Gegard Mousasi Confirms November 7 Strikeforce Non-Title Fight
Recently crowned Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi has confirmed that he will be defending his title on the CBS televised November 7 Strikeforce event, at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. The scheduling of the title defense was recently confirmed by Mousasi with m-1global.com, though no opponent has been confirmed.
Mousasi won the Strikeforce light heavyweight title in his last fight by defeating Renato “Babalu” Sobral on August 15 via first round knockout. He was then scheduled to take part in the Dream SuperHulk tournament last night at Dream 11, but was forced to withdraw due to an injury suffered in his exhibition fight against Fedor Emelianenko at “M-1 Breakthrough”.
Rumored opponents for the bout are Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, who would have been Mousasi’s opponent at Dream 11, and former WEC middleweight champion Paulo Filho. A bout between Mousasi and Filho would be easy to promote since both fighters have already had unpleasant comments about one another in the media. Among those comments was a claim by Mousasi, in and interview with fighters.com, that Filho was using steroids.
Update: October 7, 2009 at 11:36 pm by Justin
MMAJunkie has spoken with Strikeforce executive Mike Afromowitz who confirmed Mousasi’s participation in the event, but said the bout would not be a title fight.
Pictured: Gegard Mousasi
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Paulo Filho would be a better fight i think, and like the article above mentioned these guys have somewhat of a “beef” going on so that can be a good selling point.
Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou i think would not be a good fight for Gergard because the dude is not exactly a top guy IMO but also neither is filho to be honest.
Either way this seems to be building up to be a super sick card, i like Mousaisi and hope to see him in the Octagon someday.
Guess Filho would have to put on some weight to get to lhw although that hasn’t been much of a problem for him in the past
*cough* sonnen
As if the vast majority of the MMA community wasn’t already planning on tuning in to see Fedor-Clubber Lang and Mayhem-Shields, Strikeforce throws some more gasoline on the hype fire by adding their new 205 champion to the mix.
Good stuff, but I wish he had a better choice of opponents than Sokoudjou, who we’ve all seen beaten by Babalu, Mousasi’s last win, and Luiz Cane, who still has a ways to go before he breaks into the top 10; or Paulo Filho, who humiliated himself in the WEC against Chael Sonnen, and is widely rumored to have all sorts of “personal issues”.
Regardless, I’m sure it will be another great outing for Mousasi, and another notch in the Strikeforce Alliance belt, with no real counter-programming in site from El Supremo Blanco.
The ony thing that could make this card better for me at this point is if the matches were held in my newly-beloved white cage…
Now that The Emperor Of Eastern Promises got married, do you think he’s been tamed a bit or can he still take out Clubber Lang/Ving Rames?
I think we’re going to see it play out like “Rocky III” except roger’s mouth piece won’t be yellow.
haha yea, maybe his mouth piece is gonna be gold or platinum ;D
I’ve made my case against Fedor multiple times, as you all know, but in this case I think that Rogers is simply is too inexperienced and too monodimensional to defeat an experienced SAMBO master like Fedor.
And regardless of whether or not you know the difference between shoot-fighting and MMA, Fedor has three times the experience that Rogers does, and has been in with some of the biggest names in both shoot-fighting and MMA, while Rogers resume is damned thin aside from his KO of AA.
If Andrei Arlovski went back to his roots, instead of living out some assinine boxer fantasy in the cage, he would have hooked and submitted Rogers inside of 10 minutes, so I’m assuming that Fedor will do it in 5 or less.
Also, just to be glass clear, just because I feel that Fedor is not the best p4p MMA fighter on the planet, or even currently the best MMA HW, that doesn’t mean he’s going to get victimized like Arlovski did.
There is a big difference between being rusty, due to lack of activity and/or appropriate competition, and getting caught by some brawler from the minor leagues.
And if Fedor does somehow lose, then he’s slipped even further from his PRIDEful days than I thought…
if Fedor loses will we then see a sequel to Eastern Promises
November is looking great. Three weeks in a row of great fight nights and only one that I have to pay for. Too bad Fedor and Mousasi don’t have better opponents to fight, but I can live with it.
At this point Strikeforce just needs to get their talent, and the talent of their allied co-promotions, out there in the CBS network mainstream.
