs. Miesha Tate
Light Heavyweight: Muhammed Lawal vs. Roger Gracie
Welterweight: Evangelista Santos vs. Paul Daley
Come on Internet, where are all the awesome fan-made promos? VidProps: mleqs
Damn, we’re glad we didn’t make plans this summer, because we’re going to be typing our hands off over the next few weeks. After the warm up-act of the TUF 13 Finale, we enter one of those fun times when there’s always another show coming up to talk about: we’ll have some big MMA event every weekend. That’s good for you, since we’re less likely to try something new and different. Also good for us, because ideas are hard.
This Weekend
Friday, 10 June — MFC 30: Up Close and Personal The biggest MMA promotion in Canada returns for action, featuring Drew Fickett vs Brian Cobb, Marcus Davis vs Pete Spratt, Thomas Denny vs Sheldon Westcott, and the other Lima brother in welterweight action. Stay tuned for a full preview of the card.
Saturday, 11 June — UFC 131: Carwin vs Dos Santos. More like UFC 131: Snakebit, right? (Just kidding. But seriously.) Carwin vs Dos Santos; plus a pretty nice list of compelling names, but not a lot of intriguing matchups (Poirier vs who?) On the other hand, we couldn’t agree on many predictions while discussing this for the Bum Rush, so no telling how the card goes. Plus, Nick Ring vs James Head jokes will write themselves for a week, easy. Success!
Come on Internet, where are all the awesome fan-made promos? VidProps: mleqs
Damn, we’re glad we didn’t make plans this summer, because we’re going to be typing our hands off over the next few weeks. After the warm up-act of the TUF 13 Finale, we enter one of those fun times when there’s always another show coming up to talk about: we’ll have some big MMA event every weekend. That’s good for you, since we’re less likely to try something new and different. Also good for us, because ideas are hard.
This Weekend
Friday, 10 June — MFC 30: Up Close and Personal The biggest MMA promotion in Canada returns for action, featuring Drew Fickett vs Brian Cobb, Marcus Davis vs Pete Spratt, Thomas Denny vs Sheldon Westcott, and the other Lima brother in welterweight action. Stay tuned for a full preview of the card.
Saturday, 11 June — UFC 131: Carwin vs Dos Santos. More like UFC 131: Snakebit, right? (Just kidding. But seriously.) Carwin vs Dos Santos; plus a pretty nice list of compelling names, but not a lot of intriguing matchups (Poirier vs who?) On the other hand, we couldn’t agree on many predictions while discussing this for the Bum Rush, so no telling how the card goes. Plus, Nick Ring vs James Head jokes will write themselves for a week, easy. Success!
Next Weekend
Saturday, 18 June — Strikeforce: Werdum vs Overeem. Yeah, we may poke fun at Strikeforce, but there is no way we would miss this card: Werdum vs Overeem, Barnett (maybe) vs Rogers, Cormier vs Monson, Riggs vs Bro Overeem — stop, stop! you had us “Grand Prix”! Side note: Strikeforce has finally figured out that people are interested in the preliminary cards, and have begun to air those as well. You’ll be able to catch Justin Wilcox vs JZ Cavalcante and the rest of the prelims on HDNet.
Minor League Weekend
Friday, 24 June — Strikeforce Challengers 16. Ryan Couture returns for a Challengers card headlined by Caros Fodor vs. James Terry. We were a little puzzled to see Jason High vs Quinn Mulhern on the prelim: a Dream/Affliction/UFC vet vs a young KOTC champ is on the un-televised portion of a Challengers card? Just who the hell is running things over there?
Saturday, 25 June — Bellator 46. Bellator returns for their Summer Series run, kicking off an eight-man featherweight tourney to bridge the gap between seasons 4 and 5. We’ll probably ignore it.
Sunday, 26 June — UFC on Versus 4: Marquardt vs Story. We wish the UFC would go ahead and buy a damn network and be done with it, these naming schemes are getting convoluted. Ultimate Fight Night, UFC on Versus, UFC Live, TUF Finale — why do you make us work so hard Dana?? Rick Story steps in on short notice to headline UFC Whatever against Nate Marquardt, plus our BFF forever Pat Barry vs guy that really hates us Cheick Kongo. (We got Barry in this one.)
July 4th Weekend
Saturday, 2 July — UFC 132: Cruz vs Faber 2. Why not UFC 132: Role Reversal? Cruz was the challenger and Faber was the champ four years ago at featherweight, when Cruz suffered his only loss to date. Now Faber has followed Cruz down to 135 and looks to claim his title. Damn, we should totally start making promos for these things. All we need is a cool movie voice guy. And some video editing stuff. Probably some talent would help. Anyways, this is a wildly stacked card for fans of the lighter weight classes, for everyone else there’s Wandy vs Leben.
After UFC 132, there’s a full twelve days of waiting until Dream.17 (which you probably won’t see in the states live), and a terrifying 28 days until Strikeforce: Hendo v Fedor. Yikes. Guess we haven’t seen the last of Keyboard Warriors yet after all.
Strikeforce has also officially added Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal vs. Roger Gracie to the “Fedor vs. Henderson” main card; Rafael Cavalcante is expected to return against streaking prospect Ovince St. Preux, while Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos is slated to meet Belgian welterweight Tarec Saffiedine.
Both fights will take place on the main card in support of the headlining superfight between light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson and heavyweight legend Fedor Emelianenko.
Coenen fights for the first time since defeating Liz Carmouche at Strikeforce’s March event in Columbus, Ohio. There, she stopped Carmouche with a fourth-round triangle to win in a fight that Carmouche was mostly dominating. It will be her second defense of the title after winning it against Sarah Kaufman in October.
Coenen was originally scheduled to face Tate in march in Columbus, but an injury kept her out and Carmouche stepped in on late notice to fill the void.
And Lawal will return for the first time in nearly a year, since losing his light heavyweight title in his first defense against Rafael Cavalcante, the first loss of his career. Gracie comes in unbeaten at 4-0, all by submission. But he has fought just once in the last year – a submission win over Trevor Prangley in January.
Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson will air live on Showtime.
(The official ‘Fedor vs. Henderson’ poster, via Strikeforce. Click for full-size version.)
By Anton Gurevich
MMA legends Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianenko and Dan “Hendo” Henderson will meet on July 30th at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Emelianenko and Henderson share numerous MMA titles, and are widely considered two of the most influential fighters in the sport.
Currently 1-2 in his Strikeforce campaign, Fedor stands at the crossroads of his career, after suffering a devastating defeat against Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva earlier this year. The thirty-four year old Russian announced his retirement, but later changed his mind and declared that he would continue fighting. Here’s some of the most important quotes from the Russian media over the past weeks, with Fedor Emelianenko talking about what could be the biggest fight of his illustrious MMA career…
(The official ‘Fedor vs. Henderson’ poster, via Strikeforce. Click for full-size version.)
By Anton Gurevich
MMA legends Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianenko and Dan “Hendo” Henderson will meet on July 30th at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Emelianenko and Henderson share numerous MMA titles, and are widely considered two of the most influential fighters in the sport.
Currently 1-2 in his Strikeforce campaign, Fedor stands at the crossroads of his career, after suffering a devastating defeat against Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva earlier this year. The thirty-four year old Russian announced his retirement, but later changed his mind and declared that he would continue fighting. Here’s some of the most important quotes from the Russian media over the past weeks, with Fedor Emelianenko talking about what could be the biggest fight of his illustrious MMA career…
Strikeforce and Showtime on 