Strikeforce at Playboy Mansion II recap and final thoughts
“Strikeforce at the Mansion II” went off last night from the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, California. After the fight card got drilled with injuries in the weeks leading up to the event, there were fans who felt that the match ups were watered down and that the show would be a disappointment.
They might have been right about the less than stellar matchmaking, but the event itself was nowhere near disappointing.
The main event featured UFC veteran Joe “Diesel” Riggs taking on Pride FC veteran Kazuo Misaki, who was making his Strikeforce debut. The fight never once made it to the mat. Misaki chose to stand with Riggs and the strategy appeared to backfire midway through the second round when Riggs floored him with a big right hand.
Riggs pounced on him, but Misaki recovered right away and quickly got back to his feet. Almost immediately after standing up he returned fire with a right hand of his own, dropping Riggs to the mat. “Diesel” covered up and got to full guard, but referee Josh Rosenthal felt his arms up defense wasn’t sufficient enough to handle the Misaki onslaught and he stopped the fight.
Riggs made it obvious that he didn’t agree with the decision and it looked like he might have had a point. But the referee’s decision is final, and in the end Misaki was successful in his Strikeforce debut.
The only Strikeforce champion competing on the card was lightweight champ Josh “The Punk” Thomson. He faced Lion’s Den trainee Ashe Bowman in a non-title affair, and he made quick work of “The Archer” with a first round technical knockout.
Former champion Gilbert Melendez was on hand to help call the fight in the announcer’s booth, making it very clear more than once that he intends to get his belt back as soon as possible.
Who wouldn’t want to see that rematch?
Cory “The One” Devela used his reach advantage to avoid Terry Martin’s power for most of their middleweight bout. And he was probably ahead on the judges scorecards through two rounds, but he wasn’t able to stay away from the powerful Chicago native in the third where Martin finally closed the distance and landed a huge fight-ending left hand.
The knockout was the eleventh of Terry Martin’s career.
Mitsuhiro “The Endless Fighter” Ishida didn’t have to live up to his nickname tonight. He dispatched American Kickboxing Academy product Justin Wilcox in relatively easy fashion by slapping an early first round armbar on him.
He did, however, live up to the billing as one of the best lightweights in the world in his Strikeforce debut. A rematch with Gilbert Melendez or a shot at division champion Josh Thomson could be on the near horizon.
Trevor Prangley used his extensive wrestling background to score numerous takedowns and from there he imposed some nasty ground and pound on his way to a unanimous decision win over a very tough Anthony Ruiz.
We’ll more than likely see Prangley back in the middleweight division for his next fight. And Strikeforce has some interesting match ups for him there, including Kazuo Misaki and division champion Cung Le.
Luke Stewart finally got a chance to fight again after suffering the first loss of his career almost six months ago. He weathered the early storm from an aggressive Jesse Juarez and methodically worked his way to a late first round submission victory.
Expect to see a lot more of Luke on future Strikeforce cards — he’s got a lot of talent and a sick jiu-jitsu game.
The production of the event was surprisingly really good. The Sherdog.com live stream was very clean. The video was clear, the audio was crisp and there weren’t long intermissions between fights. They kept a steady flow of action, which is the way a mixed martial arts event should go.
Lon McEachern and Ken Shamrock were in the announcing booth, and believe it or not, they made a pretty good team. I know I’ll probably take a lot of heat for saying this just because of who he is, but I thought Shamrock was at the top of his game and did a nice job with the color commentary. He was informative and more often than not, right on the money with his analysis.
Overall “Strikeforce at the Mansion II” was on par with most Strikeforce shows. There wasn’t anything too spectacular, but nothing really worth complaining about either. The card wasn’t filled with too many competitive match ups, but there were plenty of exciting finishes.
As usual, it was another solid event from Strikeforce.
Next up is Strikeforce: “Payback” at the Broomfield Events Center in Denver, Colo., on October 3 live on HDNet. Don’t miss it.
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