Strikeforce ‘Heavy Artillery’ Preview

Roger Gracie vs. Kevin Randleman

The Breakdown: The golden child of MMA’s first family, Gracie makes his Strikeforce debut against Randleman, a longtime Hammer House disciple and staph magnet, in a bout to which Brazilian jiu-jitsu acolytes the world over are counting down. A former UFC heavyweight champion, Randleman has advanced well beyond his prime, and his submission defense leaves a lot to be desired.

The expectations for any Gracie have to be tempered a bit by the fact that almost any of them can make a healthy living doing private seminars, and this one, given his lofty status in the grappling world, could cash checks on his name for a long time. That convenient cash flow makes pursuing an MMA career seem less than tempting and remains a big reason why the Gracie clan has become all but absent from the modern MMA landscape. That does not mean much in this fight, however, as Gracie will not need a particularly intense training camp to snatch hold of whatever submission opportunity Randleman dangles in front of him.

The otherworldly athleticism Randleman once used to compensate for his obvious technical deficiencies has all but disappeared. In its stead sits an old-school converted wrestler with little in the way of secondary skills and an injury history that belongs in the New England Journal of Medicine. Gracie may be just as one-dimensional as Randleman, but he will enter the cage in his physical prime, and submissions win a lot more matches than takedowns.

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The Bottom Line: Get your buddies together and add some interest to this fight by setting up a pool on what submission Gracie hits on Randleman.