Shields To Challenge For Strikeforce Interim Middleweight Belt
One of the nagging questions for MMA fans over the past sixteen months has been “When will Cung Le defend his middleweight title?” The answer to that question seems to be, “Not any time soon.” It is now being reported that former EliteXC welterweight champion Jake Shields will be challenging for an interim belt at middleweight, while the promotion waits on Le to return to fighting. Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker recently broke this news to MMAFanhouse at the press conference for the promotions upcoming Gina Carano vs. Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos event.
Shields’ last outing came in June at a catch-weight of 182 pounds, against former EliteXC middleweight champ Robbie Lawler. Shields defeated the heavy handed Lawler via guillotine early in the first round of the fight. Prior to that Shields had been on a eight month layoff since defeating Paul Daley in his final defense of his EliteXC welterweight belt, before the promotion ended operations.
Current champion, Le has yet to defend the title he won in March of 2008 from Frank Shamrock. He has instead focused on a movie career which has included work in at least six films. There still is no word yet on a time frame for Le’s return to the cage.
There is also no word yet on a potential opponent, or date for Shields’ interim title challenge, which would likely take place in September or October. There had previously been rumors of a match up between Shields and either Matt Lindland or Vitor Belfort in August, but neither came to fruition.
Pictured: Jake Shields
Tags: Jake Shields
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First off, they should strip Cung Le of the title, this is BS. If he wants to focus on his acting career, fine, but don’t tie up the belt. Secondly, who else in the MW division of strike force will Jake fight? No one comes to mind at first thought. Any ideas?
Joey Villasenor maybe? Only one that I can think of.
I agree Bunny
As far as I’m concerned, I never want to see cung Le again. Had Frank shamrock not been so stubborn (refusing to take hi down) he would have still been the champ. Cung Le knows he would get worked by any wrestler or bjj guy. If he wants to go to Hollywood, strip him of the title. I hate how people say he is a top mw. No way! Maybe in Kickboxing or karate, but in mma, he is a dime a dozen. I can name 15-20 guys that would own cung Le. How stupid of strikeforce, just strip him already.
wow clearly you don’t have a clue that Le’s wrestling isn’t half bad actually, Cung Le is primarly a stand up fighter yes but he has worked on his wrestling for years now, and please stop giving Frank more credit than he deserves, didn’t he just get destroyed by Nick Diaz? o ya I was there, the thing being that where were you when Couture went all “hollywood” on us and then decided he didn’t want to work for the UFC anymore and Dana never stripped him and it to what 16months for his return just a simple waste of time.. But because its Cung everyone wants to shhhit on him and StrikeForce, interesting to say the least… and 15~20 MW’s that would “own” Cung is an interesting statement as well, to say I’m intrigued is an understatement…
The should strip him. He has refused potential title fights. He’s not a champion, he’s a chumpion.
And in answer to your question, hell yes Randy should have been stripped of that title.
It isn’t “because it’s Cung” it’s “because the dickhat won’t fight.”
So i take it Shields won’t be at Welterweight for a while then. le should either give up the belt or be stripped, you can’t go this long without defending the belt it’s stupid. The other fighter’s should not have to wait until Le feels like defending his belt it’s a bunch of crap. Jake Shields, i hope can come to the UFC and challenge for the 170 title instead of staying in and organization that allows their champions to take more than a year off without defending their belt. I can’t think of anyone who would challenge Shields for the interim title, but i’m happy that they are finaly at least somewhat moving forward with this issue.
Shields has been on an impressive streak lately, it’s a no brainer that the guy has more than enough talent to make the move to the UFC and make a run at the WW title, but it’s hard to say now that he’s fighting at middleweight. He’s better off at WW because there aren’t too many JJ guys as good as him at WW, he’d be able to take out some top 170 guys in the UFC with his world class JJ. Maybe Robbie Lawlor vs. Shields should have been for the interim belt…
Even though Id love Shield’s in the UFC, I realy dont see him as a threat to GSP. Sure he could catch George with something(maybe), but I think that Jake would have a long night of unsuccessful takedowns, while GSP picks apart his stiff and basic sriking game. Eventually leading to a KO for the WW king. Then again none of us realy thought GSP was gonna out strike Alves soooo I guess GSP could get Jake in a rear naked just as easily.
