SF thoughts

Well, i feel good to be just about the only person who said Feijao had all the tools but no key to the toolbox and could have taken this fight. I did pick Mo but never wrote off Feijao..he found the key to the box tonight. He was amazing. Striking crisp and brutal. Fought off takedowns from one of the best wrestlers in MMA and those elbows at the end were landing and brutal. Loved his performance. I think the best out of the main 3 LHW in SF with the exception of Mousasi's beatdown of Babalu. I thought Mo looked overall pretty good...he just got hurt big time. Feijao was finding his mark with leg kicks, knees, punches and at the end repeated elbows. Mo gave the valiant Quinton Jackson vs. Wanderlei Silva 2 survival display but you can only take so much before your brain shuts down.

Jacare-Kennedy lived up. Loved the fight. Good decision. Jacare was simply more effective. Most of the time i could not even tell if Kennedy's punches were landing or not while you can always tell when Jacare was landing. The takedowns didnt mean much to me as Jacare pretty much took over the first time Kennedy took him down and the last takedown was pretty much a last gasp at point grubbling by Kennedy. Jacare is awesome and improves everytime i see him out there. A fight that he was unabale to get to the mat and he won it with striking? wake me up when Maia accomplishes that against somebody other than another one dimensional BJJ player. I do think Jacare would carv up Shields...sylistically, a terrible matchup. However, i strongly doubt Shields turned down a fight with Jacare like SF commentators were told to announce. Shields is boring as dry shit but he's no ducker.

Noons is filthy..and i don't mean that in a bad way..that guy is just filthy. I love watching him fight. It seems everybody he fights just ends up looking like they got in a fist fight with Edward Scissorhands. I don't understand what the knee was about....i just don't see why he would intentionally throw one considering he was releuctant to even punch Gurgel...but i'm glad it turned out to be a no deal. If anything that knee got Gurgel back to his feet because Gurgel was not getting up from that combo. I don't know why that ref didnt stop the fight as soon as Gurgel hit the mat...it was over....actually, it was over when Noons ended that combo at the end of round 1.

As for Gus Johnson's crap about Floyd. That was embarrasingly bad. Noons deserves high praise for his boxing as it pertains to Mixed Martial Arts...because in that arena....Few can bang with Noons...but Noons would deserve a consolation trophey if he managed to last one minute with Floyd Mayweather.

Lashley looked horrible. He got hit hard a few times. Cut up. Griggs made him work until he gassed and Bobby just folded like somebody who didnt know MMA was like this. He looked like a rich mans Mahe out there. Credit to Griggs for landing some big shots that folded him but i can only imagine what del Rosario would have done to Lashley. Griggs vs. del Rosario makes sense i guess, though i think del Rosario would open up a can on the guy. Disappointed in Lashley...it appears he was expecting somebody totally different but Griggs is a fairly game fighter. Next test for Lashley is returning to the cage an improved fighter and maybe getting his revenge on Griggs...he should beat Griggs. I would be less suprised to not see Lashley in MMA again. I hope he's OK, i hear he went to the ER.

Back to Feijao/Lawal

Everybody says there is no consistancy/dominance at LHW in UFC because of the competition and i agree...and in SF everybody says..Babalu has no challengers. Mousasi has no challengers, Mo has no challengers and more than likely by tommorow Feijao has no challengers...but the next guy they put in front of them has shown to be very worthy by taking the belt just like the UFC. SF is finding strong LHW. Hopefully people will stop with the whole "nobody to fight this guy" and just let the fights play out. SF is simply going to be building new names at LHW because they don't have all the old stablished names at 205 from the PRIDE days or that established in the UFC in 2006-07 and on....so of course the next guy won't seem like a big deal until you see him put on a show like Feijao did tonight...the longer SF stays afloat, the stronger the division will become.

As for rankings...i'll probably bump Rich Franklin because lets face it...Liddell is about as big of a win as Jardine these days..maybe less MMAthmatically speaking. Have a lot of thinking to do with Mousasi, Thiago Silva and Forrest Griffin in the mix. Out of the three it will be much harder to leave Griffin out so we'll see with Gegard as Silva is already not in my top 10. I'll definetly be adding Feijao where i had Mo.

Overall, i enjoyed the card. Superior to Fedor/Werdum, Heavy Artillery and Nashville.

