Although we saw one of the most brutal finishes this year come from the elbows of Nate Marquardt to Tyron Woodley last Saturday night at Strikeforce:
Rockhold vs. Kennedy, how relevant is Strikeforce to the MMA world right now. The televised portion of the night opened with Davenport native, “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler facing Lorenz Larkin. This was Larkin’s first cut down to middleweight and after weathering an early storm from Lawler, Larkin pushed the pace to a unanimous decision win. Someone should tell “The Dean of Mean” Keith Jardine that it may be time to call it quits as Roger Gracie took Jardine down at will for the first two rounds of their fight. Jardine had no answer for Gracie’s high caliber ground game as Roger went on to win unanimously over Jardine. The co-main event could have easily been the main event of the night as fast rising star, Tyron Woodley stepped up to take on Nate Marquardt. This was the first fight for Marquardt since being dropped by the UFC earlier this year for testing high in his levels of testosterone. This was also his first time cutting down to 170lbs. The fight went back and forth in rounds one through three but it was in the fourth round that Marquardt pushed Woodley up against the cage, landing a huge elbow, stunning Woodley and after another elbow and an uppercut, Woodley dropped as the ref jumped in to stop the fight. In the night’s main event, Tim Kennedy finally got his middleweight title shot against recently crowned, Luke Rockhold. It was a lackluster fight at best as neither fighter looked to go in for the kill. Rockhold did attempt a few spinning backhands and kicks but had no power behind them. Kennedy pushed the pace in the later rounds, even getting the back of Rockhold a few times but could not finish. Rockhold would go on to get the unanimous decision win over Kennedy and retained his belt, but most watching had to wonder what would be next for Rockhold. As the UFC seem to be cherry picking the fighters that do well in Strikeforce, the winners from Saturday night, Larkin, Gracie, Marquardt and Rockhold better hope that Dana takes another look at them because there are just not that many more high profile fights left for them in the Strikeforce organization.
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