Apr
14
2009
2

Post Strikeforce Notes: The Wolf’s Wound

By Nicholas Bailey (nbailey@mmaratings.net)

Strikeforce/EliteXC events remind me of my dating life. They don’t happen nearly enough. They’re usually pretty fun and well put-together. The girls show up too heavy. You don’t always get what you want, but you have a good time anyway. Someone ends up unconscious, and you can’t wait to do it again, but you have to.

The two biggest take-aways from the event are that Frank Shamrock is a totally spent force and that the Cyborg/Gina matchup will now be plagued by amateur comedians making jokes about how it will be contested at super heavyweight. Smith vs. Radach was certainly an entertaining fight, but it won’t really have the kind of staying power that will cement it in the zeitgeist. It’s amazing that what would have had the MMA world going nuts a few years ago, that being a major promotion with a major television deal, is now just a side note to a fighter missing weight and a veteran losing their mojo.

That’s too bad, because Strikeforce delivers a quality product. The weakest part of the UFC product has long been its packaging, with even WEC commercials and video packages putting it to shame. The production values, in terms of the intro video vignettes were much more professional and impressive than the typical UFC offerings. It’s pretty unbelievable that the UFC continues to produce such amateurish stuff in that respect, although they may be moving away from that with the improving footage used for the countdown shows. The exception, of course, was the fighting corpses, which were pure garbage. MMA fans could definitely do without the now de rigueur explanation that MMA is now regulated and not a brutal cockfight and actually has rules. We know, people will pick it up, stop presenting the sport as some kind of sideshow and people won’t regard it as one.

The announcing team was also a cut above most Zuffa products, with Militich doing an excellent job (although it was hard to recognize him without that stubble), although Mauro and Gus basically had to fight over the same role. Gus Johnson is a great announcer, in terms of raw talking skills, although he certainly needs to work diligently on his general MMA knowledge. Mauro still calls everything like a pro wrestling announcer, and the gap between him and Gus is quite apparent. Hopefully Gus continues to behave in such a professional manner and keeps doing his homework, and we can have a legitimately talented guy doing announcing for fights. They even acknowledged Diaz’s marijuana suspension, which is fairly professional, and certainly a step ahead of Zuffa in the honesty department.

Nick Diaz defeated Frank Shamrock via KO (Punches) at 3:57 of round 2

Shamrock looked awful against Diaz. Beyond being totally impotent with his striking, he gave up takedowns whenever Diaz got a hold of him, and let Diaz storm right through his guard with little to no effort.

Shamrock is done. Cross-training, serious attention to physical development and endurance are no longer revolutionary ideas, and the natural athleticism that characterized his young career has faded.

This was a beautiful display of boxing from Diaz, offensively at least. Diaz threw a wide variety of strikes from good angles with great accuracy, penetrating Shamrock’s defense constantly. Diaz’s head movement wasn’t so effective however. He walked into Frank’s shots, as I expected, but Shamrock had no power on them. It’s sad, but he didn’t even bust Diaz up as badly as Thomas Denny. This may be a period of real growth for Diaz. His skills have improved only a little in the last several years, and he didn’t look like a different fighter from a technical perspective, but the weight change may be ideal for him, as he certainly looked much improved physically. He even showed some class, which is some growth of another kind.

Cristiane Santos defeated Hitomi Akano via TKO (strikes) at 0:35 of round 3

The WNBA sucks because women can’t dunk, but that does not carry over to MMA. As we’ve seen, women can truly scrap. We need to stop treating it as a sideshow attraction with ridiculous matches like Akano vs. Cyborg, giving fighters a pass for coming in massively overweight, and making them fight at the ludicrous sprint pace of a K-1 bout. The one positive that may come from this whole debacle is the possibility of seeing Megumi Fujii get some stateside recognition, as part of the deal for Akano to take the fight may have been for Strikeforce to bring in more fighters from her camp, Abe Ani Combat Club, where Josh Barnett works with so many female fighters in Japan.

