Strikeforce: Lawler vs. Shields
June 6th, 2009
Scottrade Center - St. Louis, MO



Robbie Lawler vs. Jake Shields
Andrei Arlovski vs. Brett Rogers
Nick Diaz vs. Scott Smith
Kevin Randleman vs. Mike Whitehead
Joe Riggs vs. Phil Baroni
Rafael Cavalcante vs. Mike Kyle
Jesse Finney vs. Josh Bumgarner
Tyron Woodley vs. Sal Woods
Lucas Lopes vs. Scott Ventimiglia
Dave Cochran vs. Pat Benson
Booker DeRousse vs. James Wade

nice free show.

Hopfully the Smith/Diaz and Sheilds/Lawler match ups lead to Lawler vs Diaz 2.
Arlovski and Rogars could go either way..But I'll be rooting for Arlovski.
Baroni/Riggs could be a fun quick fight.

I've not seen Rogers fight. Is he especially good, or could the fight 'go either way' in the sense that any fight can go either way?

Arolovski is more skilled, but his chin is in question.
Andrei should be able to beat Rogars, but I wouldnt be shocked to see Rogers overpower him and catch him.

So is Shields planning on moving up to 180 more often or is it just for this fight with Lawler?

Just this fight.

Oh, the chin thing. So less of a 'could go either way' than 'his opponent might hit him flush on the jaw and KO him', which would be the case for most fights ever. ;)

Not that I'm saying AA has a great chin, but I'll pick him over most fighters who aren't Fyodor. Or 6' 8".

Rogers is 9-0 and hes good pretty good size. 6'5 265. definitely a step up in competion fighting Arolovski.

Yeah, I wiki'd him, so I know his stats. ^_^

Reason I asked is because many fights aren't as simple as records, hence my wondering if there's something in that record that might pose AA a problem. Of course, he's a big man and if he throws a decent shot that catches Andrei just right... then yeah, he's in trouble.

Beyond that, though. Does he have awesome takedowns and sufficient boxing defence to keep Andrei at bay? Can he fight intelligently enough that AA will get impatient and leave himself open? Does he have proper bo BJJ, which might conceivably cause issues?

As you imply, there is a world between beating Bristol Jimmy T and beating AA. Hitting hard didn't help Paul Buentello or Ben Rothwell, after all.

No to all questions. Rogers gets peaced out here easy.

My dream ending to Diaz/Smith is Diaz dominating the first two rounds, then getting cocky; and in typical Scott Smith fashion, he gets a dramatic KO sending Diaz's head into the 11th row. Fuck that tool.

Agreed. Smith has made me a fan. I don't like his chances, however.

And Team Hammerhouse gets embarrassed again.

Good to know Nate still ranks high on the Douche Scale.

It's been said repeatedly that MMA needs a heel, and there's not many better at it than Diaz.

And Andrei's chin is officially gone.

I'll never doubt Brett Rogers again. EVER.

Fangs for the memories, Andrei...

I actually thought it was early until I saw the slomo replay. Andrei was CLOCKED. Rogers has some ridiculous power.

I thought the same thing. It looked like the first rush didn't hurt Andrei and just backed him up to regroup, but Rogers is just too brutal. Goddamn.

Oh, and Diaz would be a good heel if he wasn't all "don't believe everything you see on TV!", then starts taunting people like a retard. At least Koscheck and Trigg leave that shit at the door.

Honestly, I agreed with Diaz. How was he being a douchebag? He said Smith should train with him, and after this fight, Smith should take him up on that offer.

Smith obviously has terrible coaches and training partners. What kind of strategy and gameplan was that? Smith fought a TERRIBLE fight.

Because Diaz does this a loooot. Like, more than Frank Shamrock does it. Which I thought was impossible, but he found a way.

He did it in the Noons fight too, and stormed out like a crybaby when he lost. He didn't even wait for the decision.

He did it against Lawler too, but that time it worked as it lured the dumbass in to get a beatdown. A lot of times when he did it here, Smith tagged him. Fight should've been over in the 2nd.

The Strikeforce interviewer (Gus Johnson?) is absolutely awful, by the way. It helps to get answers from the fighters when you actually ASK QUESTIONS rather than say statements for them to agree to.

And yet Noons ducked a rematch and became irrelevant and Diaz has far surpassed Noons.



Wait, are you saying Smith should've won in the second? I'm confused.

