Evangelista Santos

(Cristiane and Evangelista's high school class voted them "Most Likely to Push Your Shit In." Photo courtesy of Showtime Sports.)

No rest for the hardcore MMA fan: Strikeforce’s second "Challengers" event goes down this Friday at the ShoWare Center in Kent, Washington — a day before the TUF 9 finale in Las Vegas. Headlining the Strikeforce card will be a middleweight matchup between two exciting strikers: Team Jackson product “Smokin’” Joey Villasenor and Chute Boxe veteran Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos. Both guys are coming off extended layoffs; Villasenor hasn’t competed since his first-round TKO win over Phil Baroni last May, and Santos is coming back from an elbow injury suffered in a Sengoku fight against Siyar Bahadurzada in September.

Also on the card: Highly-regarded welterweight Nick Thompson takes a middleweight fight against Tim Kennedy out of desperation, UFC vet Jorge Gurgel makes his Strikeforce debut against bully-beater Conor Heun, and Sarah Kaufman and Shayna Baszler will test out Strikeforce's new five-minute-rounds policy in the night's sole women's feature. Not bad for premium cable. The full lineup is after the jump.

(This Cyborg, not this one. Photo courtesy of CageToday.com.)

Maybe Strikeforce's roster isn't so thin after all. According to a new press release sent out by the fight league, Strikeforce will hold its second "Challengers" event at the ShoWare Center in Kent, Washington on Friday, June 19th — just two weeks after "Lawler vs. Shields" goes down in St. Louis — and a host of prominent names are already booked.

(Jorge Masvidal vs. Ryan Schulz; more videos here.)

From today's Sengoku show at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan...

Middleweight GP 1st Round:
Yuki Sasaki def. Yuki Kondo via submission (rear-naked choke), round 2
Siyar Bahadurzada def. Evangelista Santos via TKO (injury), round 1
Jorge Santiago def. Logan Clark via submission (arm triangle choke), round 1
Kazuhiro Nakamura def. Paul Cahoon via unanimous decision

Lightweights:
Jorge Masvidal def. Ryan Schultz via TKO, round 1
Kiuma Kunioku def. Sol Kwon via unanimous decision

Heavyweights:
Muhammed Lawal def. Travis Wiuff via TKO, round 1

Light-Heavyweights:
Xande Ribeiro def. Takashi Sugiura via TKO, round 3

In other weekend fight news...

-- Phil Baroni scored his third-straight win as a welterweight on Friday with his unanimous decision victory over WEC vet Olaf Alfonso at Palace Fighting Championships 10 in Lemoore, California. Baroni later apologized for his performance, saying he couldn't find his rhythm in the fight.

-- Jeff Monson choked out MMA cautionary tale Mark Kerr in the first round of their bout at Don King Productions' debut Vengeance FC card, held last night in Concord, North Carolina. It was Kerr's ninth loss in his last 11 fights.

(Sak: Felled by a weeping sore.)

Helloooooooo! Anybody still alive out there? It seems like the entire MMA world has clocked out early to get a jump on their Good Friday parties. Here's the news we were too disinterested to mention up until now, when we really have no choice:

— Due to visa problems in Brasil, Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos has been forced to pull out of his match against Joey Villasenor at next Saturday’s Strikeforce/EliteXC event. Said Strikeforce veep Mike Afromowitz, "The delay in his arrival would jeopardize him getting licensed in time for the fight..we’re still looking to finalize a replacement.”

— Unrelated to the Santos drop-out, a match between welterweights Tiki Ghosn (9-7) and Luke Stewart (5-0) has been added to the undercard of the Strikeforce/EliteXC show. Ghosn has lost his last four matches; though he's done well in smaller promotions, he went 0-4 in the UFC and 1-3 in WEC fights.

— Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza has been added to DREAM's middleweight tournament — which will kick off April 29th in Japan — and has been working out at Xtreme Couture with Wanderlei Silva and Robert Drysdale. Souza has been undefeated since losing his professional debut at Jungle Fight 1 in 2003, and has never been out of the first round.

— And why isn't Kazushi Sakuraba participating in the DREAM middleweight tournament? "I got a small scab on my leg which was [s]till bleeding." Aw come on man, you gotta fight through that!

— The new EliteXC/CBS TV spots, starring Kimbo Slice, can be seen here.

The Sengoku submission party...

Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Peter Graham — Their pre-fight-beef gets squashed quickly in the ring as Fujita takes Graham down and chokes him out in 83 seconds.

Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos vs. Makoto Takimoto — 'Borg comes out swinging in his usual style, but is even more dominant on the ground and gets the better of Takimoto in a heel-hook war.

Kazuo Misaki vs. Siyar Bahadurzada — Bahadurzada dishonors his Shooto belt by succumbing to a guillotine choke in the second round.

Earlier: Highlights from Gomi/Ludwig and Barnett/Yoshida.