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Strikeforce's Challengers events, by virtue of featuring lesser known and up and coming talent, have been a bastion of bad officiating over the six events that have taken place on Showtime, and Friday was no exception. The California State Athletic Commission appointed referees did not have a good showing of themselves, and that's being nice about it. The most glaring error came in the Showtime broadcast's opening bout, where Yancy Medeiros was kicked low by Raul Castillo and was given virtually no time to recover. Whereas he was supposed to receive five minutes to recover from the blow, which clearly hurt him, the official repeatedly told him he was alright to continue and rushed him to restart the bout. It was completely unacceptable and not the only time it happened during the night.
Outside of the officiating, there were some definite bright spots on the card. Medeiros was very impressive in his first bout outside of Hawaii. His takedown defense throughout all three rounds made the real difference, because he very clearly had Castillo outclassed on the feet. It was the type of performance that makes these Challengers cards enjoyable, as it gave Medeiros a showcase to have this fight; and as he continues to get bookings on Challengers events in the future he can try to move himself up to bigger events later on.
The other impressive performances from the night came from Tarec Saffiedine and Luke Rockhold. Saffiedine outpointed James Terry en route to a unanimous decision victory, but it was his quick striking and takedown defense, similar to Medeiros earlier in the night, that made an impression throughout the fight.
Rockhold once again dispatched of an opponent in quick and violent fashion, overpowering a much smaller Paul Bradley and forcing a stoppage with some brutal knees to the body that crumpled Bradley against the cage. He's a guy that deservers some more exposure in his next bout, and putting him in a spot on one of the main Showtime cards the next time out would be a smart move for Strikeforce.
The eye poke stoppage in the Trevor Prangley vs. Karl Amoussou bout was highly unfortunate, as the fight had the makings of an entertaining back and forth bout before the unintentional blow. If Amoussou's eye is alright, the two should be matched up again as soon as possible. With Strikeforce's next Challengers event coming at the end of next month, it would be a perfect opportunity for a rematch, and would help that be an even better card.
Finally, the Sarah Kaufman-Takayo Hashi bout was just not an enjoyable fight to watch. Kaufman attributed the way the fight went down to Hashi continuing to backpedal and her desire to avoid the ground game she brings. While that's fine, and she did what she needed to win, the result was one of the worst main events of a televised event in quite some time. It was unfortunate as well, as Kaufman has been exciting in her past performances and it will be harder to hype her next bout after that five round tentative performance.
All in all the event brought what it promised to bring, and that's a number of fights with up and coming talent looking to break out to the bigger events. A few looked able to do so, while others need more time and seasoning, and outside of the way the two top fights went down the rest of the night was as good as it could have been expected. Hopefully next month's event is a better showing of what the Challengers series can be.
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