MMAPredictions

This weekend MMA fans with HDNet will be able to watch Strikeforce: Melendez vs Thomson live from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, headlined by Josh Thomson against Cesar Gracie-lead Gilbert Melendez. The two were supposed to meet quite a while back but the fight had been delayed due to, among other things, an injury to Thomson’s shoulder.

Strikeforce has traditionally relied on local favorites Frank Shamrock and Cung Le to boost ticket sales among its fanbase in San Jose, and as neither of these MMA fighters appear on this card, this event is seen as an opportunity to develop fresh faces to its Northern California audience. Locals Gilbert Melendez, Bobby Southworth and Luke Stewart, all of whom fight this Friday, represent Strikeforce’s best bets at the moment in that regard.

Speaking of new talent, Raymond Daniels will be making his MMA debut on Friday. According to Strikeforce promotional materials, Daniels is “recognized as the number one Sport Karate fighter in the world, holds a 6th degree black belt in Kenpo and Shotokan Karate as well as a 5th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do”.

Daniels himself, a resident of Long Beach, California states:

“I’m going to give MMA fans something that they’ve never seen before. I want to become the greatest fighter of all time. Anybody that steps in front of me is just gonna be on my next highlight reel, an obstacle that’s standing in my path to greatness.”

The live HDNet telecast of the Strikeforce event will begin at 7:30 PM PST (10:30 PM EST). Preliminary fights begin at 6:30 PM.

UPDATE 10:22PM Pacific on Thursday evening: Drew Fickett has replaced Joe Riggs as Luke Stewart’s opponent. As always, you can keep up with updates to fight cards via our dedicated MMA Fight Card Updates thread in the forum!

- Caleb

Concerned about your prediction stats on MMAPredictions being off? Read this thread!

Despite the multiple last minute changes to the fight card Strikeforce: Cung Le vs. Shamrock took places without any major hitches. Almost three-fourths of our predictors picked Frank Shamrock to win the fight against Cung Le. Many are even describing their encounter, which resulted in a broken arm for Shamrock, as being a contender for best fight of 2008.

Here is a snapshot of how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions.com for the event overall, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 344 MMAPredictions users predicted on tonight’s card.
• Just one of those 344 predicted every fight correctly! That’s surprising considering that there were only 6 fights on the card. Congratulations to Supercrap!
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s six fights on MMAPredictions was 42.3% making this card just a little bit harder to predict than most fight cards here on the site, which tend to be in the low fifties.

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: Drew Fickett’s first round victory by guillotine over Jae Suk Lim. Ninety-nine percent of users here on MMAPredictions knew that Fickett would beat the SpiritMC fighter.

Most surprising fight outcome: Tiki Ghosn’s defeat of Luke Stewart. Eighty-three percent of our users did not expect Ghosn to win the fight against the Ralph Gracie-trained Northern California native.

Next up on MMAPredictions.com is UFC Ultimate Fight Night 13 which takes place on Wednesday! No crazy shakeups to the fight roster for the card have taken place yet.

- Caleb

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Strikeforce MMA fighters at the press conference yesterday. Photo courtesy TOM CASINO/EliteXC.

On Saturday evening Strikeforce: Cung Le vs. Shamrock will take place in the combat-sports haven of San Jose, California. The fight card has been changing on a regular basis and now appears to finally have settled.

The headlining bout between Frank Shamrock and Cung Le has been marked by the normal smack talk found in the lead-up to a Frank Shamrock fight. Shamrock has been spreading the message that he expects to end Le via striking, in contrast to conventional wisdom that Shamrock would try to end things with a submission. Le has remarked that he is unconcerned about Shamrock’s mind games and is ready to win regardless of where the fight takes place.

Mike Kyle’s been brought on to the card to fight former IFL fighter Wayne Cole. Kyle was suspended by the California State Athletic Commission after his fight in 2006 when he delivered an illegal kick to Brian Olsen, and continued delivering strikes which required Olsen to have plates and screws inserted into the bones in his face.

Gabe Lemley was brought on to fight Cesar Gracie fighter Gilbert Melendez. Lemley is widely seen to not be on the same level as Melendez, who’s only lost once in his long career among high-level competition.

