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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
For the second time in a one-month span, a Zuffa-run event has been canceled due to injury. The latest is Saturday's Strikeforce event in Sacramento, which has been canceled following an injury to headliner Gilbert Melendez.
The Strikeforce Lightweight Champion suffered an injury in training, taking him out of his title defense against Pat Healy. Showtime made the decision not to air the event without a main event, and Strikeforce announced overnight that they had canceled the card.
"When Showtime informed us that it would not be airing the event, we made the difficult decision to cancel Saturday's card in Sacramento," Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker said. "Without a television partner, we simply could not move forward with this event. We wish Gilbert a speedy recovery and will work diligently and quickly to reschedule the fighters affected by this news on upcoming cards."
Penick's Analysis: Two events in one month canceled because of very weak undercards is just not good. This decision was essentially made for them with Showtime pulling the plug on televising the event, but it's the same idea and same reasoning as UFC 151. Without a main event, the other fights weren't deemed acceptable for the event, and thus the card was canceled. Strikeforce is more susceptible to this, because they have so very few legitimate headliners, so they're going to be more at risk to this. It's insane that we've now had two events like this canceled in such a short time when it was essentially unprecedented up until last month.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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