Report: Melendez-Damm For Strikeforce Interim Title
Gilbert Melendez
The winner of Saturday’s Strikeforce “Shamrock vs. Diaz” co-headliner between Gilbert Melendez (14-2) and late-replacement Rodrigo Damm (8-2) will be crowned the promotion’s interim lightweight champion, according to MMA Madness.
The event takes place on April 11th at the HP Pavilion in San Jose and airs live on Showtime.
Current Strikeforce lightweight champion Josh Thomson (16-2) was forced out of the scheduled matchup with Melendez last week after suffering a broken leg. A winner of eight-straight bouts, Thomson won the title from Melendez in June 2008 by unanimous decision, but has not yet defended the championship. His only fight since claiming the belt was a first-round TKO of Ashe Bowman in September in a non-title matchup.
Saturday’s bout will mark Melendez’s first contest since relinquishing the title to Thomson last year.
Stay tuned to MMAFrenzy.com for the latest Strikeforce news.
Tags: gilbert melendez, Josh Thomson, Rodrigo Damm
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I don’t understand why they are putting up an “interim title” for this fight. It’s not Thomson’s fault he hasn’t defended the belt before now, then he goes and gets hurt so you have to make an interim belt? If you’re going to do that, where the heck is your interim Heavyweight champion fight?
There are a few ways to look at this, imo….
Broken leg is what 6weeks cast? Then rehab, and to get into fight shape.. The last time The Punk fought was in September of ‘08, he was suppose to fight in November but broke a toe or some shhh… So in hopes that Gilbert wins this match, this lines up a unification match perhaps on when Cung Le defends his title towards the end of the year…
And StrikeForce is attempting to get ahold of Overeem to get him to defend his title “soon”, I don’t know what that exactly means but I understand your point.
Or middleweight, since Cung Le can’t be bothered to fight…ANYONE.
I know, I thought about that after I hit the submit button. I always thought that Strikeforce was pretty well organized and Coker had a good head on his shoulders, but it seems like now that they have the added pressure of more fighters, Showtime and CBS their decision making has gone down. Headlining their first fight on Showtime with a catch weight fight, then the next major Showtime event will have a guy with (next to) no stand up skills moving up a weight class to fight a very dangerous striker, with strong enough wrestling to stop *some* take downs. These are not exactly my idea of great decisions.
Apparently Strikeforce bought EXC and then hired the idiots that made their decision.
Enough of this interim crap.