Strikeforce Afterthoughts

Strikeforce kicked off it's heavyweight grand prix yesterday, and the result was five entertaining fights with five finishes. The big news coming out of the event is Antonio Silva's upset TKO win over Fedor. After a competive first round, Silva started to dominate Fedor, getting to mount and raining down punches, while throwing in a few submission attempts. By the end of the round, Fedor's face was FUCKED UP, and the ref called an end to the fight. A year ago, if you said that fedor had lost two straight fights, especially with one of those fights being Antonio Silva, pretty much anyone would have asked you what drugs you were on and if they could in on that shit. Yet, here we are. Silva will now face the winner of Alistair Overeem and Fabricio Werdum if everything goes to plan, which given what happened and Strikeforce's history isn't likely to happen.


The other grand prix fight featured Sergei Kharitonov and Andrei Arlovski, a fight that would have been a whole lot more interesting five years ago. Arlovski's glass chin was his downfall yet again, as he was winning the fight up until Kharitonov landed some power on his chin. Kharitonov will now move onto to face the winner of Brett Rogers and Josh Barnett, who he will probably lose to.

The three replacement bouts all ended in first round stoppages, and were more entertaining than the actual grand prix fights. Valentijn Overeem easily submitted Ray Sefo with a neck crank (Sefo apparantly has never heard of jujitsu before) after getting tagged in the standup. Shane Del Rosario took some hard shots from Lavar Johnson, but came back to get mount and then win by armbar. The best fight of the night though was the brawl between Chad Griggs and Gian Villante. Both of these guys threw bombs out there, and eventually Griggs was able to knock Villante down and out. All three of the winners looked impressive, and definitly offer some great potential fights in the future, either in the tournament or not.

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