Penick's Take
PENICK: Daniel Cormier dominates and other Strikeforce "Barnett vs. Kharitonov" thoughts
Sep 11, 2011 - 9:45:05 PM PENICK: Daniel Cormier dominates and other Strikeforce "Barnett vs. Kharitonov" thoughts

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Saturday's Strikeforce "Barnett vs. Kharitonov" event was yet another entertaining card from the organization, and brought about a few surprising results along with some highly entertaining performances.

The big story coming out of the event was the performance of Olympic wrestler Daniel Cormier, who worked his way to 9-0 in MMA competition with a fantastically dominating victory over Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva. Cormier has continued to show drastic improvement from fight to fight, and on Saturday night he essentially capped off his second year in the sport with his most impressive performance.

The way Cormier's striking has advanced in such a short time has been just excellent to watch, and he completely tore "Bigfoot" apart on the feet, knocking him down multiple times and finally finishing him off with a great uppercut that led to him stopping Silva on the ground.

With a combination of greatly improved striking and world class wrestling, Cormier has emerged as not only a very capable finalist in this Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix, but a legitimate challenger against anyone in the division.

That leads in to the main event of the night, where Josh Barnett did what he was expected to do in submitting Sergei Kharitonov. Barnett's grappling is always his strength, and the way he got Kharitonov to the mat and dominated from there wasn't at all surprising, but it's going to be an altogether different story in his finals fight with Cormier.

It's very interesting that while the top draws in this tournament have all been taken out, this finals fight is still as intriguing as any matchup that could have been put together in the field. With how easily Barnett has been able to implement his catch-wrestling game in his two fights in the tournament, the obvious best path to victory for him is to find a way to work his top game. But against an Olympic wrestler in Cormier, that's not going to be an easy task, and likely makes this main event a striking affair.

While Barnett has an immense amount of experience in comparison to Cormier, the undefeated AKA fighter has proven himself very capable in that area. If his power continues to hold up, that could make for a rough night for Barnett if he finds himself unable to get the fight to the ground.

Of the other three fights on the card, it's hard not to be most impressed by Luke Rockhold, who captured the Strikeforce Middleweight Championship by out-pointing Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza. Rockhold has always been impressive, but he had a very lengthy layoff heading into this fight, and had never gone past the first round before. Not only did he perform well despite the long time off, but he simply out-worked the Champion en route to the unanimous decision. It was a close and hard fought fight, with a few rounds very closely contested, but ultimately Rockhold pulled off the upset to capture the belt. That win will be huge for his career, and depending on the fate of Strikeforce as a promotion, we could see Rockhold get plugged into things at an even higher level sooner rather than later.

In other action on the card, Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal saved fans from another full round of inaction when he knocked Roger Gracie out with a big punch almost out of nowhere. Not much had happened in the fight to that point, but the punch he delivered was excellent and had Gracie out on contact.

Finally, Pat Healy once again pulled off an upset against a fighter expected to defeat him. Maximo Blanco showed off a lot of good things early, including a diversified, fast-paced striking attack, but he continued with his propensity to break the rules, and gassed out after a good first round. Blanco looks much better suited to the featherweight division, and if he is willing to put the work in to make the drop he could be very impressive there, but Healy deserves credit for battling through adversity in the first to take Blanco out in two.

All in all it was another very good event on Showtime from Strikeforce, and though it was overshadowed by the news of the past few weeks, it more than lived up to its modest expectations, and delivered a really good night of fights.