Strikeforce Evolution: Review

Strikeforce Evolution really surprised me. The quality of the fights was awesome even though the fighters themselves are not all in the top-10 of their respective divisions.

Cung Le vs. Scott Smith - Cung Le put on a show in the first round, demonstrating his Taekwondo kicking prowess which he no doubt has. Scott Smith however proved to be a tough nut to crack and even though he took quite a few of those hard kicks even landing to his face, he withstood the onslaught and kept grinding at the ex-Champion.

Early on Cung Le had Scott on the ground and I am sure the fight would be stopped by the crap a UFC referee. Thank God that Strikeforce put in Big John McCarthy who knows better than stopping fights when the opponent on the bottom is taking punches that have no real power behind them.

Scott Smith to everone's surprise proved to the world that day that he is a better fighter. He trained harder and he took the fight business more seriously than Cung Le who has been away from fighting for 21 months due to his movie career obligations. At the end of round three, Smith finished the fight with KO from punches forcing the referee to stop the fight.

Few will argue I believe that the time has come for Cung Le to retire. At 37 he needs to look at other opportunities ahead of him and not blemish his record any further.

The other fights were also very cool. Josh Thomson vs. Gilbert Melendez was an absolute war. King Mo displayed more talent than I really believed he had knocking out the bigger (but slower) Mike Whitehead in round 1. Mo is clearly a star on the rise but also I believe that he needs to fight tougher competition if he really wants to prove himself. He is in luck however as all of the Strikeforce divisions are getting deeper every day and since he can fight at both LHW and HW, there are plenty of tougher fighters for him ahead.

Personally I believe King Mo should face Kevin Randelman or Sokoudjou next. Both fighters have had their troubles lately but have some victories over the top-dogs of today. If King Mo continues his road of success, he could soon join the line to fight Gegard Mousasi or one of the top heavyweights which will be an exciting draw.

Ronaldo Jacare Souza vs. Matt Lindland is a fight that was close to my heart for sure. As a jiu jitsu practitioner myself there was not a doubt in my mind who would win this battle but I had no idea that it would be as convincingly as it did on Saturday.

Jacare displayed not only his awesome submission game against Lindland but also some great standup which if he continues to improve further could take him to the very top of his division not only at Strikeforce but in the world. Anderson Silva is of course the master of the MMA game but Jacare is a good student indeed.

Overall a very nice event and worth every dollar. For $24.99 I got to watch a better card than most of the recent UFC PPV events that cost $44.99. Production still needs to improve and the marketing could be better but overall I think they are getting there. CBS show in April is confirmed with Fedor Emelianenko on the card. The fans await.