Noons being a retard and picking boxing over MMA (!?!?) then losing his next boxing fight, while hilarious, does not change the point.

No, Diaz should've won in the 2nd. Not saying Smith should've won that fight, I'm saying Diaz probably would've won it earlier if he wasn't being a tool.

Now that Rev reminds me, did anybody else notice the interviewer's cue cards hanging over dude's shoulders during interviews? Pack of cheaters!

Oh, and KEVIN RANDLEMAN~!

Nick Diaz' barrage of cigarette punches is just downright awesome.

If he fought a 5 round fight he'd throw over a 1000 of them.

Now Nate needs to do the same to Joe Stevenson and the Caesar Gracie camp will be 3 for 3 this month.

As for Noons, he was a fool for ducking Nick in the rematch but then ducking Thompson after that for no good reason sealed the fate on his MMA career. Nick has since undergone some sort of plastic surgery to prevent his face from cutting so easily and it seems to be working so I have no doubt Noons would absolutely get tooled if they were to fight again which they won't.

I think this proves that a cut to 160/155 is just to much for Diaz. compare how he looked during his LW run to his recent fights. And i can't believe that Lawler made a mistake like that and got choked out.

I wonder where Strikeforce goes for match making from here? I know Shields called out Cung Lee but I could see Scott Coker matching him up against Joe Riggs in a grudge match for the vacant 170lbs title they mentioned. I also wonder were nick Diaz ends up? 170 or 185? I could see them doing Diaz vs. Riggs for the belt if Shields wants to stay at 185 or doing a rematch with Lawler at 185 if Shields goes back to 170. Another possiblelity is a 3rd Smith Lawler fight to allow one of them to get back on track.

I think this is the last time Phil Baroni or Kevin Randleman are ever close to relevant. and I think Mike Whitehead was awfully unimpressive considering how shopworn Randleman looked. Of course thats kinda how his career trajectory has gone..gets wins at the small shows and over mid level oppositioon but comes up short against the top level guys.

I think this loss really put Arlovski into gate keeper status. he's still a good figter but I'd probably rank him in the bottom 3rd of the top 15. He's got enough quality wins that guys can try to make a name for them selves, win your a contender lose back to the prelims. A weak chin isn't something that gets better over time and after repeated KO's if he ever really wants to challenge a top ten HW again he needs to work on his defence speciffically his punch slipping abilities. On another note "The Grim" Rogers is for real. Its exciting with all the up and coming HW's right now. Shane Carwin, Cain V, Brock Lesnar, Rogers, Overkeem even Kongo... rember the state of US heavys a few years ago with Eilers and Buentello challenging for the UFC belt?

Also some what suprised that that Mike kyle KO'd Rafael Cavalcante!!!

I still want to see Rogers in a long fight where the rest of his game is tested against an upper echelon guy.

Brett Rogers vs. Fedor.

I still think Smith/Diaz and Lawler/Shields was bad matchmaking. Coker needs to make up his fucking mind and do something about Cung Le. You can't have all these champions who won't defend their titles. You can't keep having all these catchweight bouts that don't really solve anything and champs that don't defend their titles.

I'm wondering if Robbie was just still riding the high from the glee after he completely overpowered Shields' takedown attempt. When that initially happened, I expected Robbie to just continually overpower him the rest of the fight.

I haven't a clue why Arlovski's getting into boxing with that glassjaw. It doesn't matter that Freddie Roach is your trainer

Fucking Arlovski. Dude needs to change his entire way of fighting. He needs to develop some great takedowns and basically become a ground fighter. He's got great hands but his chin is not so great. I tried to believe in him all this time and tell myself that he's taken some hard shots blah blah blah, but there's no denying it now.

What's with the Diaz hate here? The guy is a complete fighter and at least he's entertaining. Don't you get tired of all the bland vanilla responses from fighters now and the triple glove touches each round and twenty hugs after the fight is over? The world is a better place with the Diaz brothers in it. And yes, Noons ducked Diaz and Thompson. He knew he was given a gift in the first fight and didn't want to show everyone that fact later. He tried to call out Eddie Alvarez only because he knew that fight wouldn't happen. Sprewell changed my thinking on Diaz. I think it's better for him to stay at MW and continue to grow into his frame. Seems to be working quite well for him.

