Cris Cyborg successfully defends Strikeforce 145lb Championship

Last night Cris Cyborg successfully defended her Stikeforce 145lb Championship against Marloes Coenen via TKO in the third round in Sunrise, FL. As usual, Big Bad Blog video theater has the match video for your enjoyment. It was a pretty good match. The bottom line is that Cris Cyborg is working on whatever flaws she might have. And I'm not a big fan of the Chute Boxe style in the first place. I find it a little too reckless. She's so strong that she can get away with it. In her fight with Gina Carano, we got a little taste of Cyborg's defense. Her improved defense was more pronounced against Marloes Because Marloes has a lot of tools in her arsenal. But Marloes' striking wasn't very effective. She hit Cris with a solid right just before the fight was stopped and Cris just looked at her. Marloes hung in there in the first round. She landed some shots but she stopped being effective when she stopped moving. She seemed flatfooted to me. So Marloes took it to the ground. She was on the bottom but Marloes can be very dangerous on the bottom. So they were doing this "spider and the fly" routine where Cyborg escaped when she sensed danger. So you had Cyborg on her feet and Marloes on her back with her feet up to defend herself. Ref Jorge Ortiz delayed standing them up and this pattern repeated several times in the first two rounds. That was a mistake. He needed to nip that in the bud because if you let fighters do that stuff, they'll do it. If they know the ref will stop it, they won't do it. And it hurt the flow of the match. The fighters are waiting for the ref to stand rhem up. The most impressive thing about Cyborg was her endurance. Obviously it's something she has been working on since the Yoko Takahashi fight went the distance when it shouldn't have. Cyborg won the first two rounds and she hadn't lost anything in the third. Marloes told Ariel Helwani of Fanhouse in a post match interview that she thought the stoppage was premature. I think she'll change her tune if she watches the match. It probably wasn't as bad as it looked but it looked bad. So I'm OK with the stoppage. I'm not going to get into some of the dumb stuff Mauro Ranallo said during the match. He knows better and needs a slap upside the head. Strikeforce owner Scott Coker told Michael David Smith of Fanhouse that Erin Toughill will be the next challenger probably in late spring. It won't be on the April CBS show. Erin probably has the size and the punching power to handle Cyborg. Cyborg weighed in at 144lb. God knows what she weighed by fight time. Erin can play that game too. So enjoy the fight. Sorry about the popup ad.