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The fights on last night's Strikeforce: Los Angeles card may not have meant much in the grand scheme of things, but for a singular night of action the card more than delivered with a great mix of action and four excellent fights.
The night started off with an excellent stand up battle between K.J. Noons and Conor Heun, had great and exciting performances from Tim Kennedy and Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos and was book-ended by very solid main event clash between Robbie Lawler and Renato "Babalu" Sobral.
Noons and Heun battled for three rounds in an extremely fun stand up war. Heun stayed more active throughout the bout, constantly pressuring Noons and trying to land punches and kicks, but it was Noons doing damage with a more accurate and technically sound boxing game. He severely cut and bruised Heun's face, which was a bloody mess by the end of the fight. Heun was brought in as a late replacement, and just like he did against Jorge Gurgel last year Heun put on an exciting performance in the loss.
Tim Kennedy was even more impressive, relentlessly going for a takedown on Trevor Prangley against the cage despite being hip tossed twice early on. His scrambles were excellent, and his transition to the choke to finish the fight came out of nowhere. Now that he's training full time, he's got nothing but possibilities ahead of him, and this may have been his most impressive victory to date.
Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos made his welterweight debut against DREAM Welterweight Champion Marius Zaromskis, and the two put on a hell of a scrap before Santos finished Zaromskis off in the first round. Zaromskis was very sloppy in the fight, and while he connected on some combinations of his own, it was Santos landing the more effective strikes, rocking Zaromskis on multiple occasions. He finally caught a kick and dropped Zaromskis, allowing him to drop down with a few hammer fists to finish the fight.
The main event was a great back and forth bout as well, and though technically Strikeforce set this up as an opportunity for a title shot for both fighters, it was essentially a meaningless catchweight bout. Sobral basically refused the title shot, asking instead for a fight with Dan Henderson after winning the bout.
The broadcast still featured the same issues that have plagued every Strikeforce event on Showtime, i.e. inept commentary and ending the event with 20 minutes left on their timeslot, but for this night the action in the cage completely overshadowed the negatives and provided an extremely enjoyable night of fights in the middle of the week.
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