(Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)
In the 17 months that Josh Thomson has been Strikeforce’s lightweight champion, he has defended his title exactly zero times. His only fight since grabbing the belt from Gilbert Melendez in June 2008 was a non-title squash match against Ashe Bowman last September, and he hasn’t been able to compete at all this year due to a series of leg injuries. And even though a planned rematch with now-interim-champ Melendez has been canceled three times already, Strikeforce is rolling the dice again. According to GracieFighter, Thomson vs. Melendez II will go down at "Evolution," Strikeforce’s December 19th show at the HP Pavilion in San Jose.
Despite being constantly jerked around by Thomson’s withdrawals, Melendez has been able to fight twice since last June, scoring stoppage victories over Rodrigo Damm and Mitsuhiro Ishida. The Ishida fight at Carano vs. Cyborg avenged Melendez’s first career loss; beating Thomson would clean his slate completely. With Thomson coming off a year-and-a-half of injuries and inactivity, you have to like El Niño’s chances. The current lineup for Strikeforce: Evolution looks like this…
– Josh Thomson vs Gilbert Melendez (for Unified Lightweight Championship)
– Cung Le vs Scott Smith (MW)
– Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal vs Mike Whitehead (LHW)
– Matt Lindland vs. Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (MW)
– Robbie Lawler vs TBA (MW)
– Evangelista Santos vs. TBA (WW)
– Scott Lighty vs. Antwain Britt (LHW)
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I'm sick of this guy. He's completely delusional if he thinks that he can actually put up any sort of fight against GSP.
He is right, though, regarding Hardy's position as number one contender.However, NOBODY in the WW division deserves to be a number one contender. GSP already proved that against Koscheck once before, and the second fight would be more of the same. And the same goes for Alves and Fitch or whoever else the UFC wants to throw in GSP's path.