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Bobby Lashley entered Strikeforce: Houston on Saturday night as the heavily hyped heavyweight prospect in his bout against Chad Griggs. Griggs wasn't mentioned much in official hype heading into the fight card, and Lashley was wholly expected to defeat him to move on to bigger tests in the heavyweight division.
But that's not how things went down at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
Lashley utilized his wrestling and top control for much of the first two rounds, keeping Griggs on his back while trying to improve his position and keep control.
But Griggs managed to get back to his feet on a few occasions, forcing Lashley to expend more energy trying to get him back to the ground. On one of those subsequent takedown attempts, Griggs tagged Lashley with an uppercut that opened a bad cut under his left eye that continued bleeding the rest of the way.
The fight took a turn on Lashley in the second round. While in the mount, but not staying extremely active, referee Jon Schorle inexplicably called for a stand up. But there was some confusion in the moment as Schorle then had doctor's check on Lashley's cut. He then restarted them standing rather than in the advantageous position that Lashley held.
An exhausted Lashley lunged for a takedown, but Griggs held him off and unleashed a torrent of punches, many of which appeared to land to the back of Lashley's head, until the round ended. But though he survived to the end of the round, Lashley was battered and couldn't make it back to his feet immediately, causing Schorle to stop the fight.
Lashley was then taken to the hospital on a stretcher after the fight. He was released early this morning and was said to be "extremely dehydrated."
With the loss derailing Lashley's hype train, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker said after the event, "We're going to talk to Lashley later and he'll have to do some soul-searching to really decide what he wants to do. If he decides to fight, we'd like to have him back."
Should he return to the cage, Strikeforce still wants to put together a bout between him and fellow WWE alum Dave Bautista. Bautista is not signed to a contract as of yet, but Coker said they are in talks, and it appears likely it could come together.
Penick's Analysis: Referee Jon Schorle did such a terrible job in this fight. A fight can't be stood up from the mount like that. Lashley was exhausted, but if a guy is mounted on top of his opponent, it's up to the fighter on the ground to get out of that position. The fact that it wasn't restarted on the ground if he was just having the cut checked is unacceptable.
And, had Lashley been able to ride out the round, there's always a possibility he would have been able to recover enough with the minute in between rounds to complete another takedown. On top of that, a number of the punches Griggs was throwing were landing to the back of Lashley's head, which directly led to that stoppage at the end of the round.
That said, Griggs deserves a ton of credit for riding out the storm, allowing Lashley to exhaust himself and constantly doing damage when he had the opportunity. I think it's very likely that he would have finished it in the third the way Lashley was tiring out, but the way the fight ended up going down was just unfortunate. It also once again showcased a continued trend with Strikeforce in the hyping of one fighter they're expecting to win. It happened throughout this card, and completely bit them in the ass.
As for the Bautista fight, while they'll have less of a complaint for the actual matchup itself, it makes even less sense to take up a spot on a Showtime card. With how Lashley looked in this one, I'm not sure he's going to be bringing the ratings they think this fight will bring.
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