Cris Cybrorg to defend Strikeforce title against Jan Finney

Cris Cyborg

Last night Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker confirmed that Cris "Cyborg" Santos will defend her Strikeforce 145lb Women's Championship against veteran fighter Jan Finney on the June 26 show in San Jose. I can certainly understand why Jan would take this fight but it's not a good matchup for her and really not worthy of a title fight. The biggest problem is that Jan normally fights at 135lb and in fact was scheduled to fight Shayna Baszler in the final of the Freestyle Cage Fighting 135lb tournament on June 10. The winner of that tournament gets a Strikeforce contract. Adrienne Jenkins will fill in at that show. She lost to Jan in the semi finals. No doubt Coker threw plenty of cash at FCF to let Jan out of her contract. The tournament seems even more pointless than before. Cyborg is tough for legit 145 pounders to handle. Jan's record is 8-7. She's won her last four matches but two of them were against newcomers and the other two were in the FCF tournament. She did fight and lose to Erin Toughill at 145lb in Nov. 2008. Fans may also recall that Jan was supposed to fight Gina Carano a few years ago in EliteXC but Gina got sick and the fight was cancelled. Jan deserves credit for stepping up but this ain't gonna be pretty. The bottom line is that Coker had very few options because of their mishandling of Erin Toughill. The original plan was for Erin to challenge for the title at this show. That's what he said in January. But the poor communication between Strikeforce and Erin derailed that. Coker said last night that Erin will fight this summer and will then fight Cyborg in the fall. What about other 145lb fighters? The truth is there aren't many to begin with and most of them have less experience than Jan. His options were limited at best. He said they were looking at a European fighter (probably Upcoming Glory tournament winner Romy Ruyssen) but it probably doesn't matter much as Erin is perceived as the one real challenger to Cyborg's title. I don't expect this fight to last long.