(Props: AllTheBestFights)

Ronaldo Souza‘s recent fights have proven that his standup skills are catching up with his tremendous ability on the mat — and his striking improvement reached an important milestone on Saturday night, when he scored the first lights-out K.O. of his nine-year fight career.

“Jacare” faced 9-1 Jackson’s MMA product Derek Brunson on the main card of Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman, and in Liddell-esque fashion, Souza found his opponent’s chin with a back-pedaling counter-right that dumped Brunson on his face. A few more follow-up shots, and it was all over. Even more impressive than Souza’s finishing power was the fact that he stopped throwing as soon as he saw that Brunson was unconscious — even if referee Mike “Stache God” Beltran clearly wanted the fight to keep going.

But Souza vs. Brunson wasn’t the only great knockout from this weekend’s Strikeforce card. After the jump: Ovince St. Preux’s one-punch shutoff of T.J. Cook.

“It’s okay. He probably didn’t know you were a Strikeforce fighter when he told that last joke…”

Strikeforce is continuing to add fights to its August 18th card, which will go down at the Valley View Casino Center in San Diego, California. Headlined by Ronda Rousey’s first title defense against Sarah Kaufman, the promotion has announced three more bouts for the event.

It may be an exercise in futility to rank Strikeforce bouts in terms of significance, but there are still some interesting matchups on this card. Perhaps the most intriguing of the three recently announced matches is a middleweight showdown between former champion Ronaldo Souza and Derek Brunson. Since losing the strap to Luke Rockhold last September, ‘Jacare’ scored a third round arm-triangle choke over Bristol Marunde in March. Jacare looks to maintain momentum with a win over NCAA D2 All-American wrestler Derek Brunson, which is far easier said than done. Brunson is coming off of an extremely close loss to Kendall Grove at ShoFIGHT 20 two weeks ago after accepting the fight on four days’ notice. That fight, which was the first loss of Brunson’s career, could have easily gone his way. Expect a close fight here.

And it was here, in this blighted place, that Strikeforce learned to live again… (Props: FoxSports.com)

The fact that a Strikeforce aftermath is being broken down into two separate posts is probably confusing most of our longtime readers, considering we’ve had so little to say about the organization leading up to last night’s Strikeforce card. Ever since Zuffa’s acquisition of the organization, our post-event recaps have focused on Strikeforce’s lack of a direction, now-meaningless titles and ever-diminishing roster. The organization clearly wasn’t going anywhere (i.e. going under), yet it also, well, wasn’t going anywhere (i.e. it wasn’t planning future growth). Yet last night, for the first time in a while, Strikeforce looked like an organization that could consistently provide MMA fans with intriguing, relevant matchups.

After all of the hype that Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate managed to create for last night’s bout, the ending could not have possibly gone better for Strikeforce. Exciting fight? Check. Dramatic finish? Check. And most importantly, Sarah Kaufman’s victory over Alexis Davis on the undercard established a clear challenger for the new champion who actually stands a chance at beating the champion. The biggest problem with Strikeforce’s title fights as of late has been the fact that the champions are simply too much better than anyone that Strikeforce can match them up with (Rockhold vs. Jardine, anyone?). While Rousey continued to look phenomenal in her short MMA career last night, former champion Sarah Kaufman provides another intriguing matchup for her. Back to back championship fights in a Strikeforce weight class that will pit the champion against a formidable opponent who is coming off of a victory: Now that’s encouraging.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/TATAMETV)

It’s interesting to see which Brazilian fighters train which whom on a regular basis before camp starts. Junior dos Santos has apparently been spending a lot of time in his area of Northeast Brazil with “jiu-jitsu playboy” Demian Maia when he’s not entrenched in training camps with the likes of Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, and the Nogueira brothers.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/ncaasteve)

Steve Cofield caught up to TUF 14 coach Michael Bisping recently during a break from taping the SPIKE TV reality series, and the cocky Brit expressed his dissentient opinion that his opposing coach on the show, Jason “Mayhem” Miller is not a worthy opponent.

“I can fully understand it. The guy’s obviously….he does Bully Beatdown. He does a TV show, so he’s got a bit of got a bit of a crossover appeal, if you will, but I wasn’t overly excited that he’s going to be my next fight. I wanted somebody like Chael Sonnen or possibly the winner of [Yushin] Okami and Anderson [Silva] — you know, somebody of that stature in the middleweight division,” Bisping explained matter-of-factly. “But I can understand from a business perspective the UFC’s decision to do…you know, to give Mayhem the shot. It’s a double-edged sword. It will be good for the show, but it wasn’t the opponent I wanted though.”