Yes, Fedor will probably beat Rogers in under 5 minutes, and Mousasi shouldn’t have much trouble with Sokoudjou, but CBS needs something to work with, so in this specific case weak opponents for their talent is far better than no opponents at all…
I think if Fedor does lose to Rogers it will be inside the 2 minute mark. Fedor looked ultra sloppy in the opening minutes with AA, but only needed one mistake by Andre in order to apply his finishing touch.
As long as he survives the bum’s rush (two meanings to that, if you follow), he will have Rogers crumpled or submitted inside 5 minutes.
No, I don’t think he’s the P4P champ either, but he’s damn good, and until someone exposes him for something else other than what he was in 2005/6, I don’t see reason to believe he’s not the man he was/is.
JCohl, with regards to your previous post….
True…True.
I like either guy to fight Mousasi. IMO so-could-jew would be the better match-up, but like MK4 pointed out there is some bad blood between these two which would be nice to see get settled.
Either way Dreamcatcher by destruction.
Just to point out — Sambo is not “shoot-fighting” AND it does not have shootfighting roots NOR does fedor “shoot” if you look at his fights (He does not even shoot for the leg vs Chio, which would make more sense than anyone else, but instead tries to hip throw the giant which was a stupid move in my opinion). Sambo does have some “catch-wrestling” in its roots from what I’ve read recently in a MMA mag (as does shootfighting actually: “Shootfighting’s use as a synonym for mixed martial arts had its genesis in the 1970s, when Karl Gotch taught a group of Japanese professional wrestlers catch wrestling techniques, called “hooking” or “shooting”.” -wiki ). SO actually catch wrestling is closer to shootfighting than Sambo.
I’ve found it not worth continuing to debate anything here but seeing fedor called a “shoot-fighter” or a great “shoot-fighter” back in the day etc etc is just silly (his matches in Japan are not even the shootfighting ones or ISFA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrase (You’ll note fedor is not a listed fighter like barnet or even a noted fighter).
jcohl please read some articles on this and take it into consideration on future posts.
Ah, John, where to begin?
First, I never said thst SAMBO was shoot-fighting, but on occasion I have said that PRIDE was closer to Japanese style shoot-fighting, or hybrid wrestling, than modern MMA, and I said it because it actually is.
You would know that if you spent some time on the mat, or in the cage, or even in the ring, instead of in front of your keyboard posting gibberish.
And if you want to start nit-picking, it’s not “Sambo”, which chrisl has explained on multiple occasions, but SAMBO, which is an acronym.
So before you ask someone who has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that he has a far superior MMA/combat sport knowledge base than your own to “read some articles”, I’d suggest you take your own advice before embarrassing yourself AGAIN here at the frenZy…
looks like you don’t even have “far superior knowledge” about some of your own posts but I’ll leave it at that
I also expected an “ad hominem” responce so nothing new (maybe you should read some articles on “inferiority complex” because you clearly have one) but I’m sure my points have sunk in and hopefully we’ve heard the end of “And regardless of whether or not you know the difference between shoot-fighting and MMA, Fedor has three times the experience that Rogers does” comments. And all those Fedor might be a great shootfighter but not so good at mma etc type comments.
Oh and I’ve never said that you stated Sambo was shootfighting (although you’ve implied that you’re of very limited knowledge on the topic many times, like in this very thread when you say fedor is sambo talented and then follow it up with the lime I quoted), you’re the only one whose said that.
KEEP IT CIVIL GENTS
Sorry, fr702, but some of us are just flat out losing patience with posters who comment on comments, instead of commenting on MMA.
Some of us have discussed this over in the forum on how to deal with these sort of posters, and I’ll try to make more of an effort moving forward to avoid this type of situation.
Funny how all things come back to Fedor…..
Mousasi v Filho is quite possible, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it, they both have talked quite a bit of shhh on one another I wouldn’t mind seeing them fight
Mousasi v Filho is the match all most appear to like but I thought Sokoudjou looked fairly scary boxing Sap’s ears in. Sap is not the best but he is 350ish pounds of muscle and a good bit of power comes with that sort of weight and I don’t even remember Sokoudjou even getting pushed around.
Besides that single title defense match where Filho looked out of shape and sloppy what have his previous or latest fight looked like?
His latest fights he looked good took some hard shots and won via sub v Melvin Manhoef @ DREAM.10 and won a unanimous decision v Alex Shoenhouer @ Bitteti Combat 4 I posted those fights long ago in the forum’s section