Also Shields said he'd be open to staying at MW if it meant he could fight for a title. And I'd like to see some extended fighting with top competition for Brett Rogers as well. The Overeem fight will tell the tale for sure. I don't see Overeem getting caught early and we will get to see exactly how good Rogers is.

When Riggs vs Baroni was announced I thought "Okay, no way that one doesn't end in a hilarious fashion" but it turned into a pretty damn good fight. Riggs looked better then he ever has and even though it was against a few-away-from-retirement (or at least he should be) Baroni I was impressed.

Randleman is done. Arlovski is close to done. I just don't think Andrei has the motivation at this stage in his career to completely reinvent himself as a fighter. I could see him working with Roach or another camp as a boxing coach because he'll always have some of the best hands in the game but that chin is as big of a liability as you can have. Rogers has arrived but I'm still not sold until I see him either A) Take a good shot on the chin or B) Wind up on his back against a grappler. Overeem will be more then happy to test the first option, methinks. I can't believe, reading what I read about the press conference afterwards, that they were still unsure whether Rogers would get the title shot.

Whomever said that Lawler was possibly high on himself after stuffing Jake on the ground might be onto something. He wasn't particularly quick to react when Shields snuck his arm in for the choke and when you're dealing with a guy who has those grappling credentials it doesn't take long to get put out.

Oh, and UFC should sign Mike Kyle on a one-fight deal so he can face Anderson. What a fucking douchebag.

I think Arlovski should take a year off from fighting and come back as a LHW. Spend a year working on nothing but grappling. It's just a bummer for me because I've always enjoyed his fights and could see the obvious potential and then to drop two straight to Timmy. But then to come back and have this kind of resurgence outside of the UFC and put on a pretty good streak, I thought damn maybe he's got a really good chance against Fedor. Comes out and is just fighting a smart fight, picking his shots and landing clean ones on Fedor and then BAM out like a light. Losing his next fight to Brett Rogers I think just showed that his head isn't right. Despite his great hands, his chin is just too suspect for him to be consistent in the HW division.

He may have been able to drop to LHW like a few years ago, but not now. Especially with him working to put on more mass and actually doing it over the last several months so he can compete in heavyweight boxing. Even if he took a year off, it would still be an atrocious cut for him.

As far as grappling goes, Andrei just isn't simply into submission fighting. Especially post title reign Andrei. It's pretty much his own fault. Dino Costeas has been his BJJ coach for several years. It's the fact that he doesn't want to work on that part of the game. He pretty much spent the majority of this last camp out at Wildcard and at a swimming pool working on his conditioning.

Now Cung Le is saying an interim middleweight title will be made. Seriously. Enough of this shit. You can't let Cung Le keep holding an entire belt and division hostage. Its almost ruined Robbie Lawler.

Strikeforce's ENTIRE list of champions is screwed up. Overeem won in Nov. 2007 and hasn't defended it once. Babalu won in Nov. 2008 and hasn't defended. They have two Lightweight champs, neither of whom has defended their title once with their respective first defenses against each other (!?!?) in a rematch. WTF land!

I get that Babalu was ready to defend the title, but his wife is pregnant and all. I get it. But now he's fighting at Affliction against Mousasi. Its a good matchup . . . but the dude is supposed to be a Strikeforce champion and he should be committed to defending that title first.

Say what you want about UFC, but they don't want this problem anymore. Belts should not be held up this long.

**cough, cough** BJ Penn **cough, cough**

BJ Penn's defending his title this summer.

And he defended the title last year shortly after winning it against Joe Stevenson.

Epwar, my point is, BJ Penn as lightweight champion didn't galavant in another organization while he was still champion. He stayed within the organization and moved up a weightclass to fight the welterweight champion and he still committed to defending the lightweight title in the same year.

They are letting Cung Le who is not serious about an MMA career hold the title and do nothing about it. He hasn't fought in like 15 months.

Whom exactly did BJ defend the title against after beating Sherk? I seem to recall him talking a lot of shit and getting beat down by GSP.

And LO-fucking-L at UFC not holding belts up. It's called The Ultimate Fighter.

Yeah, BJ hasn't defended once since May 2008. When he enters the Octagon against Kenny, it will be 15 months since he won and his first defense.

We had Jake Shields on the show live last night~! So, peep that.

