Listen up, Strikeforce middleweights. If you woke up this morning feeling an unexplained aching sensation in your skull region, it’s not an allergic reaction to last night’s Nyquil and Vicodin cocktail, it’s just your body preparing itself for what’s to come. It’s all because terrifyingly aggressive Dutch striker Melvin Manhoef just signed with Strikeforce to fight exclusively for them in the U.S. That means Manhoef will still be able to do his thing in Japan from time to time, but he’s expected to make his Strikeforce debut some time between now and early 2010, and is supposedly even being considered as a replacement opponent for Robbie Lawler on the December 10 "Evolution" event in San Jose.
The thing about Manhoef is, while he will almost certainly never be champion in an organization with so many adept grapplers, he’ll also never be in a boring fight. Yeah, he can be taken down and submitted, and ideally you’d like to see more improvement in that area of his game from a guy who’s been in the sport for that long. But the man is a human tornado of pain. To put it in terms Dana White would appreciate, if you had a basketball game on one corner, a baseball game on another, a football game on a third, and a fight on the fourth, a crowd of people would still walk to the next block to see Manhoef go crazy on some poor bastard. I mean, the guy knocked out Mark Hunt for crying out loud.
If you don’t believe it, get your fill after the jump. Unless you’re a fan of Sakuraba, Evangelista Santos, or intact brain cells.
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Did anybody notice in the slow mo that melvin got rocked on the knockout punch with a counter left from the dude? He fell against the ropes and looked a lil wobbly. I like how he fights. Swings for the fences and goes out on his shield. Never gonna be a champ in mma, but like someone said before…ALWAYS exciting.