Friday, July 23, 2010 | 12:15 p.m.
Prior to a catchweight fight between Robbie Lawler and Renato "Babalu" Sobral on June 16 in Los Angeles, Strikeforce officials promised the winner of the fight would earn an immediate title shot in his respective division.
The only problem was, the winner didn’t end up wanting one.
Immediately after defeating Lawler by unanimous decision at the Nokia Theatre last month, Sobral told media members he wouldn’t fight light heavyweight champion Muhammed ‘King Mo’ Lawal because the two are friends.
Since then, Strikeforce has announced that Lawal’s first title defense will be against Rafael Cavalcante at its Aug. 21 event in Houston.
But according to Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker, just because the fight between Lawal and Sobral wasn’t made immediately doesn’t mean fans won’t see it at some point.
“If push comes to shove and we wanted Babalu in that fight, I think he’d take the fight,” Coker said.
While the friendship between Sobral (36-8) and Lawal (7-0) likely factored into them not being paired together, the recent announcement of Dan Henderson’s permanent move to the 205-pound division may have also had an impact.
After dropping a unanimous decision to former middleweight champion Jake Shields in his Strikeforce debut, Henderson (25-8) has decided to move up in weight — good news for Sobral, who is openly seeking a fight with the former Pride champ.
At the moment, Coker said the organization is considering Sobral and its former champion Gegard Mousasi (29-3-1) as opponents for Henderson.
“Dan Henderson and I had a conversation after LA and he wants to move up to 205,” Coker said. “That led us to think the next fight for Dan will be either Babalu or Gegard Mousasi.
“Calvacante just had an impressive win over Antwain Britt so he deserves the shot. I think the winner of Dan and Babalu or Dan and Gegard could face the winner of that title fight.”
According to Coker, Henderson will likely return to the cage in either October or November of this year.
Strikeforce is currently in negotiations with the CBS Network to broadcast the event. Coker said an agreement between the two could be formalized in "a couple weeks."
Brett Okamoto can be reached at 948-7817 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at LVSunFighting
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