I too had a feeling about Feijao that was festering much the same way I did with Gomi-Griffin but I didn't have the balls to pick this one. I certainly didn't see him being so effective at avoiding takedowns but despite Mo's dominance against Mousasi I just couldn't get visions of him appearing fatigued early in the fight out of my mind. He seemed to be ripe for the taking at multiple points but Mousasi just fought a strange fight and had no resistance to takedowns. I thought Feijao had crisp enough striking with the pop to really crack Mo a couple rounds into this one and do some damage. I'm not sure if Mo was really worn down or not but his defensive style with his hands so low is still asking for trouble when he starts to slow down a little and he got popped. I give him a lot of credit for answering back with a huge right of his own before those knees did him in and led to the downfall. I'm not sure I've ever seen a guy just basically get knocked out in the position that fight ended in either. Huge hammerfists and elbows from Feijao. Great performance from the new champ and Mo will certainly be back. The future is looking bright for SF at LHW

The Jacare-Kennedy fight didn't really do it for me. I didn't expect Kennedy to want to fuck around on the ground with Jacare but he really had no urgency in his striking and appeared to be just banking on a gassed opponent that would hand him the fight at some point. He never really went after it and just kind of let that title chance slip away from him as the guy who let his hands go more and threw bigger shots was obviously going to take the close rounds. I think Jacare is the better fighter anyway and it will be interesting to see where that division goes from here with this tournament idea

Noons effectively finished Gurgel with a shot that landed after the bell and then did him in with an illegal knee at the end. The fight should've been stopped before that anyway but if you don't jump in to stop it and then Noons lands that...um, don't you have to do something about it? Either way, there was no use of BJJ as expected and Gurgel was eventually going to get the shit beat out of him by a better striker with 10x the power. Noons should be on his way to a title shot here pretty soon. Just tell him to shut the fuck up about getting a title shot in boxing

Lashley blows hard. The only thing I took from that fight was that he doesn't have the heart of a fighter and that ref who stands up a fight when somebody is fucking mounted should be castrated. Lashley-Batista is actually a logical next step if he decides he wants to keep fighting

As a sidenote, its getting really hard for me to listen to SF's announcers. I can't stand any of them. I'd take Pat over Frank anyday

Good post Bobitt. I agree with most of it...especially the announcers.

I think SF get a lot of undeserved flack about a lot of things... but the announcing crew is not one of them. I just can't defend them. If i was not a huge fan of MMA and familiar with every fighter on the main card, i would probably turn them off. The really sad thing about it is, out of all three of them...Gus Johnson is actually the least annoying to me these days.

Frank obviously reads everything he says. I'd imagine he knows close to dick about more than half the fighters he calls.

No kidding. I was trying to tune them out tonight but Gus actually sounded collected and picked his spots while the other 2 were blabbering on like a couple dipshits

Its going to be interesting to see what SF does with a few of these divisions coming up. Ariel's postfight interview with Coker made it seem like that MW tournament probably won't happen. I believe Coker said something like "the stars would all have to align". They have pretty solid depth to make some good fights regardless

The HW division despite having some great fighters is obviously a mess right now led by Fedor and Ubereem. I'm really interested to see the next fights for Del Rosario and Cormier. Two solid guys and Cormier seems like one of the coolest dudes around. I'm definitely a fan

I'm not sure what happens in the LHW division. It seems like Hendo-Babalu has been talked about for a while. Do they just hand Mousasi a title shot now or move in a different direction? I could see Hendo-Babalu, Mousasi-Feijao and Mo matching up with like Mike Kyle in his next fight

I'm pretty sure Cavalcante/Kyle is next. He beat Feijao and has won 7 straight at 205 against some respectable competition. He's definetly been on a better run than Feijao was before he got his title shot. If not, it would probably be Mousasi after Mousasi beats the crap out of that fella who beat Manhoef.

1)I thought Cavalcante had no shot. I knew he could bang, but I figured Mo would just wrestle him up. Didn't count on Feijao's takedown defense. All of a sudden he looks like a complete package fighter.

I think the win opens up the SF 205 division quite nicely. now there are any one of 4 very interesting fights for cavalcante, Babalu, Gegard, Hendo and Kyle. I'd give the next fight to Kyle, and let the other guys settle things up.

