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Strikeforce
STRIKEFORCE CHALLENGERS RESULTS: Sarah Kaufman outpoints Takayo Hashi to become first Strikeforce Women's 135 lb. Champion as crowd clears out of arena
Sarah Kaufman was crowned the first Strikeforce Women's 135 lb. Champion on Friday night, defeating Takayo Hashi by decision in a lackluster five round bout in the main event of Strikeforce's sixth Challengers series event on Showtime.
The fight was never in question throughout the entire five rounds, as Kaufman continually connected on short combinations and on several occasions scored knockdown punches. There wasn't much else to the fight, however, as Kaufman was seemingly content to land her punches without ever attempting to finish.
In what was only the second women's MMA fight to headline a main televised card, the bout came nowhere near the excitement of the first that Strikeforce put on last August, when Cris Cyborg was crowned the first 145 lb Women's Champ against Gina Carano. Kaufman was tentative throughout the bout, and the crowd responded by filing out of the building following the second round.
With the fight looking to continue the stagnant fashion of the second round, nearly half of the 2,500 in attendance filed out of the arena. According to Dave Meltzer's report at Yahoo! Sports, the crowd had mainly showed up for the local amateur fighters on the undercard, and by the main event the crowd was simply unfamiliar with either woman.
Kaufman explained her strategy after the fight, saying "“I wanted to please the crowd, but she kept moving backwards and made it difficult.”
“I wasn’t seeing the chance to finish. It’s hard to finish someone who is always running. [The ground is where] she wanted the fight, so I was going to take the smartest route possible by keeping it standing. I didn’t want to give her the chance to get an upkick or a submission."
It was an unfortunately uneventful main event, but with Kaufman now crowned atop the Women's 135 lb division in Strikeforce she'll have more chances to showcase her skills in the future.
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