(Props: YouTube.com/Strikeforce)

Strikeforce held a press conference yesterday plugging this weekend’s “Rockhold vs. Jardine” card at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Some highlights…

- Keith Jardine hasn’t weighed 185 pounds since the ninth grade.

- King Mo plans to “put them thangs” on Lorenz Larkin. Man, I hope that doesn’t mean what we think it means.

- Scott Coker thinks Robbie Lawler vs. Adlan Amagov won’t make it out of the second round. As usual, Lawler is as silent as a cigar-store Indian.

After the jump: A highlight reel of the fighters in action. The editor wisely chose to use a clip of Jardine’s TKO of Forrest Griffin from 2006 rather than his sole appearance in Strikeforce.

(Props: allelbows)

Four months after beating the Strikeforce middleweight belt off of Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Luke Rockhold returns to action this Saturday night in a title defense that even he isn’t that psyched about. But considering his 7-0 stretch under the Strikeforce banner — with six of those wins coming in the first round — it’s clear that Rockhold’s biggest accomplishments are still in front of him. If you’re not familiar with the AKA rising star, check out this “Fight Journal” video from allelbows, in which Rockhold makes some media rounds, discusses the downfall of Brock Lesnar, has a run-in with a very humble Keith Jardine, and shows how he puts his championship belt to sleep every night.

Okay, maybe it’s not the card of the year — and four of the five matches are undeniable squash matches — but if you’ll be around on Saturday, come by for our liveblog of the Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine Showtime broadcast, starting at 10 p.m. ET.

(Pat Barry lets a seven-year-old haul off on his face for four minutes. This is basically what I imagine Pat’s sparring sessions with Brock Lesnar looked like. Props: LIAM_B)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere…

- Tito Ortiz Says His Final MMA Fight Will Take Place in July, Possibly Against Forrest Griffin (MiddleEasy)

- Lyoto Machida Undergoes Successful Surgery, Calls Out Chael Sonnen (MMA Fighting)

- Jim Ross: Brock Lesnar Returning to the WWE Simply Isn’t Happening (MMA Mania)

- Top 10 Best Fights From the UFC in 2011 (The Fight Nerd)

- Luke Rockhold: Keith Jardine Does Not Deserve a Title Shot (Lowkick.Blitzcorner.com)

- FightLine Exclusive Interview With Karo Parisyan (FightLine)

- Michael Schiavello Rips Fedor Emelianenko and M-1 Global for ‘Diva’ Behavior (5th Round)

- UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit Gets UFC Primetime Treatment (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Strikeforce: Robbie Lawler’s 10 Greatest Fights (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- Five Big Items of Fallout From MMA’s Two NYE Shows (Fight Opinion)

- UFC for XBox Live a Dud in Debut (MMA Payout)

- A Viking Send-Off for Brock Lesnar (MMA Convert)

(Unlicensed plastic surgery: It rarely works out the way you want it to.)

As we mentioned yesterday, Strikeforce is clinging on to life despite the fact that their biggest stars have either been poached or are on hiatus from fighting, and their championship belts now have less legitimacy than that chick’s doo-doo back tattoo. So how sketchy have things gotten over there? This sketchy:

Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold is slated to defend his belt against former UFC veteran Keith Jardine on Jan. 7, MMA Fighting has confirmed with sources close to the fight. The title fight is expected to headline the organization’s first event at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino…Rockhold was expected to meet Tim Kennedy in his first title defense, but according to sources, Kennedy couldn’t commit to the fight due to an undisclosed injury.

(Photos: MMAMania.com & CombatLifestyle.com)

It looks like all of the circumstantial evidence suggesting that Tim Kennedy was packing his rucksack and heading to the UFC was a false alarm. That, or Zuffa realized that Strikeforce’s middleweight herd was thin on credible challengers and decided to keep their most decorated fighter on the roster for a bit longer. Tatame.com reports that the bout is likely to take place in January of next year.

Luke Rockhold returned to action last September, shaking off seventeen months of ring rust in a title bout with Strikeforce Middleweight Champion Ronaldo Souza. Rockhold was predictably a massive underdog, but he got the better of “Jacare” throughout the five round affair and took the belt in a unanimous decision. That “W” marked Rockhold’s seventh straight victory.

Kennedy was unsuccessful in his own title bid against Jacare last October, taking the champ the distance but coming up short on all three judges’ scorecards. Since then he’s racked up wins over Melvin Manhoef and Robbie Lawler.

