Was the Lawal and Lashley Hype Justified?

Hopefully all of you got the chance to check out Strikeforce’s offering last weekend, as their live event in Houston showcased some good action and surprising finishes. Amidst all of it, appearances by two highly-regarded former amateur wrestlers were a big part of the show, as both Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal and Bobby Lashley were in action.

There are a few obvious angles to tackle when looking at Strikeforce’s latest offering, all of which are pretty strong storylines. However, while awful refereeing and horrible strategic choices by a few fighters are not exactly rare in mixed martial arts, the first losses of two former wrestling standouts will be a bigger story as time passes.

Let’s look at the man who looked to be Strikeforce’s light heavyweight champ for a long time, King Mo Lawal. If Chris Berman was sitting with me watching Strikeforce: Houston, he would have looked at me, shrugged and said “that’s why they play the games!” in his incredibly grating voice. Then, I would have struck him repeatedly with the nearest inanimate object, but that doesn’t mean the man wouldn’t have made a valid point.

It seems like every time MMA fans or media think they have something all figured out, you have your Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcantes to screw it all up and make you realize that even trying to predict MMA fights is often a joke. My awful prediction records aside, King Mo definitely showed that he has a long way to go yet in his fight with Feijao. In MMA forum troll-speak, you could say he was “exposed”.

King Mo’s wrestling is as good as ever, but like many wrestlers before him, he has fallen in love with the idea of showing off his striking, even appearing to channel Anderson Silva at times during his fight. Sure, he had a couple of nice slams and takedowns, but he was more than happy to let the majority of the fight be a kickboxing match.

You could say that Lawal might have been concerned about Feijao’s jiu-jitsu, or maybe he just thought he had the better striking of the two. Either way, his decision resulted in his being cracked, and his reaction to it was to slug it out. Of course, it didn’t go his way.

Meanwhile, Bobby Lashley took a much more disciplined approach, but met a similar fate in his fight with Chad Griggs. Unlike Lawal, Lashley was focused on taking down his opponent throughout the fight, but his gas tank simply did not hold up. That, combined with some surprisingly well-timed strikes by Griggs during Lashley’s takedown attempts wore down the big man. A head-scratching decision by awful referee Jon Schorle (more on that later) resulted in a completely gassed and apparently dehydrated Lashley working for a takedown that he couldn’t finish while Griggs pounded away with hammer fists. Schorle stopped the fight soon after.

So, how good are the two of them? Does this mean the hype for either man was unfounded?

In Lawal’s case, I still think he’s a top ten-level light heavyweight. That is, he’s a top ten fighter skill-wise. However, his cockiness has already earned him a loss, and will continue to do so if he doesn’t fight in a smarter way. Despite the result of the fight, he did look good for the most part while striking, and it looks like his poor reaction to the clinch was what hurt him the most during the final sequence. That can all be worked on, and anyone who thinks that new champ Feijao Cavalcante has a better future than King Mo Lawal is just crazy.

With Lashley, the future is considerably less bright. Lashley is not the grappler or athlete that Mo is, and is older than him at 34 years old. Furthermore, while he fights more to his strengths than Mo does, he has to do so because he hasn’t developed the supplementary skills to complement his wrestling that Lawal has. I really don’t see his stiff-looking striking getting much better than it is right now, either.

A more troubling problem with Lashley is that he has not adopted a particularly strong top game so far, which we saw in the fight with Griggs. Even from the side mount, Lashley was content to simply lay across his opponent and pepper him with smaller shots. Against a fighter who was a regional fixture more than a real prospect, Lashley could do little to threaten him with hard strikes or submission attempts.

I think some of this had to do more with Lashley not being in the best possible shape, which may be both due to his frame and perhaps underestimating his opponent. Lashley has spoken about future title shots and fights against top heavyweights for a long time now, as if it was a foregone conclusion that he would one day be in the title mix and ranked among the best in the world. It is not exactly far-fetched to think that he just may have not been as motivated as he should have been during his training for the Griggs fight.

Therefore, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that his cardio will usually be a lot better than it was on Saturday night. However, I don’t think he will be developing the striking he’ll need to survive on his feet with the likes of Alistair Overeem or the ground game to threaten (and stay out of trouble with) the likes of Fabricio Werdum during the rest of his career. He’ll be a pretty good fighter, like he is now, and may even crack the back end of the top ten at some point, but he won’t be a bonafide title contender in Strikeforce unless a lot of talent checks out before then.

King Mo, however, is the real deal. In a way, I’m impressed by his reaction to being badly rocked by Feijao. He didn’t immediately shoot like many wrestlers do, nor did he turn and run to buy some time. Instead, he tried to exploit his opponent’s aggressiveness with counter-punching. Like I said before, he really got in trouble when Feijao clinched him and made him eat a couple of knees. With some refinement in striking and a little better strategy, King Mo will still be the best light heavyweight Strikeforce has to offer until he inevitably takes off for the UFC at some point.

There was a time when it seemed like guaranteed success awaited talented wrestlers who decided to take up MMA. However, those days are now clearly over, and plenty of good wrestlers have washed out of the sport or stuck around but never reached the status that they expected to. Just as with talented fighters of other disciplines and backgrounds, only the wrestlers who are able to adapt their game to MMA and learn other skills will be truly successful. I still think King Mo will continue to do so, but Lashley doesn’t look like he can. King Mo projects to be like Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, with less power, better wrestling and more athleticism. Meanwhile, Lashley may end up just being the second coming of Travis Wiuff.

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Tags: Bobby Lashley, Muhammed Lawal, Rafael "Feijao" Cavalcante, Strikeforce