I also got video interviews with Brett Rogers and Gilbert Meldenez last night and Mark Coleman and Mauro Ranallo after the weigh-in. Check it all out at mmaforreal.com

Wow Arolovski down..I knew Rogers had a chance, but damn didnt think it would be that fast.
How many fights does Strike Force have him under contract?
I want to see him in the UFC vs Cain Velasquez.
Diaz and Smith was entertaining, I just kept waiting on Smith clipping Diazs jaw, but Diaz handled him.
Even though Lawler got choked out, They still should go for Diaz vs Lawler 2.
If Sheilds plans move up in weight, it kinda leaves Diaz in limbo, So why have part 2?

You're still missing the point though, in that Cung Le hasn't fought, period, in almost 16 months. Overeem hasn't fought in Strikeforce since November 2007. In the last year, Sobral has fought for Affliction more than he's fought for Strikeforce, he's Strikeforce's champion, and fucking Affliction hasn't even had their third show yet. Say what you will about Penn, how TUF interacts with the title, or whatever, but at least the UFC fighters fight on a consistent basis in their own promotion, and have something to do with their title. People complain about how Le has held the 182 lbs. division hostage because he has. There are legitimate contenders to that title, and yet the division's own champion would rather be a direct to video movie star than a fighter. In the 155 lbs. division in the UFC, they're building contenders. After finishing off Stevenson, you could make a pretty good argument that no one else was ready for a title shot. You had Florian and Huerta as guys who were right there, with other guys like Sherk, Griffin, Edgar, and now even Guida right behind them. What a surprise, Florian and Huerta fought each other and Florian made a legitimate claim to be the #1 contender to the 155 lbs. title. In the meanwhile, you've had Guida make his game an actual winning one (even if it's boring), discovered that Sherk probably shouldn't get another title shot, showed Griffin is on the outside looking in with Nate Diaz, and Edgar is next in line after Florian. Penn has stayed active too with the GSP fight, even if he was dominated, so it's not like the guy completely fell off the face of the planet. People still understand that Penn is the lightweight champion and will be defending it. Very few even understand who the Strikeforce middleweight champion is, why he hasn't fought in forever, and why top contenders are battling it out without a title on the line.

So does Mauro order his food in that voice?

UFC's LW division is certainly their deepest as far as contenders go. By the time Florian and Edgar are done with their shots, They will have 2-3 more guys ready.

I heard on Bubba the Love Sponge the other day that Sherk was so pissed he lost that he tried to leave the arena with his gloves still on, no shower or clothes change. They had to stop him because he had to do the pee test.

I was glad to see Nick Diaz continue his winning ways. I guess if you hit a guy with a couple hundred jabs, you don't need a power punch.

"No one else was ready for a title shot"

This is a debatable point but hardly an excuse for BJ's ego getting in the way of the division progressing as far as contenders go. As a result we now have a backlog of legit contenders in Edgar, Sanchez, Maynard and even Guida all lagging behind Florian.

Anybody bitching about the Le situation either has no clue that this is what happens when you allow fighters the freedom to get work outside a promotion or is just ignoring the plain facts.

I don't doubt Sherk was upset, but reckon he mainly just wanted to avoid the pee test.

Am I right folks?

You couldn't be more wrong. Both in the legitimate and the "That wasn't funny" sense.

There's certainly no "backlog" of legit number one contenders at 155. There's a lot of guys in the mix, yeah, and it's deep, but once Florian loses to BJ, is there one guy that you look at and say that he's definitely the best of the rest? Hell no. Gray Maynard is probably the most deserving of that group right now but even then, it's not like it's a given that he's the legit number one contender, and Diego's had only one fight at that weight so far. We'll see more about him when he fights Guida. If he beats Clay, then I'd like to see him and Maynard fight. But that whole group of guys could all fight each other five different times and come out with different results. Sure it sucks for Florian that he had to wait that long to get his shot, but at least it was guaranteed to him and BJ was actually fighting in the UFC.

With the Le situation, I understand the deal, and it's not Le's fault. It's on Strikeforce to make the division right and take the belt away from him or make an Interim championship. By allowing that situation to go on, it devalues the whole division. And it's not Babalu or Overeem's fault they haven't defended their belts, it's on Strikeforce. The Le situation stands out and they need to make it right. You can't allow a champion to say "I'm not fighting for a while" and continue to let him be the champion. They need to say that's cool, we'll just crown someone else and whenever you decide to fight again we'll work you back in.