This was actually an early stoppage. I know it’s unseemly to see Akano continuously beaten on, but if that had been a man that got stopped as soon as he went down, rolling to guard or for a leg lock, there would have been uproar.

Of course the biggest outcry in this fight was about Cyborg’s weight problems. Supposedly set as a 145-lb fight, Cyborg showed up heavy, weighing in at 152. After various shenanigans, the fight went on, and Cyborg got on the scale at 158 late the night of the weigh-ins, never having weighed under 151.

A high-level professional fighter with months of lead-time weighing in this far over the limit is unacceptable in the first place, but this irresponsibility went above and beyond the usual unprofessional behavior.

First, this was very disrespectful because of the already-huge difference in sizes between the fighters. Akano is a 128-lb champion in Japan, and was small even when fighting at 135. Coming in so overweight shows no respect for Akano basically doing Cyborg a favor by stepping up in weight to compete with her, and shows that Cyborg had no regard for anything approximating a fairly contested bout with such a small opponent.

The worst, though, is Cyborg’s attempts to blame the missed weight on her period. Female MMA fighters cannot pull this kind of crap if they want to be taken seriously as peers to male fighters. This argument did convince some people, who don’t seem to have the same expectations of female fighters as of males. What is next, attempting to overturn the result of a fight because it hurts your feelings? Okay, BJ Penn has already tried that, but I digress. It’s certainly true that hormonal changes can affect a woman’s body, that doesn’t give her a free pass to be unprofessional. It doesn’t matter if you are pregnant, you signed up for the bout and made a professional commitment to contesting it at a fair and agreed-upon weight, and certainly not to try to browbeat your opponent into allowing you to skate by at the very last moment. Gabe Ruediger’s hormones made him hungry (although he may have also been menstruating), Nick Diaz’s body composition changing with age and physical maturity made him heavier, but those men do not get a free pass. A period is a somewhat predictable occurrence, and if it has such a strong effect on your weight, as a professional, you are responsible for taking that into account in your preparations. Combine that with the fact that Cyborg’s camp has admitted she was as heavy as 165 pounds two weeks before the fight, and this is a case of a woman taking advantage of her gender to its detriment, comparable of crying to get out of a speeding ticket. There’s no excuse, period.

Brett Rogers defeated Ron Humphrey via TKO (strikes) at 1:38 of round 2

Herb dean represented for dread rights. Herb was definitely the worst possible referee for Rogers to have had if he wanted to grab some dreads, but grab he did, and the penalty was completely appropriate. Abongo took a good beating from Rogers, and Rogers didn’t look that good in being unable to accumulate serious damage on an opponent with very poor defense. Abongo is a powerful and dangerous guy, but he’s going to need to work on his defense quite a bit to get anywhere in MMA. I think we saw a bit of a ceiling for Rogers here, although he’s improving.

Scott Smith defeated Benji Radach via KO (punch) at 3:24 of round 3

Scott Smith’s opponents would be well advised to learn from his fights with Lawler, Sell, and now Radach. The guy is incredibly tough, and unless you take him out he’s going to come at you hard with counters. The worst thing you can possibly do is try to sharpshoot him with single shots, because even if you are winning the exchanges, you’re giving him a chance to land that big counter. However, when fighters have put his back to the cage and swarmed him, he’s been very vulnerable, shelling up and taking punishment, which is how Lawler was able to put him away.

Gilbert Melendez defeated Rodrigo Damm via KO (Punches) at 2:02 of round 2

Gilbert Melendez has always been a well-rounded fighter, but his hands appeared much sharper than usual in his domination of Rodrigo Damm, adding quite a bit of excitement to his eventual rematch with Josh Thompson, which could previously have been expected to be little more than a replay of their previous encounter. Melendez will face a much sterner test than Damm in Thompson, but he appears to be doing his best to rise to that challenge.

All in all a very solid event, although Shamrock being shown to be a spent force will certainly adversely affect Strikeforce’s drawing power. Many MMA fans will find it difficult to wait until June for the promotion’s next event.


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