Drew Fickett will now face Jae Suk Lim , after both of their original opponents (Cesar Gracie fighters Jake Shields and Nick Diaz, respectively) have withdrawn from the card.

This event will be on premium cable channel SHOWTIME at 9 PM Eastern and Pacific. Good luck with the predictions you make here on MMAPredictions.com! I will be in Carson, California at the Brazilian jiu-jitsu Pan-Ams and will jump online tomorrow evening to update MMAPredictions with the fight results!

- Caleb

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Today Strikeforce held a conference call to help get the word out about Strikeforce: Cung Le vs Frank Shamrock, which takes place in San Jose on March 29th and will be shown on SHOWTIME. Here are a few snippets:

• Frank Shamrock on Cung Le: “Like most people he’s afraid to go to the ground with me. I don’t think it’s going to be a long fight.”
• Cung Le on Frank Shamrock: “If Frank chooses to stand I think we’re going to have a great fight. If Frank believes he’s going to chase me down while I’m striking that’s great I will be happy to greet him with strikes.”
• Frank Shamrock on his brother Ken Shamrock’s fight against Buzz Berry at Cage Rage 25: “I was pretty disappointed. I don’t know if he’s still got the heart of a lion in him… I hope he’s got plenty left in him because I’d like to take it out of him.”
• Gary Shaw on arranging the fight between Randy Couture and Fedor Emelianenko upon their availability: “I would sign it in less than a heartbeat.”
• Jake Shields on his promotion to black belt under Cesar Gracie: “It was mostly symbolic. I’ve been competing at that level for a while. It’s still significant though as it’s not often that Cesar Gracie gives a black belt.”
• Gary Shaw on Frank Shamrock, responding to the claim that Anderson Silva is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world: “The best fighter in the world, hands down, bar none, is Frank Shamrock.”

Gary Shaw also said that a CBS press release will go out tomorrow listing the date, the announcing team, and some fight matchups of the previously reported network television deal EliteXC has reached with CBS. Someone asked when we might see Gina Carano in action again and though Shaw did his best to not reveal any details about tomorrow’s press release, he did hint that she may appear in tomorrow’s press release.

- Caleb

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San Francisco Bay area fighter Jake Shields was promoted to black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu today at the Fairtex facility in San Francisco. Shields’ long time coach Cesar Gracie awarded the highly-coveted degree in an internal training session for the professional fighters.

Also present at the occasion were Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz. Nick received his black belt from Gracie last year and Nate is currently a brown belt.

Shields has been training with Cesar Gracie since 2001, and will fight Drew Fickett next for the Strikeforce welterweight title at Strikeforce: Cung Le vs. Frank Shamrock on March 29th at the HP Pavilion.

- Caleb

Win a copy of Chuck Liddell’s new book by predicting UFC 82! Details here!

Last weekend we saw Tank Abbott, a UFC veteran from a bygone era return to action and lose against Kimbo Slice. This evening we saw two more MMA classics in Bob Sapp and Maurice Smith in Tacoma, Washington at Strikeforce at the Dome. The event turned out to be full of surprises.

Predictors here on MMAPredictions.com were very polarized towards a single competitor in each of the five fights available for predicting, but their picks were largely incorrect tonight.

Here is how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions for tonight’s event, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 272 MMAPredictions users predicted on tonight’s card.
• Not one user guessed all five fights correctly. Two users came close, getting 4 of the 5 fights correct. Good job SwedishGuy and BadAzz79!
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s five fights on MMAPredictions was 30.9%, which is way less predictable than our site’s overall accuracy of 52.8%.

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: We have a tie! In both Maurice Smith’s victory over Rick Roufus and ATT’s Jorge Masvidal’s win over Ryan Healy, 84% of our users knew who the winner would be.

Most surprising fight outcome: Bob Sapp’s loss to Jan Nortje came as a surprise to 97% of our users. Even after this fight, Nortje can only claim an underwhelming 2-5 record so it is no shock that most users thought Sapp would win.

Next up on MMAPredictions is UFC 82 which will feature Dan Henderson against Anderson Silva, and IFL - Las Vegas!

