Click on the photos to get the full size.

Two pictures saved for the end.  The first one is set aside because it was easily the best picture I took all night.

Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields. Still better known for having a few seconds of TV time as an assistant coach on The Ultimate Fighter.

The other picture is part of the reason why (sorry, Jamie) I have no documentation of the post-fight brawl.  After the decision for the main event was announced (merely a formality, I assure you), I went to go say something to Ariel Helwani of AOL’s Fanhouse.  I got the following picture, but I totally was not ready to shoot any in-cage action as I did not expect there to be any.  I am totally not the professional photographer in the relationship.

Also, my peculiar stance on professional eye candy led me to no pictures of the ring card girls.  Having worked side-by-side with the Nashville Predators dancers for a year, my perspective changed.  Hard to explain; it is not that I do not notice them, just rather that I notice them exactly as much as I do everyone else.  And when you take into account that a few of Strikeforce’s ring girls are the same people that I worked with at the Predators, the effect doubles.

Coming up next: photos from inside the cage (duh).

Shot by the same dashingly handsome man as the previous video, this one features the fighter introductions for the Jake Shields vs. Dan Henderson main event (or, “special attraction” if you are ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr.).  If I had known that referee Big John McCarthy’s famous “You ready?  Are you ready?  Let’s get it on!” would be mic’ed and audible throughout the arena, I would not have cut this video prior to that moment.

I must have a fascination with the introductions of main event fights, as if you visit my YouTube channel you will see that 50 percent of my uploaded videos are such.

Nevermind… I’ll give you one picture now for being such a nice audience.  Click on them to get the full size.

The Predators won, but by the time I saw this, that was irrelevant.

Thank goodness the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN has been notified that they are hosting a Strikeforce event.

Someone here at Sack Mike Goldberg lives in the Nashville area.  The rush for tickets begins now.  My favorite fighter may be Seraldo Babalu, but Strikeforce mainstay To “Be” Announced is right up there.  Plus a small (read: large) part of me would take extreme delight in seeing favorite of Jafanboys all across the world, Shinya Aoki, get stomped by a legitimate, but borderline top-10, Gilbert Melendez.

I attended the UFC Fight Night headlined by Martin Kampmann and Carlos Condit last year at the previously named Sommet Center, but a CBS Strikeforce card with three “fights involving a belt” (words like title and champion seem strange to use regarding Strikeforce to me) would probably be a bigger deal than that.  Last year I ran into Mark Coleman at the concession stands at the Fight Night card; perchance I could find someone else to encounter there this time.