People know that I love watching boxing and MMA and really, it's been a bad couple of weeks for the sport of MMA.
It started with Anderson Silva embrassing the sport with his antics against Demian Maia in Abu Dhabi earlier this month, then Strikeforce managed to embarass the sport even further with three disappointing fights on network TV, followed by Jason "Mayhem" Miller entering the cage and starting a post-match brawl with Strikeforce Middleweight champion Jake shields and his team of goons.
I'll quickly list the many ways in which Strikeforce embarassed themselves on Saturday:
1) The much-hyped Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal/Gegard Moussasi fight was nothing more than a glorified wrestling match with two guys that clearly only 3-round stamina, but we're forced to go 5.
2) Gilbert Melendez/Shinya Aoki was just a complete joke. This can split up into different embarassments.
2a) Aoki clearly wanted the fight to be on the ground and would purposely fall to the ground to bait Melendez into a ground-war.
2b) Aoki finally was able to get Melendez onto the ground, but clearly, the referees were encouraged by Strikeforce officials to keep the action moving, so Aoki was never able to work any ground game before the fighters were told to separate and stand up again.
2c) At one point, Aoki was so desperate to get the fight to the ground that he purposely fell, then slid around on his butt and chased Melendez around before either being told to get up or Melendez obliging him and wrestling on the ground.
3) Clearly, Strikeforce invested a lot in Dan Henderson and was expecting him to beat a smaller champion in Jake Shields, but Henderson looked all of his 39 years old and fans were left to watch 4 out of 5 rounds be nothing short of a wrestling match again.
4) Eventual winner Jake Shields and commentator Frank Shamrock had mutual hatred for each other, but instead of Shamrock acting like a professional commentator, Shamrock used his ability to be on-air to vent his hatred for Shields. This made the fighter look more like a meathead and did nothing to get casual fans or first-time viewers on the side of looking at current/ex-fighters as intelligent athletes.
5) After the Shields/Henderson fight, Gus Johnson is interviewing Shields when fellow Strikeforce competitor, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, comes into the right asking for a rematch and shoving Jake Shields, which leads into a pure street brawl between Miller and Shields' team of goons inside the cage on live national television.
6) Gus Johnson has no idea what to do at this point and mentions to the live audience that MMA is full of guys with lots of testosterone and this is bound to happen from time to time...just a ridiculous thing to say...then uncomfortably pleads with the goons to stop brawling inside the cage because they're on live television
6a) While on the commentating, the three-man team of Gus Johnson, Mauro Ranallo and Frank Shamrock was just awkward to listen to...Johnson and Ranallo are both lead men and you could tell there was a power struggle between the two. Johnson has to be paid more and is brought in because he has a well-known voice, but he clearly has a lack of knowledge of the sport. Ranallo has the knowledge, but you know he's supposed to be the number two, but there were plenty of times where he tried to take over for a short amount of time.
7) Once the brawl was cleaned up, CBS producers clearly had no idea how to finish off the broadcast...Johnson re-tries the interview with Shields only for a bunch of commotion to be happening in the background and the hosts just rush themselves off the air in what has to be as embarrassing of a broadcast for CBS as the joke that was the Kimbo Slice/Seth Petruzelli debacle that ended EliteXC.
If CBS decided to never air an MMA broadcast again, I would completely understand...even though the late Saturday night timeslot between 9-12 p.m. is not reserved for big-time shows, they can do a lot better than what Strikeforce offered them, and in the end, that's just terrible for the sport.