Right on Carls
you have a point, but Shields is not Alves. Shields for sure doesn’t have dangerous striking, but unlike Alves who i felt got a little desperate after round 3, Shields is very experienced and is a smart fighter, i’m not saying he can beat GSP easy, but don’t forget that GSP likes to take guys down which would work to Shield’s advantage because as we all know he is an awesome JJ fighter. We honestly can’t say what would happen if these two were to ever fight, but one things for sure, i don’t think that GSP will control Shields on the ground the way he did Penn and Alves…..Shields may not be able to defeat GSP(i don’t think anyone at WW can beat GSP anyway), but he can take out the UFC’s top WW, Shields is a great at what he does and unlike lots of fighters now and days, Shields sticks to what works best for him, you don’t see him trying to be like Sherk or those guys who try to strike when they clearly cannot. Whether Shields can beat GSP or not, he belongs in the UFC and at WW rather than at Strikeforce at Middleweight.
carls – I agree with your assessment, but I don’t think using a metric of “no threat to GSP” is a good indicator of whether or not to bring someone into the UFC.
After all, who at 170 IS a threat to GSP?
Just sayin’…
thats bs because i was sayin the whole week before the fights that alves had no chance and he wasnt even in the same class as jon fitch. and fitch just got wrecked by gsp. and everyone including you acted like i was stupid for sayin that it was a joke for everyone sayin it was his toughest challenge yet. then i came back with there is no way he is worse for gsp than hughes in his prime or even bj penn. just go ahead and take notes callin nate diaz over melvin and grey maynard is going to get smashed by roger huerta.
Please dont come at me with this crap Knightboy. If you wanna get in to it I said alvez had more ways to “win” than Fitch did.(which was everybodys consensus) Then again I dont realy expect you to pay any attention to what I say anyways. Last time you made stupid comments I put you in your place. I dont have the energy to do this again bud.
come on just admitt it i was right on by sayin alves had no chance and melvin guillard has no right to be a main event if you think thats me saying stupid comments then i guess your right. lol. i just thinks it funny how now your sayin hes the king. it easy to jump on a bandwagon. everybody gets stuff wrong i thought mir was going to be able to catch lesnar in a mistake.but to start stuff and jump all over me for my opionion and then change your tune.you and gunslinger jumped all over me just because i think that alves, guillard and grey maynard would lose their next fights.
Enough’s enough. Stop the arguing.
Good point MK4.
I like shields’s chance @ ww in the ufc instead of mw if he did go to the UFC.
Cung Le’s kind of getting on my nerves dude. I mean i love the guy for whoopin’ on frank shamrock, but damn don’t you have an obligation to defend your title? It’s the fighting that even gave him a chance to break into “movies”. It’s good that they have an interim belt maybe that will motivate him to return to fighting.
Shields is sick dude and i’m glad he’s back to fighting more regularly. I’m not sure who’s going to be his opponent but i want to see him run through a couple of guys so he can go to the ufc ww division and really test himself against the best ww’s in the world.
gsp had alves in a RNC in the first rather quickly. outside of shields who does strikeforce have at 185?
No one, that’s the problem. I couldn’t really think of anyone outside of Joey Villasenor. The MW division is lacking some serious depth in StrikeForce.
Isnt Diaz a MW? that would be a good fight. i dont know the whole story but i guess that Jakes tired of fighting WW?
Jake and Nick train together at Cesar Gracie Jiu-jistu and Nick fights at WW/ whatever EliteXC called that catch weight-class that they made just for Nick.
