MMAPredictions

KEN HERSHMAN:
We’ve had MMA on the network since 2007. That (EliteXC) programming was actually very successful despite ProElite’s financial struggles. One thing that we’re very proud of is that we always put on compelling contests that are very well received by our subscribers.

We’ve been in boxing the last 20-plus years. We expected MMA to start off slowly until people caught up, and I’d have to say that that’s not the case. It’s right up there with some of our highest rated sports programming.

We’re thrilled to be getting back into this space and equally excited to get back into it with Strikeforce and Scott Coker. There’s no one better and classier in this business. We’re really looking forward to launching this platform together. We now have a great compliment on the network again to our NFL programming and our boxing programming. And I can’t wait until April 11.

FRANK SHAMROCK:
I want to thank SHOWTIME for once again not only taking the risk with MMA but also embracing it wholeheartedly. My experience with Scott Coker is a very long one and a very successful one.

Scott was that guy that got me out, got me back in the cage and got me going again. I put my trust in him and put my faith in him to promote me well and to present us with honor and respect that I think the athletes deserve. In that way I think Scott is a tremendous friend and promoter.

SHOWTIME, man, you guys are good guys. You’re commitment to MMA is honorable. I, as an artist, really, truly appreciate that. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been a professional mixed martial artist and I can’t imagine having another job or wanting one.

(For) April 11, they called me and I took my suit off and put my training clothes on. One thing Strikeforce is really good at and SHOWTIME is really good at is making and booking exciting fights. My opponent for April 11 is an exciting fighter. He’s a guy who throws, talks trash and on April 11, I’m going to knock him out. And his name is Nick Diaz.

Many of you guys know him. He’s sort of the other bad boy that I haven’t beat down yet. But come April 11 we’ll take care of that.

QUESTIONS:
Do you plan to continue to cross promote?

SCOTT COKER:
We haven’t had the sit down with Ken and the guys at SHOWTIME, but my thought is that the co-promotion fights that we did together with EliteXC and Gary Shaw were probably two of the best fights we’ve ever done. When organizations get together and have compelling matchups that make sense and are relevant that work out in the end for both fighters and all parties, I feel why wouldn’t we? I think if it’s good for business that I will support it. But it’s something we still have to iron out.

On fighting Ken Shamrock.
FRANK SHAMROCK:
I do plan to fight more often. I had a program which was kind of fighting twice a year, but think I need to tie them a little closer so I don’t get out of shape.

In reference to fighting Ken, it’s a fight I’d always want to do. I think it’s a very compelling story. Ken’s going through some personal and emotional problems right now and we’re letting him do that. But this fight is something that is very personal for me. I think it’s very important that we tell the story of the sport and the Shamrock family and what type of influence the family has had on the sport. I think it’s important that I kick his butt, but right now we’re putting it on the back burner.

What went into Shamrock-Diaz?
KEN HERSHMAN:
Everything I’ve seen from Frank is there is never a dull moment. With Nick, you know what you’re getting from him. He’s just going to come at you and not stop.

When I program boxing I’m much more involved in the matchmaking. I look for styles that will make compelling contests and will make compelling fights. When we talked to Scott about this matchup this was one of those that was like three seconds. Do it. These guys are going to go at it. It’s going to be fun. Who knows who wins? Frank has to lose some weight and that’s a challenge for him and Nick has to fight a guy that is a legend. So come April 11 all I can say is I won’t miss it.

Has there been Kimbo Slice contact?
HERSHMAN:
Well there is a lot of reasons why (there hasn’t been contact with Kimbo Slice yet). We had to work through the whole EliteXC thing and unwind that transaction. It was a big bit complicated and a bit cumbersome. My hat goes off to Scott and his team for hanging in there. It was a long road, but we got there. And now we just closed this deal a few days back. We’ve already put together an event. Scott’s already matched up the main event and a couple of other cards. Now we’re going to go to the next step, which is to secure those fighters that we want and Kimbo is one that we think we have a future with. We’re going to make every effort to get him done. But there are only so many hours in a day. He’s an important part of where we’re going and we’re going to see if we can line that up with him in the coming weeks.

SCOTT COKER:
We have been in touch with I think half of the fighter roster. Yesterday, I did talk to Kimbo Slice’s lawyer, just to say hello and let him know we will be in touch shortly and that we are very excited to have Kimbo fighting with Strikeforce and getting him back into the cage as soon as possible. My goal is to get these guys back working and back fighting as soon as possible.

We will have reached out to everybody by the end of day tomorrow. And then we’ll start putting the matches together and move forward.

KEN HERSHMAN:
I think that we are going to have at least five major events this year and hopefully at least five of our up-and-comer series which was so successful before. As Scott said, we are going to sit down and go through the calendar and try and space these things out. But you know SHOWTIME hasn’t had MMA on the air with live, new events since September of last year, so we’re chomping at the bit. We can’t wait to get going and we’re looking forward to this April show to kick it off. You’re going to see a number of events in pretty rapid succession thereafter.

CHRIS DEBLASIO:
Just to clarify, there will be the championship level events and the up-and-comer series which is similar to our boxing series ShoBox, which showcases young fighters who are up and coming and trying to make their way to the big time championship fights.

Plans for women’s MMA:
SCOTT COKER:
Being from a martial arts background, we’ve always looked forward to women’s fights. At the end of the day, this is a martial arts contest. I’ve always supported women’s martial arts competitions. MMA is just taking it to the next level. We’ve had some compelling matchups. When you look back at the history of the women’s fights in Strikeforce there are a couple fights that are right up there with the big boys as far as exciting matchups. They can bring it. There’s no difference. A kick is a kick. A punch is a punch. An arm-bar is an arm-bar. If a girl is 125 pounds doing it, it’s still effective.

We’re going to continue supporting women’s MMA and we’re going to be inviting Gina Carano to come fight on April 11. And we’ve already got confirmation from Cris Cyborg that she is available if we can put that match together. And if not maybe we’ll put Cris Santos-Cyborg on the April 11 card. But those matchups are still to be determined and nothing is confirmed on that end. But we will be supporting women’s MMA in Strikeforce.

What’s the status of Cung Le?
SCOTT COKER:
Cung has been doing his movie star career. He’s had some success with it, he’s doing very well and we’re all happy for him. I talked to him about a week ago and he is itching to get back in the cage. He does have an injury on his elbow right now which is stopping him from fighting in this show. Otherwise, he would be fighting on this show because his schedule is open. He’s just injured. You will see Cung Le back in the cage on Strikeforce at least two times before the end of the year. I haven’t say down and talked to Frank about it, but the fight between Cung and Frank number two is a fight that actually should happen before the end of 2009. We are planning on having Gilbert Melendez fight (on April 11).

What is solidified for April 11?
SCOTT COKER:
Frank and Nick are going to be the main event. The other fight that we have matched is Benji Radich, who is an amazing fighter and great striker. He will be fighting Scott Smith, who in the last Strikeforce event knocked out Terry Martin in the first round. Those two guys will probably go right to the center of the cage and start throwing as hard as they can because that’s how they work.

The fighter that we are looking to match is Gilbert Melendez.

What’s the status of Josh Thompson?
SCOTT COKER:
I haven’t sat down with Josh yet, but we would like Josh to fight and the opponent we are going to invite to fight Josh, who is not confirmed, is KJ Noons.

Question on EliteXC Titles:
We should give them the ability to come fight and unify the titles at some point in ’09. We’re offering it to KJ because KJ was the EliteXC champion and Josh Thompson is our champion. That would be an amazing fight and that’s why we’re trying to put that together so we can unify the belt. But to get through all the weight classes that we have and they have, I think it is going to take the remainder of the year.

Announcers and start times:
KEN HERSHMAN:
I think we are going to stick with it the same way we did with EliteXC, which is mostly a 10 p.m. start time, east coast. The announce team we are putting in place as we speak. We haven’t figured out a way to have Frank Shamrock fight and announce at the same time, but I’m sure he’ll figure that out. I think we would like very much to bring Gus Johnson back, who did the CBS shows and is now our main commentator for boxing, and then we’ll round out the crew from there.

Title ramification for catchweight fight between Shamrock and Diaz:
SCOTT COKER:
This fight works because Nick Diaz fights traditionally between as low as 150 and up to 180. He goes back and forth depending on the matchup. He was fighting at a lower rate and I talked to Cesar Gracie (Nick’s trainer) and he said ‘we can’t make that weight anymore so we want to fight at 170.’ That’s were he would like to go back and fight and make his match. As you know, Frank is in the 185-pound weight class.

Putting those two fights together, it just made a lot of sense to me because of the history behind Cesar, the Gracie’s and the Shamrocks. I thought it was a compelling story. And it would be a fantastic matchup because of the styles. That’s why we put that fight together.

We’ve had a few fights at a catchweight, not that many. But once in a while to put one on that’s very special together like we are able to do for the launch with SHOWTIME and do it here, at our home, with Frank and Nick it just made a lot of sense and we’re very excited to do it.

In terms of exclusive fights:
SCOTT COKER:
If we had a fighter under contract but we couldn’t keep them busy then we would let him fight here or there. But based on the schedule, I think we are going to be very busy and we’re going to need the athletes to come participate because we are going to have so many fights. For right now we’re going to need athletes to fill these slots.

Alistair Overeem (Strikeforce heavyweight champion) will be fighting for Strikeforce. The question is when? I’m hoping to get him back before the end of the year. He’s just had a very busy schedule in Japan and fighting in Europe. One of my top priorities is trying to work out his next fight with us.

Kimbo against Bob Sapp?
SCOTT COKER:
That fight was just a conceptual fight. How great would it be if Kimbo and Bob could ever work out the weight and have that fight? I think it would be an entertaining fight to say the least. But by no means was that something that was contracted or talked about with both sides. It was just a “what if.”

Does Shamrock have the need or desire to avenge the loss to Cung Le?
FRANK SHAMROCK:
A need or desire, no. They’d probably pay well very well and it would probably be the fight of the year again. Other than that, fighting is fighting to me. It’s a transaction between two artists and somebody wins.

Shamrock’s comments on Nick Diaz:
FRANK SHAMROCK:
I do know Nick personally. It’s rare that I do know fighters on a social level. Nick Diaz is very similar to me. He grew up in a broken home and had abusive parents and really had a tough childhood. He and I have that in common and we’ve spoken about it a few times. He’s also gone on his MMA quest and traveled around to all the gyms. He ended up with my father for a minute training with him. So we have common ties that tie us together. I know for a fact hat he wasn’t too happy when I knocked out his coach Cesar and he said some words afterward that got him into this fight. But we’re going to fight and I don’t care about Nick. He’s a nice guy and I’m going to knock him out. Then I’ll move onto the next one.

Question about ProElite:
KEN HERSHMAN:
The reality of the situation is that ProElite ran into funding problems as many, many companies much bigger and far flung are in this world today. We had to figure out a way to unwind the relationship in a way that worked for everybody and that allowed MMA to have a life and to continue on SHOWTIME. That was very important to me and it was very important to SHOWTIME that we continue to showcase this programming for our subscribers.

Absolutely we had a say in that (the ProElite deal with Strikeforce). We were a stockholder number one and we had a programming agreement. We had to be very comfortable with the partner we were going to continue with. We absolutely had input there and we’re very happy with the way it worked out.

Why Strikeforce?
KEN HERSHAMN:
There were a lot of factors that went into it. First and foremost, we wanted stability that I think Strikeforce has demonstrated in their long tenure of operating successfully. We like their roster of fighters and we like the combination of rosters between the EliteXC fighters that we’re picking up and their current fighters. It presented a lot of compelling content in a very short time frame for us, so we didn’t have a building process.

What did you learn from failures of EliteXC?
KEN HERSHMAN:
They learned a lot as we did throughout this process about expansion too quick, too much, too fast. Things like that we’ll apply here. We just want to have a steady partner. We want to put on great shows. The benefit of our model and Strikeforce’s model is we’re not dependent on pay-per-view. So we don’t have to go out there month in and month out and charge our fans $40 or $50 to see our content. You get SHOWTIME, you can watch them every month, month in and month out. We think we have a really good model that will allow us to grow in the future and we’re looking forward to it.

Exclusive deal with Strikeforce?
KEN HERSHMAN:
We weren’t exclusive to EliteXC either and we’re not exclusive with Strikeforce. But I will tell you that when we’re in with a partner, we’re in with a partner. We feel like we’re going to be doing a lot with Scott. I’m not sure we have the capacity or the desire to do anything with anyone else. If somebody came along with something compelling we would examine it and also talk with Scott about how he felt about it because that’s the type of partnership we’re going to have.

What synergy is there between boxing and MMA?
KEN HERSHMAN:
I think that when we looked at our sports platform and the ways to expand it we looked at boxing and that is, in essence, one of the original extreme sports. Adding mixed martial arts, to me, is a very natural extension of that. Obviously that sport has evolved and developed in a very quick fashion and has caught the attention of a young demographic, which we will see. And we have the NFL, which, on a lot of levels, is as extreme and challenging of a sport as a combat sport. We love the triumvirate of those three together. We think that they all cross-pollinate each other and we expect that fans of one will become fans of each of the other.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN JOSE, Calif. —Strikeforce World Light Heavyweight (205 lb. limit) Champion Bobby Southworth (9-5) will face the greatest challenge of his nine-year mixed martial arts (MMA) career when he puts his belt on the line against superstar Renato “Babalu” Sobral (30-7) at the world-famous Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, Calif. on Saturday, September 20th.

“He is the protector and I am the hunter,” said the 32-year-old Sobral, a former UFC world championship challenger and Brazilian national wrestling champion. “I am already in shape and prepared to take it from him. I want to be the new Strikeforce world champion and , if I could become champion while fighting at a venue like the Playboy Mansion, that would make a good win even better.”

A student of Ruas Vale Tudo, the hybrid combat system created by MMA legend Marco Ruas, Sobral is coming off a convincing, unanimous judges’ decision triumph over Mike Whitehead on July 19th. The bout marked Sobral’s third straight win, a streak that he kicked off with his second round submission of David Heath at UFC 74 on August 25, 2007.

“It was a good performance for me and helped prepare me for this championship fight ahead,” said Sobral.

Prior to being stopped by then-UFC champion Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell in the main event of UFC 62 on August 26, 2006, Sobral had reeled off 10 consecutive victories, including decisions over fellow superstars Trevor Prangley and Jeremy Horn and submissions of Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Chael Sonnen.

The 38-year-old Southworth retained his title during Strikeforce’s “Melendez vs. Thomson” world championship card at San Jose’s HP Pavilion on Friday, June 27th, by fighting off a determined Anthony “A-Train” Ruiz for five, five-minute rounds before being awarded a unanimous judges’ decision.

The win provided Southworth with a sense of bittersweet revenge after he had initially faced off with Ruiz in a non-title bout on November 16, 2007 and sustained a cut around his eye that required the referee to stop the fight at the 52 second mark of the second round.

One of the original members of San Jose’s fearsome fight squad, Team AKA, Southworth introduced himself to the masses as a contestant on Spike TV’s inaugural season of “The Ultimate Fighter.”

“Strikeforce At The Mansion II” will also be highlighted by a showdown between 2006 Pride Fighting Championship Grand Prix winner and world top 10 ranked, Kazuo “Grabaka Hitman” Misaki (20-8-2), and 25-year-old former UFC star, Joe “Diesel “Riggs (28-10). Newly crowned Strikeforce World Lightweight (155 lb. limit) Champion Josh “The Punk” Thomson will also return to action against an opponent that has to be named. The event lineup will be comprised of 10 bouts.

In addition to a full night of MMA action, all “Strikeforce At The Mansion II” guests will be entitled to a top-shelf, open bar; buffet-style, gourmet dinner; and wine-tasting party featuring the spirits of various California gold medal wineries.

Strikeforce wrote a new chapter in sports history when it produced the first-ever MMA event at the Playboy Mansion last September. Amongst the host of celebrities who attended the affair were Hefner and “The Girls Next Door;” comedians Gary Shandling and Joe Rogan; actress and model Jaime Pressly; actors Michael Duncan Clarke, Christina Fulton, Ethan Suplee, Ernie Hudson, and Page Kennedy; MMA legends Royce Gracie and Bas Rutten; and superstars Cung Le, Frank Shamrock, Josh Barnett, and Andrei Arlovski.

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!