(“I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen.” Pic: ESPN)

During the four years, four months and 16 days that Anderson Silva has had the middleweight title on lockdown, the UFC’s light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions have combined to produce 10 different champions. Think of it this way: Silva won the title by pulverizing Rich Franklin at freakin’ UFC 64, the same event where Sean Sherk defeated Kenny Florian to become the first lightweight champion since 2003. It was also just a few months after Michael Bisping defeated Josh Haynes to win season three of “The Ultimate Fighter.” Kinda seems like a lot has happened since then, huh?

Well, not at middleweight. Middleweight has been a rock – an unchanging, unshakable rock that sometimes seems so maddeningly bored with its own immovability that it just sits there and stares at its opponents for five tedious rounds. Silva’s dominance has been so thorough that it alone kind of makes ranking MMA’s top five 185-pounders an exercise in futility. Half the guys in the Top 10 have already been defeated by the current champ and lot of the other guys either don’t seem worthy or fight in other organizations. Still, we ranked ’em. Why? Because they were there, son, because they were there …

("Hey, I thought you guys said you would call me if you were gonna do anything tonight." PicProps: Fighters Only)

Well, this is only going to fuel more speculation about you know what. As Strikeforce moves to finalize its March 5 card in Columbus (tickets go on sale tomorrow, y’all), the recently postponed rubber match between Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Tim Kennedy has been scrapped entirely, at least for the immediate future. Instead, Kennedy will fight Luke Rockhold, the company announced on Monday via press release. That’s at least some compensation for an already pissed off Kennedy, who went public recently with a list of fighters he said had turned down bouts with him and his complaints that Strikeforce was leaving him to die on the vine from sheer inactivity.

No reason for the change was given, though MMA Junkie quotes PR spokesperson Mike Afromowitz saying (in fairly typical Strikeforce fashion) that “the matchup had never been signed in the first place.” In any case, it appears to complete a four-fight card for the cleverly named “Strikeforce: Columbus,” and essentially leaves Miller without a date. Interesting (but probably coincidence) that this switch goes down less than 48 hours after middleweight champion Jacare Souza successfully defended his crown against Robbie Lawler and longtime Miller crush object Nick Diaz stretched Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos to retain his welterweight belt. Wild speculation, anyone?

("I thought you said you were Mr. Cyborg?") 

Here we are with Strikeforce’s first major event of the 2011, or as we like to call it, their first shot at fucking up the good things they did last year.

Although rumor has it Gus Johnson won’t be in the broadcast booth tonight, he promises that he’ll bring his MMA-retarded rhetoric back in time for the first round of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix in February, despite the fact that HDNet has announced Michael Shiavello and Bas Rutten will be added to the announce team — at least for the prelims.

With no GuJo to screw up the broadcast and no feuds brewing between the Diaz’s and opponents they’ll likely never face, there’s a pretty good chance that this event could go off with out a hitch. The only thing that could knock this ship off course would be for Cyborg to upset Diaz and for Lawler to knock out Jacare.

And for the record, we WANT Strikeforce to succeed more than we want to see Justin Bieber fall down a flight of stairs, it’s just that they haven’t exactly given us a lot of indicators that they’re ready to go head-to-head with Zuffa’s Evil Empire (Just kidding, Dana. Ben doesn’t want to get fucked again.)

Let’s get this thing going. Spoilers after the jump. Refresh often.

(King Mo was skeptical about looking into the strange man’s pinhole projector, but eventually his curiosity about seeing a total eclipse of the sun got the better of him. PicProps: Strikeforce)

Aside from the hapless Jorge Gurgel – who has lived in the States so long his nationality could most accurately be listed as “Ohioan,” anyway – Saturday night’s Strikeforce: Houston card couldn’t have gone much better for the promotion’s Brazilian contingent. From Rafael "Feijao" Cavalcante stopping Muhammed Lawal to claim the light heavyweight title in the main event to  Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza winning the 185-pound strap after a fight with Tim Kennedy that wasn’t really as close as a lot of people are trying to allege, Brazil pretty much owned everybody’s asses last night.  Again.

In unrelated news, Bobby Lashley lost to some guy whose sideburns made him look like he should be playing trombone in a third-wave ska band. All of our deepest fears and darkest suspicions about the former pro-wrestler’s heart and MMA skills were confirmed. Goddamn it felt good.

Somewhere, whatever notes Scott Coker had scribbled on the back of a Motel 6 brochure about the future of his company probably got crumpled up and tossed in a trash can.