2)I don't care what the stats say, I had Jacare clean sweeping that fight. Kennedy was taking good hard shots all night, he landed a couple good body shots, but what else? He clearly underestimated Souza's striking, was getting picked apart, and allowing your opposition to pick u apart will not tire him out. Kennedy should have had a plan B in which he tries to bully Jacare against the cage. Prime example of a fight in which 2 top notch grapplers provide a straight stand up affair, and Jacare's standup was flat superior.

3)Watching live I thought Noon's has to be able to pull up on that shot after the bell. Bell clearly rang, and Noons style went full force. The knee, even if it missed, gives the fight a double black eye.

4)I hope I never have to see Lashley fight again.

As far as the announcers, the opening to the show was awful, gus was dumb, and Shamrock's monologue to open was so bad. I must have missed some of the more outlandish quotes(floyd? missed that one), but those guys are def prone to that.

unfortunate for SF in that Miletich is better then shamrock as a color man, but Shamrock is entrenched in the job.



Also, A LOT of empty seats in that arena. Pretty bad considering I thought the card was pretty stacked, and Kennedy, a war vet who hail's from Texas was on the card.

captain organic wrote:

1)I thought Cavalcante had no shot. I knew he could bang, but I figured Mo would just wrestle him up. Didn't count on Feijao's takedown defense. All of a sudden he looks like a complete package fighter.

I think the win opens up the SF 205 division quite nicely. now there are any one of 4 very interesting fights for cavalcante, Babalu, Gegard, Hendo and Kyle. I'd give the next fight to Kyle, and let the other guys settle things up.

2)I don't care what the stats say, I had Jacare clean sweeping that fight. Kennedy was taking good hard shots all night, he landed a couple good body shots, but what else? He clearly underestimated Souza's striking, was getting picked apart, and allowing your opposition to pick u apart will not tire him out. Kennedy should have had a plan B in which he tries to bully Jacare against the cage. Prime example of a fight in which 2 top notch grapplers provide a straight stand up affair, and Jacare's standup was flat superior.

3)Watching live I thought Noon's has to be able to pull up on that shot after the bell. Bell clearly rang, and Noons style went full force. The knee, even if it missed, gives the fight a double black eye.

4)I hope I never have to see Lashley fight again.

I completely agree with the Lashley sentiment. The Noons fight was a close call on that knockdown after the bell. It looked like he was already in motion when the bell rang. He may not have been bringing his arm around yet but he was definitely loading up and starting to come back up when the bell rang. That knee was harsh but it was also partly the Ref's fault. Had he stopped it when Gurgel got dropped the way he did like he should have the knee wouldn't have had a chance to have been thrown in the first place. Jacare took it 48-47 on My score sheet. Kennedy came up pretty big in rounds 2 and 4 and was outstriking Jacare in those rounds.

One thing though is Strikeforce needs to get they're time management under control. There was a half hour gap between the under under card and the Galvao fight, and another half hour gap between the Cormier fight and the Main Card start. I would hate to have bought a ticket and had to sit there doing nothing for an hour like that.

On the Koons/Gurgel fight. Yeah the ref carries some fault for not stepping in at the in of the first and the end of the fight but the fact remains the last shot the was landed was a blatantly illegal knee that ended the fight. Now Gurgel was going down either way but does that mean we just disregard the completely illegal knee he throws cause Gurgel was on his way down anyway?

And I'm not overlooking that late shot at the end of the first either. I tried rewinding that a few times looks to me like he didn't even load up untill he heard the bell at the same time Gurgel was putting his hands down cause he heard the bell. Koons should have been DQed right then Gurgel was out but they let the fight go on gave Koons a gemme KO for the second round and he couldn't even do that without throwing a knee when Gurgel was clearly grounded. Weak.

The rest of the card was great though

I can't defend the illegal knee, and I think the commission or even Strikeforce should fine him for it similarly to how the NFL fines players for shitty hits after the game. But I doubt that in his mind while avoiding that combination he was thinking "oh theres the bell, now!". When you're fighting you don't think about shit like that.

Jorge got knocked out completely twice. Haven't seen that since Franklin's corner scraped him off the mat and placed his gelatinous form on the stool in the second Anderson fight.