I haven’t read any of the comments cuz thats how I gets down kids… Jake Shields is fighting @ MW now simply due to the fact that Cesar Gracie told him to, bottom line… Nick is going to be in the WW division and Sheilds is going to fight MW (unless he moves to the UFC which is a huge if)… The reason that Jake and Matt Lindland was never signed is simply due to the fact that with 4 title fights already on the August 15th card Jake Sheilds v Matt Lindland would NEVER happen on the undercard EVER, hence why that fight was simply scratched… I do believe that there are quite a few MW’s that can fight Sheilds in StrikeForce (ie look at everyone that isn’t in the UFC, its simple math)..
The crazy thing is that this specific Cesar Gracie camp could (possibly) have the LW champion (Gilbert Melendez), WW champ (Nick Diaz) and possibly the interim MW champ (Jake Sheilds) in the StrikeForce Org, um simply wow….
Cung Le should be stripped ya, Alistair should have been too but let me say that StrikeForce is building a very very strong org and til you get contenders for the titles why do soo… StrikeForce is HOTT and their popularity is growing, the thing is they are “new” to the spotlight, and people trust me when I tell you that they are doing wonderful things in MMA and will continue to grow, and frankly imo there is no need to bash them simply cuz they aren’t the UFC, see I hate on Affliction for many crazy reason’s but they have some good fights happening and I can even respect that (F~WAMMA)… Anyways guess I will go reply to comments above
There really aren’t any good MW in StrikeForce at the time. I guess they will have to “borrow” someone from Affliction again.
one of those not so good MW’s is Joey Villasenor, Luke Rockhold v Sheilds would be a sick fight imo, but you guys probably don’t know much about Luke and his wrestling/Jitz but that would a good fight, but honestly the “name” factor isn’t there for Jake to take the fight well perhaps in 2010 or something…
“borrowing” MW’s from DREAM, WVR, Affliction and so forth could definately happen, but with most of us believe that Affliction III will be their last card, those fighters kinda need somewhere to go, don’t they? and well to be honest I truly believe that StrikeForce will “aquire” Affliction (MMA)’s fighters and Scott Coker will allow Tom Atencio to do some PR but not much else but again that is another story I guess…
I noted Joey in my comment at the top of the comments section.
While I agree that Cung Le hasn’t done right by his promotion, I wouldn’t necessarily kick him out the door either.
fr702 points out that Strikeforce is putting together something solid, and probably wants every name talent they can grab that the UFC hasn’t.
They have a real shot at making something happen, and they’re at ground zero for the MMA movement in America right now, LasVegas notwithstanding.
Also, in a world where the UFC pretty much stands alone as the top MMA promotion, being number 2 during a period of mainstream acceptance and growth isn’t such a bad thing.
They’ve come pretty far, pretty fast, and have been at this a lot less time than the UFC has.
I think for now an Interim champ is the way to go, but I’d definitely put Le on a timetable. Give him maybe 6 months more, and if he’s still banging out those straight-to-DVD chop socky flicks, then invalidate his title and name the Interim MW champ the actual champ.
Otherwise, sign him to a title unification bout and pinp the H&ll out of the thing.
I also agree with submit24 that at least part of this is Frank Shamrock’s fault. I know Shamrock is almost like a bad word in most MMA circles, but its unbelievable to me that he didn’t beat so one-dimensional a fighter as Cung Le. Hate the guy if you want to, but there is no denying that even at his age he still has skills, and a few good fights left in him.
Shamrock practically grew up [figuratively speaking] on Pancrase, hybrid wrestling, shoot-fighting, whatever you want to call it. Hey Frank, did you forget about the takedowns part of Pancrase? The part where you hook a guy and make him tap? Have you seen any evidence that the “master of san shou” has a clue how to avoid a leglock, or for that matter a single leg takedown? Hello?
Bottom line, is that the sport benefits from a thriving Strikeforce, so they should be supported in every way possible…
jcohl, yes I have personally seen him working on his wrestling and Jitz, before he even started (officially) in MMA he was working with the likes of Kos, Liddell, and Olsen for his wrestling and he would roll with Banuelos (during speed drills) and his Jitz was worked with many different guys from brazil and he use to work @ AKA for a spell… Zinkin Entertainment introduced them all a rather long time ago, then Cung Le turned “pro” soo yes I have seen evidence of your question, cheers