Feb 22 2008
Rear Naked Ramblings – Strikeforce To Seattle This Weekend
News and notes from around the MMA world …
Two sad notes before we get to the rest of the news.
- Young Canadian fighter Rene Ayangma died after a light sparring session Tuesday evening.
- Ryan Gracie’s toxicology report reads that he died because of a lethal mixing of drugs according to Sherdog.
And to the rest of the news …
- Mike Coughlin writes about Bob Sapp and Strikeforce, who run live tomorrow in Seattle at the Tacoma Dome.
- Dave Meltzer has more on Sapp.
- The UFC and Yahoo! are working together now that Yahoo! is their online PPV distributor.
- Chuck Liddell’s autobiography is on the New York Times Best Seller’s list for the second week in a row.
- Mirko Cro Cop says he will return to the UFC after he has 3 fights with Dream.
- Fabricio Werdum won’t get the next title shot and will instead face Brandon Vera at UFC 85.
- IGN interviews IFL Middleweight Champ, Matt Horwich.
Talking Points
After last week’s slobberknocker of a fight between Kimbo Slice and Tank Abbott, Strikeforce comes back this week with Bob Sapp’s first fight in the US. Sapp is a huge star in Japan I’ve read that he even had his own merchandise store at one point. You’re talking Michael Jordan level status. While I don’t think Strikeforce is depending on Bob Sapp in the same ways that EXC depends on Kimbo Slice, with their business model, they don’t need to. Their big market is in San Jose, California with local headliners Frank Shamrock and Cung Le. Seattle has been a good market for minor league MMA and Strikeforce is using Sapp and his local ties to the area to try to sell tickets. The fight is on HDNet, which very few people receive (something like 6 million people in all), but for those who do get it, it should be an interesting spectacle. There aren’t many big name fighters, though former UFC fighter Joe Riggs and former UFC champion, Maurice Smith are on the card. Interestingly, Smith beat Tank Abbot in a fight over 10 years ago. We’ll see if he can do better against kickboxer Rick Roufus than Abbott did against Slice.
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