Scott Smith

(How's taste this career-shattering loss? Photo by Esther Lin for Showtime Sports.)

What a weekend of fights, and amazingly, all without the benefit of the initials “UFC.”  Instead we had Strikeforce and the WEC (okay, a Zuffa property, but still) teaming up to blow our minds without charging us fifty bucks for a pay-per-view.  Now we begin the difficult task of using the Potato Index’s completely arbitrary numerical rankings system to see who’s up and who’s down after the eventful weekend.

Mike Brown +209
He beat Faber fair and square, no flukes needed, and he also proved he can last through five tough rounds.  Instead of making broken hand-related excuses for Faber, let’s finally all give Brown the unqualified props he clearly deserves.

Urijah Faber -37
We can play the ‘what if?’ game with his broken hand all we want, but that’s the fight game.  That he still fought well and fought hard afterwards, even in a losing effort, deserves to be mentioned.  But he’s not the world’s best featherweight as long as Brownie is around, and that deserves mentioning too.

(Props: MMA Scraps)

What up, guys? I just got back from shooting some footage at the Strikeforce press conference, which I'll be sharing with you on Monday. The basic gist of the Q+A session was: Joe Riggs and Scott Smith had to go to the hospital after their fights, Andrei Arlovski just didn't feel like sticking around, Jake Shields has made up his mind that he's not going to give Joe Riggs the time of day, Nick Diaz doesn't consider Cung Le to be an important opponent, and Brett Rogers is just gonna keep doin' work. (Direct quote.) Plus, Brett Rogers told me the secret to his KO power, I chatted with Gilbert Melendez about his preparation for his rematch with Josh Thomson, and Nick Diaz provided me with an exclusive rant. In the meantime, video of the Rogers/Arlovski knockout is above, and video of the Diaz/Smith scrap is after the jump. Talk soon...
 

("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.