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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Just over a week out from their December 4 event in St. Louis, Strikeforce has lost their mainstream draw on the card, as Herschel Walker has been forced out of the event.
According to a report from the Associate Press, Walker suffered a deep cut under his left eye and has been pulled from the card. The cut required several stitches, necessitating Walker's removal from the card. The cut occurred while Walker was training at the American Kickboxing Academy on Monday.
The 48 year old former long time NFL pro and Heisman Trophy winning college football player was set to make his second appearance in the Strikeforce cage at the Scottrade center in the night's co-main event. His opponent was scheduled to be Scott Carson.
Walker made his MMA debut in January with Strikeforce, defeating Greg Nagy by TKO in the third round.
Strikeforce's December 4 card is headlined by a light heavyweight bout between Dan Henderson and Renato "Babalu" Sobral, and airs live on Showtime.
Penick's Analysis: This hurts Strikeforce's promotion of this card immensely. They were banking on getting more eyeballs to tune in for Walker as they did in January, and now the viewership for this event is likely to plummet. And that's not to say that Henderson and Babalu aren't worthy of more viewers tuning in, just that Strikeforce hasn't promoted the event all that well to this point. They haven't had a major event since the beginning of October, and though they've run two Challengers cards since then there hasn't been a real heavy sell for this event. The fact that it's going up against The Ultimate Fighter 12 finale doesn't help it, either. Most hardcore fans will watch one of them live and DVR the other, but they're going to need to ramp up the promotion over the next week on the Henderson-Babalu matchup and the other fights on this card because losing one of their main selling points definitely sets them back.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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