Strikeforce Results and WEC 48 Picks

Strikeforce Nashville brought a few surprises, some not as pleasant as others, while WEC 48 looks to be a great night of fights for the WEC’s first PPV event.

For Strikeforce, Muhammad ‘King Mo’ Lawal soundly beat Gegard Mousasi even after some less than stellar early rounds. Gilbert Melendez increased his standing with a win over Shinya Aoki. Most impressively, Jake Shields pulled off a massive upset by defending his Strikeforce middleweight belt against Dan Henderson, and he is now a free agent who could end up signing with another promotion. April really has turned into an interesting month for MMA rankings.

Of course, no discussion of Strikeforce Nashville could be complete without mentioning the massive brawl that ended the event. Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller interrupted Jake Shields’ post-fight interview to ask for a rematch, and then everything went to hell. Gilbert Melendez shoved Mayhem, followed by a massive beating from many members of the Cesar Gracie camp including Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz. In fact, three of the Strikeforce champions were involved, which doesn’t bode well for the promotion. For now, damage control seems to be Strikeforce fully blaming the incident on Mayhem, though many think that his actions did not warrant a group beating. There was cause to admonish him, sure, but not the ridiculous bashing that actually did occur.

That can all stay in the past, though. WEC 48 should wash out any bad taste left by the Strikeforce ‘finale’ as it includes some very intriguing fights. The main event of Jose Aldo vs Urijah Faber has serious implications for the WEC featherweight division. If Aldo wins as is expected, then Faber will be in something of a Rich Franklin position – he can beat most other people in the division, but he probably won’t be able to seriously challenge for the title again. If Faber wins, then there will be a Faber > Aldo > Mike Brown > Faber situation that could lead to interesting times ahead. More than likely, Aldo will win and Faber will be unfairly written off as ‘done’. I really hope he pulls off the upset, though, as it would make for some spectacular match ups in the future.

The WEC lightweight championship match of Ben Henderson vs Donald Cerrone should hopefully bring the fireworks that their last fight did. I’m not sure it will, though, given that they should both have worked on things that didn’t work out for them in the last fight. Nevertheless, I don’t think it will go the distance, as one of them will pick up a submission or knockout this time around.

I’m not sure if Mike Brown is being undervalued or overprotected by the WEC, but this fight with Manny Gamburyan seems almost insulting to the former featherweight champion. I know that Manny is in good form at featherweight, but we aren’t talking about a championship-level fighter. If he manages to even challenge Brown, I’ll be impressed with Manny Gamburyan, but I’ll be absolutely flabbergasted if he wins.

Will WEC 48 be a successful PPV? It has many of its biggest stars on this card, and Zuffa are bringing in Rogan and Goldberg for commentary to make this have more of the feel of a UFC event. This has added to rumors that the UFC and WEC are bound to merge, but I think it may be more of a case that the WEC needs PPV training wheels to start with. When people are used to buying WEC PPV cards, then you can be sure the UFC influences will be slowly reduced until the WEC stands on its own. That, or people are right about a UFC/WEC merger. We’ll see.