Cung Le Vacates Middleweight Title; Jake Shields and Jason “Mayhem” Miller Meet for Championship on November 7
Cung Le has vacated the Strikeforce middleweight title he’s failed to defend since winning it early last year and contenders Jake Shields and Jason “Mayhem” Miller are now set to square off for the belt on November 7 on the undercard of Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers on CBS.
Le (6-0) won the 185-pound championship with a third-round TKO victory over Frank Shamrock in March 2008, but had yet to defend the title as movie roles prevented him from returning to the cage. According to MMA Weekly, Le recently secured another movie deal and has opted to relinquish the title after 18-months of inactivity.
Shields (23-4-1), the former EliteXC welterweight champion who is currently riding a 12-fight win streak that includes victories over Yushin Okami, Carlos Condit, Paul Daley, and Nick Thompson, last fought in June, submitting Robbie Lawler in the opening round of the catchweight contest.
Miller (22-6) fought to a no contest against Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in May and the pair had been expected to rematch for DREAM’s middleweight title in September, but both fighters have now joined Strikeforce’s 185-pound roster. Since 2006, Miller is 8-2 with wins over the likes of Lawler, Hiromitsu Miura, Tim Kennedy, and Kala Hose, while suffering losses to notables “Jacare” and Frank Trigg.
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Tags: Cung Le, Jake Shields, Jason Miller
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Miller should take this one both standing and on the ground…
Content deleted. You need to start adding to the conversation or you will be placed on moderation. – Justin
Well this is interesting…. Atleast the title fight will be for the real thing and not an interim title…
And NO Anderson Silva shouldn’t give up his title too, a statement like that when made (its obvious to me that someone will try and go there) is just ludacris
agreed dude!
Just wondering fr702, do you wear your Anderson Silva shirt to Strikeforce events?
And leave ludacris and any other rapper out of it.
Just kidding.
Seriously though, there is a huge difference between Silva and Cung Le, who basically picked up the title from his buddy Lil’Sham and then got out of Dodge.
Right now I’m not exactly an ardent Anderson Silva supporter, but there is light years of difference between the 2 situations.
Really glad to see the MW title back in play for Strikeforce, and I’ll be pulling for Mayhem to score some gold in Chicago [or wherever]…
Do you take your soap box to your UFC=MMA fanclub leadership meetings?
I like Cung Le and its interesting how this will play out, he was signed for 2years or 4 fights, well there is no championship clause anymore and I doubt that he will be fighting by April of 2010 which is 2years since his last fight, perhaps then becoming a free agent Le would then sign somewhere else, definately should be crazy
Glad that Le did the right thing here, since he’s got no plans of defending the belt. And yeah, I’ll be pulling for Mayhem, too.
Have soapbox will travel. Thats me.
All the way to England if I can pull the scratch together in time for 105 to see Couture fight again.
And yeah, definitely curious to see what Cung Le’s future MMA plans are.
I think he’s in his late 30’s, so it isn’t like he has a lot of time to waste getting things going.
I thought Strikeforce was a great place for him, because in the ground-pounding UFC, his mono-dimensionality would be exposed pretty quick.
I’ll definitely be staying tuned…
come visit me jcohl!
Well it’s about time dude! It’s amazing what mma has done for those fighters (huerta,le,jackson,couture) who want to branch off and do other things.
Happy he vacated the title and i’m looking forward to seeing miller vs shields dude!
Glad to hear Le do that now if if Anderson Sila would just do the…….jk
miller by tko
i think shields will rip one of mayhems arms off! the dudes on a roll! Mayhem is always balls out though so it should be a great match!
I doubt silva will give his belt up. He’s a different story though. LE has been out of action for too long and had no plans on returning.
Finally Le does what he should have done a long time ago, the dude wants to try an be like Bruce Lee in movies…god luck with that buddy.
Anywa this is a good thing for Strikeforce because now i’m for sure watching that card. I can’t say now who i’ll be pulling for because i like both guys. Mayhem and Shields both have good subs, i like both dudes and i just wanns see a good fight but whoever wins i’ll be glad for them…i would like to see Shields compete at 170 in the UFC though…..
So when’s Anderson giving up his belt?!?!?
But seriously, Shields vs Mayhem is a HUGE “undercard”. Can’t wait for that one.
Cung Le should have given his belt up a year ago. There should be a 6 month defending clause in all title-holder contracts. Kind of makes the MMA business look uncertain and unprofessional. At least we now know where Cung Le’s priorities lie. He should train with Rampage.
If you were to put such a clause in there, I think you would have to make exceptions for injuries sustained in defenses.
Makes sense.
I would also have some sort of cluase in there making allowances for someone like Anderson Silva, who got roped into the James Irvin fight primarily as a favor to the UFC.
However as I’m not a huge fan of thse crossweight “super-fights” between titleholders [Penn/GSP/Silva/Rua?], there might be some jinkiness down the road if the sport goes in that direction.
At this point I think the sport needs some sort of “responsibility” clause for those few titleholders who simply aren’t interested in defending titles they’ve won.
To date I can only think of Cung Le being a problem, but moving forward I think the sport is better served with some sort of stipulation included in contract signings.
Jake Shields and Jason “Mayhem” Miller are now set to square off for the belt on November 7 on the “UNDERCARD” of Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers on CBS… is this true they’re on the UNDERCARD what kind of line up of fights is Strikeforce putting on to put there Middle Weight Championship Fight between “Miller and Shields” on the Undercard ,so does this mean we don’t get to see this fight?? If that statement is correct thats got to be 1 of the dumbest moves ever in the history of MMA even worse then Kimbo Slice as Main event. How do you throw one of your champs on the Undercard? I’m at a lose for words right now.
In all fairness to Strikeforce, I don’t think any determination has been made yet about what fights will be seen on CBS other than Fedor-Rogers.
Also, there might be some deal with M-1 Global wherein if Fedor is fighting, that means M-1 Global is “co-promoting”, and that might require Fedor’s fight to be the main event, in spite of his current championship-less-ness, if you follow.
I know it sounds ridiculous that a title fight is undercarded to a non-title fight, but when you consider all the baggage that comes with Fedor, it makes sense in a senseless sort of way.
Also, in all fairness to Fedor, he is, at least in the eyes of M-1 Global and probably Strikeforce, a bigger draw than Shields-Mayhem, and they want to put their best foot forward with CBS, because they are probably only going to get one solid shot at getting it right…
I’m thinking “undercard” in terms of, Rogers v. Fedor is the headliner, then you have the undercard of fights that will air but not the main event, and then the preliminary card of fights that will happen before the televised card.
Maybe I’m getting a little bit confused of the Term undercard but the way its used … I mean normally there is a main card of 5 fights with a undercard {Preliminary card}of 4-5 fights as well .. the unaired fights if you can see where I’m coming from now.
CEASAR GRACIE JIU JITSU ALL THE WAY 209.
Jake Shields by UD
What movies has this guy made??? I haven’t seen him in any.
Maybe him and Rampage can go make a romantic comedy or be the new Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.
Shield’s by K’O in da first round!!
It depends on the context, but undercard can mean anything other than the main event or it can refer to the preliminary card. Generally I use undercard and preliminary card interchangeably, but here it just meant it was on the same card as Fedor-Rogers.