Jake Shields, the former EliteXC welterweight champion, will fight for the interim Strikeforce middleweight title in October. Strikeforce founder and CEO Scott Coker informed FanHouse of the news at Tuesday's Gina Carano-Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos press conference in New York City.Shields last competed for Strikeforce in June, defeating Robbie Lawler via guillotine submission in a 182-pound catchweight bout.
The current Strikeforce middleweight champion, Cung Le, has yet to defend the title since defeating Frank Shamrock in March 2008. Since then, he has put his fighting career on hold to appear in a number of films, most recently Fighting.
According to Le's IMDB.com page, he currently has one film completed, three in post-production, and two in production. In other words, his schedule seems pretty full at the moment. Coker also mentioned that Le is getting married on August 8.
Coker would not say who Shields will be facing for the title, or exactly when and where this fight would take place.
The Vancouver Sun recently reported that Shields was in preliminary talks to face Matt Lindland or Vitor Belfort for the interim title in August, but "but Showtime TV executives wanted to give him more prominent billing." Belfort is currently scheduled to face Jorge Santiago at "Affliction: Trilogy" on August, so that match-up seems doubtful. However, a fight against the highly-respected Lindland would make a whole lot of sense at the moment.
Note: stay tuned for FanHouse's full video interview with Coker in the coming days.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-14-2009 @ 9:37PM
ihateemo said...
This doesn't make any sense to me. Shouldn't he be fighting at welterweight? Or is Strikeforce so shallow that they can't give him a decent welterweight competitor beyond Diaz?
I guess Shields is going to be holding two belts soon...
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7-14-2009 @ 10:23PM
RJ said...
I guess you're a new fan because this is old news. Shields isn't going to be fighting at 170 any time soon.
He first refused to accept a fight with Joe Riggs so they came up with the Lawler match after that he said he wanted to fight Cung Le next, but he's pretending to be Chuck Norris and the Matt Lindland rumors have been going on for awhile, and that's not exactly the best match up for Shields.
7-15-2009 @ 12:39AM
ihateemo said...
Oh, I didn't realise him and Diaz were friends. That explains it. ^_^
7-15-2009 @ 12:57PM
richardbikle said...
i thought Diaz's last fight was at middleweight. I think Shields should fight at WW, he doesnt need to give up that much size.
7-15-2009 @ 4:09PM
ihateemo said...
Diaz's last fight was a catchweight (180), but his next fight against Riggs will be at 170 for the welterweight championship.
7-15-2009 @ 5:22PM
Mark said...
"The current Strikeforce middleweight champion, Cung Le, has yet to defend the title since defeating Frank Shamrock in March 2008. Since then, he has put his fighting career on hold to appear in a number of films, most recently Fighting"
What's with this interim crap. If you go that long without defending a title should be stripped of it, and this fight should be for THE championship.
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7-16-2009 @ 1:59AM
Spud said...
It seems to me that strikeforce is running out of competition for their posterboy. Friends won't fight friends so Diaz vs Shields could never happen even though that would probably be the best fight strikeforce could promote. Really the situation here is that Le either needs to stop filming nd fight or Shields needs to talk to Dana White nd get in the UFC where they can get him actual competition at welterweight where he belongs, plus if Shields is the number 3 welterweight he should have no problem fighting for the belt against gsp after a fight or two
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