Kevin Randleman

(Khalidov vs. Santiago)

Apologies for the delay/lack of attention on this, but Sengoku's eleventh event took place early Saturday in Tokyo. Some highlights/lowlights...

— The headlining featherweight match between Hatsu Hioki and Michihiro Omigawa featured two things that have become common in Sengoku: A shocking upset for perennial underdog Omigawa, and an inexplicably bad judges' decision. Hioki controlled the fight with his grappling in the first round, and dominated the standup in the second. Though Omigawa rallied in the final frame, few expected him to take the split decision victory. Afterwards, even Omigawa disagreed with the scoring.

— Chechen-Polish upstart Mamed "Cannibal" Khalidov scored a surprise first-round knockout of Sengoku middleweight champ Jorge Santiago. After a takedown by Santiago, Khalidov was able to stun Santiago with a punch from the bottom, then scrambled to top position and quickly finished the fight. Because it was a non-title bout, Santiago remains the champion. Love it when that happens.

— Kevin Randleman and undefeated Bulgarian prospect Stanislav Nedkov put on a three-round wrestling match that ended with one judge scoring it for Nedkov and the other two calling it a draw. In keeping with Sengoku's ridiculous traditions, the two judges who didn't pick a winner were required to cast "must decision" votes, and Nedkov walked away with a split-decision victory. Full results plus more fight videos can be found after the jump.

Strikeforce...How the Sausage is Made - Watch more Funny Videos

When I arrived at the Scottrade Center on Saturday, Gus Johnson and the Strikeforce crew were in the middle of going through a dry-run, testing the camera setups, production cues, and pyrotechnics, while a few of the fighters worked out their own bugs in the cage. So if you were ever curious to see what happens a couple hours before a big televised MMA show, check out the video above, in which random PAs stand in for Phil Baroni and Nick Diaz; apologies for the shakiness in the beginning. The centerpiece of this clip starts at the 0:30 mark: Brett Rogers was running through some sprawls when Kevin Randleman entered the cage and, as if on cue, an epic groove started blasting from the speakers. The Monster's vibe was infectious, and by the 1:10 mark, the Strikeforce cage was the hottest dance club in St. Louis.

("Guys, you can get some of those cupcakes *after* we take this face-off picture, okay? Guys?" Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Hello, and welcome to a special "From Press Row" edition of the CagePotato liveblog. That's right -- I'm typing to you from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis tonight, not from my usual spot on my couch in Brooklyn. The good part? I'm about 25 feet from the cage and wedged between some of the brightest minds in MMA journalism. The bad part? Slamming beers, eating wings, and loudly showing bias towards my favorite fighters is frowned upon here, apparently. But we're gonna try to have a good time anyway. Live round-by-round results are after the jump, starting at 9 p.m. CT. Hit that "read more" link and refresh the page every few minutes to get all the latest. Time to do work, son.

(Kevin Randleman is athletic *and* explosive! Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

All fighters successfully weighed in today for Saturday's Strikeforce event, which will be held at the Scottrade Center and broadcast on Showtime. CageWriter passes along this little detail from the weigh-in:

Yeah, that sounds about right. The numbers are after the jump. Don't forget to swing by tomorrow night starting at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT as we liveblog the televised card. Fire up, Potato Nation!

(My God, the animosity between these two. It's like the entire room could burst into flames at any moment.)

MMA fans have a full dance-card this weekend, with Strikeforce putting on a stacked Showtime event on Saturday night (10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT), and the WEC following it up on Sunday night with a show on Versus headlined by featherweight champion Mike Brown's second meeting with Urijah Faber (9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT). Be sure to come back here Saturday night for the Strikeforce liveblog — and get psyched for the whole shebang by reading the latest installment of the longest-running MMA argument on the Internet. Ben vs. Ben starts right now...

Brett Rogers says he wants to stand and bang with Andrei Arlovski on Saturday. That sounds like a horrible idea for "The Grimm," given that Arlovski is just as big and strong as he is but with much more technical striking. Does Rogers stand a chance with that strategy, or is he an unconscious man walking at this point?

BG: WTF? Is Rogers supposed to take Arlovski down and sub him out with his battle-tested Grimjitsu? I’m not trying to hate on Brett’s ground game, because none of us have actually seen it; he’s a brawler, and thus far he’s only had to face other brawlers. Arlovski, on the other hand, actually has some submission skills in his back pocket. So while we know that Rogers will be fighting an uphill battle on Saturday night, I’d say his odds decrease even further if the fight goes anywhere else besides stand-and-bangville.

Brett’s only shot is to stick to his bread-and-butter and swing those hamhocks. The fact that Arlovski’s hands are far more technical means that the Grimm will probably get picked apart. But Arlovski’s unreliable chin makes him vulnerable to what Rogers brings into the cage. That’s what makes this fight compelling for me: Brett Rogers definitely should not be able to beat Andrei Arlovski — but he just might.

BF: With regard to the submission skills in Arlovski’s back pocket, I hope your finger slipped and you really meant to type ‘submission skill.’ As in, his straight achilles lock. That’s all the dude’s got on the mat and he goes to it like it’s his signature killer move, so let’s not pretend that there any Arlovski-platas in the near future.