Strikeforce: Henderson vs Babalu takes place tonight at the Scottrade Center in St.Louis, MO. The card is headlined by former Pride Champion Dan Henderson as he takes Babalu Sobral, with the co-main event has the welterweight debut of Scott Smith as he takes on the returning Paul Daley as it is Daley's return to the big stage after his incident with Josh Koscheck at UFC 114, Robbie Lawler takes on veteran Matt Lindland in a middleweight bout, Antonio Silva takes on Mike Kyle in a heavyweight showdown and Benji Radach takes on Ovince St.Preux in a light heavyweight bout.
Tonight's card has title implications in two bouts as Scott Smith takes on Paul Daley in the co-main event. It seems like daley overlooking Smith and look towards a possible fight with either Tyron Woodley or KJ Noons and there is no guarantee that Noons' will even come back up to 170 for his next bout. And then after that fight, he wants a shot at Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz. You can never overlook an opponent and this is Daley's big chance to erase what happened earlier this in the incident with Josh Koscheck.
Scott Smith is making his welterweight debut after a successful stint at 185 including two great bouts with Cung Le including his KO win last December at the card headlined by Gilbert Melendez-Josh Thomson II and then the loss the past June at Fedor-Werdum. The reason for Smith moving down was he told me that, " a couple weeks after the Le, I only weighed 189, so it made sense to move down to 170 as I will be quicker and be more powerful than I have ever been."
My prediction is: Scott Smith TKO Round 3
In the main event of the evening, MMA Legend Dan Henderson takes on Babalu Sobral. Henderson looks to rebound from his loss to Jake Shields in his Strikeforce debut in April at the infamous brawl afterwords in Nashville. Henderson looked fatigued after a very dominating first round as he had Shields on the ropes and couldnt' finish as Shields dominated the last four rounds to an easy unanimous decision victory. Henderson disclosed in the last weeks couple weeks that he wasn't 100 percent heading into the Shields bout with a hard weight cut and a back injury and took some bad medication that made his weight cut a little more difficult than usual. henderson says his back is 100 percent and feels more comfortable fighting at 205 at this stage of his career.
Babalu Sobral is a former Strikeforce Light heavyweight Champion and is coming off a victory over Robbie Lawler at the Strikeforce: Los Angeles in a catchweight bout at 195. He was scheduled to face former Strikeforce Light Heavyweight King Mo Lawal and refused to fight him as they are training partners and Lawal went to face Feijao and lost the title to him in August at Strikeforce:Houston.
Babalu stated that he wanted to fight Henderson again as his first loss was to Henderson at the RINGS tournament in 1999.
Both fighters have stated that they didn't learn anything from the first bout as they both evolved into true mixed martial artists. It will be war and the winner of the main event is guaranteed the next shot at the Light Heavyweight Championship.
My Prediction: Henderson via decision
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment