Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley
This was a huge MMA show for Strikeforce, their first Zuffa owned event and two titles are on the line in two huge fights. The main event and co main event aside this card has two former champions fighting decent competition. DREAM champion Shinya Aoki takes on the always tough Lyle Beerbohm and former DREAM middleweight champion and Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi takes on former top UFC contender Keith Jardine. That’s 4 interesting fights right there making this one of strikeforces most stacked cards this year.

Shinya Aoki vs. Lyle Beerbohm
The first fight of the night and it’s a very interesting one, for me at least. I’ve been following Beerbohms career for quite a while now, he first grabbed my attention when I saw him listed at a ShoXC event his highly amusing name and an even funnier nickname, along with a perfect 10-0 record at the time made me a fan. Shinya Aoki on the other hand is my favourite MMA fighter and he has been for some time. Being a fan of the ground game and a BJJ student I always find it fascinating how he manages to submit or neutralise his opponents’ offense with his grappling alone. I’ve been following his career since his DEEP and Shooto days, he would always entertain me with his slick subs and beautiful grappling, his Gogo-Plata win over Joachim Hansen was when I knew he’d be something big one day and tieing Gesais Cavalcante in knots confirmed my feelings.
When the fight was first announced I was intrigued, though I had no doubt Aoki could sub 99% of MMA fighters on the planet I knew Beerbohm was no pushover. For those who don’t know Beerbohm comes from a shady background, he was a meth addict and spent some time in jail where he first discovered MMA. Beerbohm has always showed good heart in each of his fights and good submissions but we see him put in a lot of bad positions. Just take his fights with Shaolin and Pat Healy for example, both excellent grapplers who managed to catch Lyle in a couple of close submissions but he managed to escape, you cannot deny Beerbohms heart. However with a style like Beerbohms an opponent like Aoki could easily be a nightmare match up. In the past Aoki has shown little to no hesitation in breaking limbs if his opponent doesn’t tap and does he show sympathy? Not even a little.
The fight itself is short and sweet. After being put against the fence Aoki gets Beerbohm down with a beautiful leg sweep, not quite sure of the Judo term for that though. The takedown itself surprised me considering how good a wrestler Beerbohm is. It’s not long after the takedown that Aoki easily manages to get Beerbohms back and sink a nasty looking neck crank in forcing a tap. My concerns of Lyle not tapping go out the window but it’s no surprise considering the hold he was just put in and the person who put him in it, not tapping to that could cause some serious damage and we recently saw Leonard Garcia – another fighter known for his heart – tap to another dangerous submission in the twister, good choice from both men.
Clinching was a bad idea from Lyle against a fighter with a judo background as good as Aoki’s, it was just bound to hit the floor and it seemed like Lyle wanted the fight to hit the ground surprisingly. Bad game planning aside his two recent losses can teach Lyle a lot and can only help him improve as a fighter. Good luck to him on that.

Gegard Mousasi vs. Keith Jardine
This is another interesting fight for me. Jardine is someone who is weirdly inconsistent, he’s definitely a good fighter and is dangerous everywhere. He has good takedowns, takedown defence, submission defence, power and devastating leg kicks. In his fights with Chuck Liddell and Quinton Jackson he manages to fight well to his strengths particularly to Chuck fight where he kept circling and landing leg kicks on chuck not allowing him to counter attack. His wins over Brandon Vera, Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin show he can hang with some of the top fighters in the world but he also has embarrassing losses.
What intrigues me about this fight is despite his embarrassing losses and recently suffering from a 5 fight losing streak he can still be a dangerous fighter. Fighters like Wanderlei Silva, Thiago Silva and Houston Alexander have shown the best recipe for beating Jardine is to be aggressive and land big blows to his chin, though Mousasi certainly is a finisher he’s not an aggressive fighter like the three above. He takes a similar approach to fighting as Anderson Silva, patiently stalking his opponent and allowing them to show him their movements and how they react to certain things, but if the opponent is too aggressive they get easily finished quickly and knowing Jardine he would most likely stay on the outside of Mousasi and constantly land leg kicks, because of this I didn’t suspect it to be an easy or quick night for Mousasi.
The first round was Jardine trying his usual style of fighting, he stayed on the outside landing leg kicks and not allowing Mousasi to counter, he would take Mousasi down with ease too, but not unlike the King Mo fight Mousasi seemingly allowed Jardine to take him down, not putting up much resistance and not being afraid of fighting from his back. About 3 minutes into the fight Mousasi would begin to be very aggressive catch Jardine with some big punches seemingly rocking him. Jardine got another takedown but Mousasi landed an illegal upkick causing a referee break, though illegal I feel the upkick didn’t look like it did much damage and didn’t warrant a stoppage and especially not a point deduction from Mousasi. Jardine used this to recover from the initial rocking he received on the feet, still point deduction or no I feel Mousasi took the round despite getting taken down he kept being aggressive and was clearly hurting Jardine.
Second round Mousasi is a lot more aggressive, constantly moving foward not giving Jardine enough room to land his leg kicks without getting countered. This round was a lot more one sided and Mousasi was putting up more resistance for the takedowns, it was as if he put up just enough takedown resistance to tire Jardine then just allow Jardine to get it causing Jardine to tire. Much like the first round Mousasi took it despite takedowns, Jardine did nothing on top and practically allowed Mousasi to get back to his feet.
Final round is even more dominant than the last two. Jardine lands barely anything, especially leg kicks. This time it’s Mousasi getting the takedowns getting three easy ones where he would follow with a deep standing guillotine attempt, some nasty ground and pound and a kimura at one point, he even manages to mount Jardine with ease. There should be absolutely no question from anyone who won this round.
It was overall a good fight, Jardine showed some good heart and clearly tried his best to win or do something, but by the last round it seemed all he was trying to do was survive. Mousasi took him apart and although many people have knocked Jardine out, nobody has ever dominated him like. Mousasi didn’t get the win, the judges scored it a Majority draw but anyone who saw this fight knows exactly who win and it was a much more one sided fight than Jardines fights with Liddell, Rampage and anyone else he went the distance with.

Gilbert Melendez vs. Tatsuya Kawajiri
Huge fight here for the Strikeforce Lightweight title, I was looking forward to this one but I had a feeling Melendez would take it. I thought Kawajiri won their first fight but that was 5 years ago, since then both men have been in wars, showed excellent improvement in most areas and racked up some nice wins. Gilberts striking has improved leaps and bounds since their first fight as has his takedown and sub defence, Melendez is a whole new animal here and he showed it tonight. While Kawajiri is an excellent fighter he’s still a notch below Melendez. Another thing to factor in is this is Kawajiris first time fighting in a cage and on US soil, I think it made a difference in the Aoki-Melendez fight too, not to say that either Kawajiri or Aoki would have won in a ring in Japan but I’d at least like to see some of these guys get a warm-up fight on American soil and in a cage before taking on someone so highly ranked and good!
For a good while now, Kawajiri has been thought of as the Japanese lightweight to take the US by storm and he really raised some eyebrows after his destruction of Josh Thompson at Dynamite 2010, but the fact remains that he was never the number #1 Japanese lightweight he’s always been floating just under the top spots, being top 5 for a good while. However the Gomi’s and Aoki’s always kept him from reaching the top. It’s true that his style is much akin to the American style of fighting, mixing boxing with wrestling, good top control and submission defence but that isn’t anything Gilbert Melendez hasn’t seen before and it was an easy night for him.
Cecil Peoples was the referee and watching it live I was really worried about a screw up in such a big fight especially after seeing Peoples ignore a tap in a title fight on a small US card. Fortunately he didn’t screw up this time. The fight was short and sweet, Melendez made quick work with Kawajiri. Melendez showed some extra aggression in his stand up this time and really went for the kill, counter punching at first but after hurting Kawajiri he really turned it up looking for an early TKO. Their previous encounter was a close back and fourth war with Kawajiri constantly rocking Melendez and beating him on the feet, this was almost the complete opposite, Melendez now hits harder and faster, he showed it ever since his back to back losses to Ishida and Josh Thompson, he’s reinvented himself as a sprawl and brawler and is a dangerous fight for anyone in the division.
It’s somewhat disappointing considering how short the fight was but then again Melendez showed that he can hang with the best in the world and destroy great fighters with ease, nobody else in the division is doing what he’s doing right now other than Eddie Alvarez and I’d love to see that fight. For my money Melendez is the number #1 lightweight in the world right now.

Paul Daley vs. Nick Diaz
The main event of the evening and I among many other MMA fans was pumped for this fight. Love them or hate them this was two of the most entertaining fighters in the world going at it, both fighters always go for the finish and anyone watching was guaranteed just that. Both fighters have always been favourites of mine, they never settled for anything other than a finish and always put on a good show.
Going into this I had Nick Diaz winning with a late submission, much akin to his fight with Cyborg, I thought Daley would get tired attempting to put Diaz to sleep and from eating body blows and later in the fight Diaz would find a way to get Daley down and finish him off with a submission. However I always felt Daley would be dangerous 100% of the time standing and all he would need to do for the win is land that left hook.
Nick Diaz has shown improvements in all areas since he left the UFC, his boxing has gotten 100 times better and you could say the same about his jiu jitsu, though his takedowns still leave much to be desired and could be his Achilles heel when competing with the top welterweights in the world.
This fight was exactly what should have been expected and more, an absolute war of attrition, with both fighters talking smack to each other while beating each other to a bloody pulp until one goes out. The fight lasted only one whole round but it was possibly the most entertaining round in MMA history, even the stare down was entertaining in how intense it was and both men looked like they wanted to beat the hell out of each other.
Diaz was playing mindgames at the start with Daley holding his arms down, putting his chin out and smack talking Daley, this seemed to work well and caused Daley to be very aggressive, dropping Diaz early, going straight for the kill and possibly tiring himself out allowing Diaz to take over for a short while. The punches to the body were doing loads of Damage to Daley causing him to even take Diaz down early but Diaz didn’t attempt to sub him surprisingly. Thinking back on that I think Diaz didn’t want to sub Daley but to beat him at his own game, prove Cesar Gracie right in his claims that Diaz would be the first man to KO Daley. Daley didn’t look like the same fighter after eating some body shots, looking tired and brawling much like Diaz’ fight with Gomi but Daley managed to drop Diaz a second time and almost finishes him but he was too tired to stop Diaz. Diaz managed to take advantage of a stumbled Daley and land some ground and pound causing a stoppage that might have been a little early especially considering some referees may have stopped the fight the second time Diaz got dropped and there was only 3 seconds left. Either way I would have loved to see a second round or even a rematch, one of the best fights of the year.
Nick Diaz has now knocked out knock out artists in Daley and Zaromskis, outboxed a pro boxer in KJ Noons, out grappled a former ADCC champion in Hayato Sakurai and submitted BJJ black belt Cyborg. Many believe the top wrestlers on the welterweight division would easily beat Diaz and though they have an advantage in the wrestling department, I feel Diaz is a dangerous fight for anyone in the world on the feet and on the ground.
The event closes with the commentators discussing possible Strikeforce vs. UFC superfights we’d all love to see.

The Final Words

Strikeforce have lately been pulling out some very entertaining events lately and this is no exception. It may even be the best Strikeforce event and it had a bit of everything from epic battles, slick submissions and beautiful KO’s along with one of the best rounds of fighting in MMA I can’t recommend this event enough!