This is second time the pair has been scheduled to fight. Their original bout was scrapped back in February when Rockhold suffered a leg injury in training.

(Video courtesy of YouTube/ClinchGear)

In a recent interview Dana White did with 5thRound.com, the UFC president clarified that Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson will now be fighting exclusively for the UFC, which has led to even more speculation about the future of the promotion that was bought by Zuffa earlier this year. Since acquiring Strikeforce the UFC has picked clean the lion’s share of the promotion’s marquee talent, including Henderson and two of its other six remaining champions, Nick Diaz and Alistair Overeem.

King Mo, during the UFC application process post-fight interview. Props: Showtime Sports

Last night, the real story behind “Barnet vs. Kharitonov had nothing to do with the heavyweight grand prix. It had nothing to do with the middleweight championship of a sinking organization. Last night, as with every other Strikeforce show since the promotion was purchased by Zuffa, was little more than an audition. It was about who will get a UFC contract when Strikeforce goes under, and who will have to go through TUF. The fans knew it, the announcers knew it, going as far as confirming the Belfort vs. Le rumor, and the fighters definitely knew it.

Despite Strikeforce’s best efforts to hype Josh Barnett vs. Sergei Kharitonov as a potentially close fight, we all knew what to expect: A repeat of Kharitonov vs. Monson, except with a far superior version of Jeff Monson. Because of this, it’s hard to be impressed with anything that Josh Barnett does at this point. The tournament’s biggest names and most intriguing matchups for Barnett- Fedor, Werdum and Overeem- were all removed well before last night. Barnett has become such an overwhelming favorite to win that when he wins, he’s simply living up to expectations. He was paired up against an opponent with weak grappling credentials, knew he would dominate the fight once Kharitonov was on the ground, and fought accordingly. At least the tournament was set up so that he would get to face a competent grappler in the finals.

(Dan Cormier does a dead-on impression of how his face is going to look after he gets hit with one of those fists. / Photo via MMAFighting.com)

Tonight, four big-ass dudes become two, and we mean that in the straightest way possible. Strikeforce’s lovably meaningless heavyweight tournament reaches its semi-final phase tonight at the U.S. Bank Arena in Cicinnati, Ohio, supported by a middleweight title fight and a compelling light-heavyweight feature between Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal and Roger Gracie.

Round-by-round results for the “Barnett vs. Kharitonov” Showtime main card will be piling up after the jump starting at 10:30 p.m. ET. CagePotato liveblog-mercenary Matt Kaplan will be handling business tonight, so please make him feel welcome, and refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest.

VidProps: BloodstreamMMA100/YouTube

Strikeforce is forging ahead with this crazy “Grand Prix” gimmick — no telling how they came up with a concept like that, but props to them — and the semifinals could go down in September. If everything goes according to plan, the event should be packed with good matchups. Let’s take a look.

The heavyweight GP will continue with Alistair Overeem squaring off with Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, and “War Master” Josh Barnett against “The Russian Concussion” Sergei Kharitonov. Those two fights alone would be enough to carry a card, but Coker and company want to make it worth your while to watch, so they’ve continued to put together bouts with an eye on producing a blockbuster.

Every other bout currently rumored for the show features a current or former champion for the Strikeforce banner, including a title match for current middleweight champ “Jacare” Souza.

(Best finish of the night: Luke Rockhold vs. Paul Bradley)

Takayo Hashi may have been touted as the second-best 135-pound female fighter in the world coming into her title fight against Sarah Kaufman at last night’s Strikeforce Challengers event in San Jose, but for most of the five-round contest she looked woefully outmatched. Kaufman’s superior standup ruled the night, as the undefeated Canadian — and new "welterweight" women’s champion of Strikeforce — dropped Hashi twice in the first round, and spent the rest of the fight chasing the Japanese grappling specialist around the cage, landing punches whenever she was in range.

Kaufman successfully avoided the occasional takedown and submission attempts from her opponent, and outside of a teep kick that found its mark on her face in the final frame, she made it through all 25 minutes relatively untouched. After the fight’s conclusion — a 50-45 decision on all three judges’ scorecards — Kaufman apologized to the fans for her inability to finish Hashi, and generously credited Hashi’s constant movement: "It was really hard to get a lot of clean shots on her consecutively,” Kaufman said. “I would have loved to have finished the fight, but I couldn’t have done any more than I did.”