Quote :

I think SF get a lot of undeserved flack about a lot of things... but the announcing crew is not one of them. I just can't defend them. If i was not a huge fan of MMA and familiar with every fighter on the main card, i would probably turn them off. The really sad thing about it is, out of all three of them...Gus Johnson is actually the least annoying to me these days.

Took the words out of my mouth. I've defended the production of this promotion in the past but it actually seems to get worse with time. I despise Showtime sports production in general. Jimmy Lennon is awful. Frank is awful. If they ditched him, went with Pat, Mauro and Gus they'd have a great crew.

i picked Mo aswsell thought he would get top and gnp, but not sad to see him on queer street. Maybe he comes back a bit more humble.


Kennedy /jacare - I picked kennedy becaues I thought cardio would be an issue and after jacare/ joey V i thought kennedy would suffocate the gator in deep waters. Jacare showed me alot and paced himself nicely.

lashly- thought he was fighting another can but this can had some gas and gameness. Too bad you cant be 240 lbs of muscle and perform well. lashley wouldnt even through a punch as he went for TDs. ATT I am dissapointed in you

I agree to an extent about the knee but at the same time the ref seemed to be stopping the fight at that moment as well as the fact that(at least when I watched it, I haven't watched it over yet as I'm at work) it didn't look like it landed flush either. I'm not saying we should sing Noons' praises or anything but I don't think he had it in his head to throw illegal strikes or anything. That was truly a bizarre fight.

Again alot can be attributed to the referee's lack of attentiveness to things I think. When the fight is all stand up and the ten second mark is coming fast you should get in as close as you can to the fighters so that when the bell rings you can seperate them before something happens that isn't supposed to. It's not the fighter's responsibility to listen for the bell it's the Referee's. I know from experience playing highschool football that you don't always hear the whistle because your focussed on things. It is entirely possible not to hear the bell at all, but I'm not saying thats what happened because I don't know.

All I'm saying is the Ref could have prevented both of those abnormal happenings last night had he been paying more attention and acted with a little more purpose.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

Quote :

I think SF get a lot of undeserved flack about a lot of things... but the announcing crew is not one of them. I just can't defend them. If i was not a huge fan of MMA and familiar with every fighter on the main card, i would probably turn them off. The really sad thing about it is, out of all three of them...Gus Johnson is actually the least annoying to me these days.

Took the words out of my mouth. I've defended the production of this promotion in the past but it actually seems to get worse with time. I despise Showtime sports production in general. Jimmy Lennon is awful. Frank is awful. If they ditched him, went with Pat, Mauro and Gus they'd have a great crew.

Why not just pat and Gus? Why do they need a 3 man booth. Why are the stuffing the booth with not so great talent?


And I like Lennon personally. I have no gripe there at all.

I despise Lennon. Mauro and Pat then.

LudoCain wrote:

It's not the fighter's responsibility to listen for the bell it's the Referee's. I know from experience playing highschool football that you don't always hear the whistle because your focussed on things. It is entirely possible not to hear the bell at all, but I'm not saying thats what happened because I don't know.

All I'm saying is the Ref could have prevented both of those abnormal happenings last night had he been paying more attention and acted with a little more purpose.

Good point but in football you don't have two sets of corner people and a ref saying to you "10 seconds left" and shit fighters get plenty of notice that a round is about to end. I do agree that the ref is also at fault, I can see an arguement for the last second hook but there is no excuse for the illegal knee I still say Koons should've been DQed.

The ref couldn't have DQ'd him. He had already started to stop the fight.

I have no problem with the punch at the end of the first from Noons. For one, you have to imagine these guys don't hear the bell a lot of the time...usually they keep fighting until the ref steps in. If you watch the replay in slow motion it looks like Noons loaded up after the bell but that was the combo. He threw one, he ducks his head, and loads up the hook, bell rings...Gurgel hits the ground. Thats on the official to step in and he didnt....not that i think he had much time. Punch was clean IMO. Not a sucker punch by any means.

The knee, i just don't understand why he threw it and it put a cloud over what i thought was one of KJ's most devastating striking performances to date with possible exception of him murdering Yves Edwards...i would not be suprised to see it switched to a no contest.

KJ Noons layed out JG, that was a sick combo