Saturday, January 30, 2010

By Isaac Kuhlman

  In the latest mixing of the world of MMA and the NFL, Herschel Walker made his Strikeforce debut on Saturday in Miami against a breathing weight bag in Greg Nagy (pronounced "nudge"). The promotion saw other great fights including a middleweight brawl between Robbie Lawler and Melvin Manhoef, Bobby Lashley beat up on former TUF contestant Wes Sims, Christian "Cyborg" Santos win again, and the main event featured the "Stockton Bad Boy" Nick Diaz versus the international phenom Marius Zaromskis.

  The main event between Diaz and Zaromskis was a knockdown, dragout war where Diaz came out stuffing Zaromskis into the cage and pounding him with knees to the thigh. Then Zaromskis rocked Diaz in the standup but was unable to finish Diaz on the ground. Upon standing back up, Diaz landed power punch after power punch until Zaromskis dropped to the ground to end the fight. Diaz won the fight by TKO (Strikes) at 4:38 of round 1 to win the welterweight title and improves his world ranking in the welterweight division.

  In the most obvious fight of the night, "Cyborg" Santos defeated her opponent Marlos Coenen by TKO (Strikes) at 3:40 of round 3. Now, I say this fight was obvious because nobody expected Coenen to win, but the fact that she lasted 3 rounds was actually a little impressive knowing how crazy agressive Santos is. The end of the fight remained the same however, and Santos looks to find ANYONE to fight her. She may even have to move to the men's side of the fight game.

  The best knockout of the night (and possibly in the last year or more), Robbie Lawler defeated Melvin Manhoef after having only landed 3 strikes in the fight. Manhoef was lacing into Lawler for about 3 minutes with his world-class kickboxing skills, and, after nearly crippling Lawler's right leg, Lawler threw out an overhand right that knocked out Manhoef immediately. The punch looked to be a "shot in the dark," but Lawler landed it on the button to end the fight.

  Herschel did dismantle his opponent Nagy in almost every aspect of the word before the referee just decided to step in and get Nagy out of there.The fight lasted about 2 rounds more than it needed to, but, in the end, Walker stepped away with a TKO victory at 2:17 of round 3.

  It was much of the same action for Bobby Lashley in his fight against Wes Sims. The only difference between the Lashley/Sims fight and the Walker/Nagy fight was that the referee stopped the domination early. Though, the stoppage was probably a few moments premature, Sims was going to get beat up further for the rest of the fight until the ref stopped it, so it wasn't necessarily a bad stoppage. Sims proved to be as bad of an opponent as the other two fighters that were originally scheduled to fight Lashley until the Florida State Boxing Comission pulled Yohan Banks due to non-competitiveness (meaning he was too terrible to fight Lashley) and his next opponent, Jimmy Ambriz, was just not going to be ready to fight on Saturday. So, Sims stepped in at the last possible minute and got beat up.

  Lastly, I want to mention that Las Vegas resident and former IFL star, Jay Hieron, took on and beat Joe Riggs in a 3-round battle that never made the main card. However, it is possible that he may get a shot at Diaz soon for the title. If not, it's pretty likely he'll start getting his due on the main cards as he is one of Strikeforce's best fighters.