("The first time I got shot at in a war … I knew I was in the right place," PicProps: CanvasChronicle)

There are both positives and negatives about this weekend’s Strikeforce middleweight title fight. On one hand, it obviously sucks that Saturday night’s scrap between BJJ whiz ‘Jacare’ Souza and all-around Awesome Dude Tim Kennedy essentially represents another epic fail by Strikeforce when it bungled plans for its totally-rad-sounding 185-pound title tournament. On the other hand, that this fight gives two seemingly very likable athletes their first chance at a major championship, well, it’s hard to hate on that.

Especially in the case of Kennedy, whose status as what the UFC might call “an elite war fighter” should be well-known to you. The active duty Green Beret not only appeared as the special guest on this week’s Bum Rush podcast (which makes him a prince among men, in our opinions) but he also cut a half-fascinating, half-bone-chilling new interview with Old Dad where he shed some more light on how his experiences “Over There” helped prepare him for a career inside the cage. Essentially, it was kind of like using a cannon ball to train for throwing the shot put.

(Braulio Estima vs. Xande Ribeiro in the men’s absolute finals. For more ADCC videos, check out YouTube.com/sourceBJJ.)

The level of Brazilian domination at the 2009 Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championship was, as they might say, absolutely hidiculous. Brazilian grapplers swept every single division at the two-day event, which was held Saturday and Sunday at the Palau Municipal d’Esports de Badalona in Barcelona, Spain. Complete results are below; props to MMA Mania.

Day 1, 9/26/09

Men’s +99kg (+218 lbs.) Opening Round
Fabricio Werdum (Brazil) def. Rogent Lloret (Spain) via kimura
Tomasz Janiszewski (Poland) def. Antoine Jaoude (Brazil) via points
Romulo Barral (Brazil) def. Denis Roberts (Australia) via heel hook
Saulo Ribeiro (Brazil) def. Kouji Kanechika (Japan) via points
Jeff Monson (USA) def. Karol Bedorf (Poland) via points
Janne-Pekka Pietiläinen (Finland) def. Tom Erikson (USA) via heel hook
Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu (Brazil) def. Tom De Blass (USA) via points
Asa Fuller (USA) def. Mike Matell (Canada) via armbar

Men’s +99kg (+218 lbs.) Quarter-Finals
Fabricio Werdum (Brazil) def. Tomasz Janiszewski (Poland) via points
Saulo Ribeiro (Brazil) def. Romulo Barral (Brazil) via points
Jeff Monson (USA) def. Janne-Pekka Pietiläinen (Finland) via points
Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu (Brazil) def. Asa Fuller (USA) via points

According to Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza’s manager, they’re planning on a fight “for the title” at Dream.9 on May 26.  Nothing is confirmed yet, Jacare’s manager told Tatame, but right now it looks like it will be a rematch between Jacare and “Mayhem” Miller for Gegard Mousasi’s vacated middleweight belt.  If true that would make for a tight turnaround for Miller, who’s slated to take on Kala Hose in Hawaii at Kingdom MMA on April 18.  Call it making up for lost time.  Or maybe he’s just assuming that it won’t take much out of him to whup on Hose in front of his Hawaiian peeps.

– As we saw earlier today, Dana White’s threats to step back from the limelight might be the slightest bit hollow, but ESPN plans to actually make him talk on video when they send their E:60 crew to Montreal for a story on his recent video blog controversy.  The piece will allegedly seek to compare White to the heads of other major sports organizations, asking what would have happened to them had they gone all nasty on a female sports reporter and her anonymous sources.  We just hope E:60 has learned from their past mistakes.  If they ask him about steroids, the interview’s over.

– Spike TV sent out another ‘in your face!’ press release today to announce that Saturday night’s replay of UFC 94 was the “#1 program among Men 18-34 in all of television (cable and broadcast) during its time period.”  The replay peaked at 2.4 million viewers for the main event and averaged 1.9 million over the three-hour broadcast, which, as Spike is kind enough to point out, bested HBO’s Winky Wright/Paul Williams bout, which drew a measly 1.5 million viewers.  What you’re wondering is, did they mention how it compared to Strikeforce’s viewership?  They did not.  But they know you’re thinking about it anyway.

– Remember the rumored bout between Mark Coleman and Stephan Bonnar?  The UFC made it official for UFC 100 today, but relegated it to the “may not be broadcast” prelims.  On one hand, that’s a hell of a place to end up after such a great career (talking about Coleman, obviously. I said great career, not one great fight).  On the other hand, if there’s one UFC card where you can feel okay about being pushed to the prelims, it’s that one.

Gegard Mousasi vs. Melvin Manhoef

Zelg Galesic vs. Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza

The conclusion of Dream.6′s middleweight Grand Prix, plus more, after the jump.

Props: MMA Scraps