- Caleb

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Brazilian light heavyweight Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos‘ contract has been “terminated” according to an email sent out yesterday by Canada’s Hardcore Championship Fighting. HCF president Dave Houshiar relates:

“It is with a heavy heart we terminate Cyborg’s contract as he is one of my favorite fighters however we cannot allow fighters to dictate the terms of contracts to us as this can impact the integrity of our events.”

The HCF’s action to end their relationship with the Santos was the result of Santos’ work in other mixed martial arts promotions too close in time to a fight with David Loiseau on March 29th. Santos is scheduled to fight Japanese MMA fighter Makoto Takimoto at the upcoming World Victory Road event in Japan on March 5th, Sengoku.

According to 5 Ounces of Pain, Cyborg has signed a three fight deal with California-based Strikeforce. Cyborg has been fighting since 1997 and compiled a record of 15 wins and 11 losses. At this point in his career he certainly could benefit from the exposure he would receive from being aligned with Strikeforce.

- Caleb

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This evening Strikeforce will present Strikeforce at the Dome. The event features Bob Sapp, Jorge Masvidal, Joe Riggs, and others and will be televised on HDNet Fights.

The live HDNet broadcast of Bodog Fight Presents: “Strikeforce At The Dome” will begin at 10:30 PM ET (7:30 PM PT).

Get your predictions in on this event! Click on the photo above to be taken to the predictions page!

- Caleb

Don’t miss any MMAPredictions news! Receive postings by email!

Armando Garcia, Executive Officer of the CSAC, during the hearing.

Brazilian fighter and jiu-jitsu black belt Alexander Crispim tested positive for a so-called “designer” steroid desoxymethyltestosterone when he last fought on the undercard of the Strikeforce: Four Men Enter, One Man Survives event in November 2007. Designer steroids are those which are explicitly designed with the intent of avoiding detection by conventional lab tests.

Yesterday the California State Athletic Commission held hearings which included appeals related to performance enhancing drugs and Crispim and a representative asserted that while he may have tested positive, he believes that a legal nutritional supplement he was taking was responsible for the positive test result, an argument similar to that provided by former UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk in his own appeal to the commission in 2007.

Not arguing that the steroid was absent from his system, Crispim’s goal in the appeal was to obtain a reduction in the sentence originally handed down by the CSAC of $2,500 and a one year suspension from fighting. He and his representative argued that given that Crispim’s $1,000 per month income from teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a fine of $2,500 and prohibition from mixed martial arts fighting would be economically crippling. They requested that his sentence be reduced to $500 and a six month prohibition.

Crispim attempted to support his argument that the supplement he took was found to be contaminated with desoxymethyltestosterone by providing printouts from internet websites and forums which support his claim. He and his representative also stated that in the October 2007 issue of ESPN Magazine there was a similar statement that desoxymethyltestosterone was found in the supplement Crispim took. However despite contacting ESPN Magazine, searching eBay, and visiting seven public libraries in an attempt to obtain a copy of the ESPN article, they were unsuccessful and the only thing they could present to support their claim was the printouts from the internet.

The CSAC ultimately decided that there would be no reduction in Crispim’s sentence in the absence of convincing material evidence, stating that if one looks hard enough one can find just about anything on the internet to support a certain theory. Crispim, who earned $6,500 for his defeat of Clint Colonel, will be unable to fight until November 17, 2008.

- Caleb

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Sherdog reported today that Josh Thomson has aggravated a pre-existing shoulder injury and will not be fighting Gilbert Melendez at the Strikeforce at the Dome event on February 23rd.

Their showdown was anticipated as being a barnburner as Thomson is on a six-fight winning streak, and the previously unstoppable Melendez was just handed the first victory of his career by Mitsuhiro Ishida at the M-1 Yarennoka card on December 31st in Japan.

Strikeforce’s February event, which is sponsored by Bodog Fight, now contains three fighter names: Bob Sapp against an unnamed opponent, and Maurice Smith versus Rick “The Jet” Roufus.

UPDATE 11:14 AM PST Jan 16: Strikeforce representatives have confirmed that the Thomson vs. Melendez fight will not take place, but say that Melendez will still fight. A replacement will be named shortly.

- Caleb

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