Ballet of Violence

He dominated this fight, but he clearly faded in the third round.  He was sucking gas and he was allowing Smith to close the distance when he clearly shouldn’t have.  He just didn’t have the energy to keep Smith on the outside.  Smith’s only shot at winning was on the inside, and he did manage to tag Le with shots in earlier rounds.  Le’s face showed Smith’s success between the second and third.

I had a really bad feeling once Le started relying on his head movement and his backpedal to keep Smith from closing the gap instead of enforcing the distance with front and side kicks.  He didn’t have the energy to throw them anymore, and he had a long two and a half minutes left.

And that’s exactly where Smith won the fight.  He was inside, and Cung starts weaving his head, not as fast as he had done even one minute prior.  Smith baits Cung with a right hand, and Cung bites, slipping the right hand low, moving his head directly into Scott Smith’s follow-up left hook.  And there go Cung’s legs.  He backpedals into the cage, his head clearly in the fuzz, and Smith chases him down to throw the punch that blasts Cung Le into near unconsciousness.  He collapses onto a knee, then onto his face, an Smith fires his piston right fist for the two shots that put Le’s lights out.

I’m not convinced that Le is done as a fighter, or even entirely out of a Strikeforce Title run.  The Strikeforce Middleweight division is deepening quickly but before I count Cung Le out completely, I have to ask the following question:  Why did he fade so much in third?  If it is ring rust, then we should see a marked cardio improvement in his next fight.  But if it is because at 37 years of age, he just cannot keep his body running for a full fifteen minutes of power kicks, we may only see Le as a novelty act in the future.  I am very interested in his next matchup.