Jake Shields Wins the Strikeforce Title Over Jason Miller
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Fighters.com’s second-ranked middleweight Jake Shields (23-4-1) earned the previously vacant Strikeforce title in a tangled ground battle against MMA veteran and host of MTV’s Bully Beatdown “Mayhem” Jason Miller (22-7) at Strikeforce in Chicago Saturday night.
At moments exciting, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu chess match between Shields and Miller received a share of boos at times from the capacity crowd during Strikeforce’s big CBS televised event.
Miller looked dominant in the moments when he exploded into action but such attempts at power proved a little to little across the scope of five rounds where Shields out-scored his opponent in ground position for the majority of the fight.
The early rounds found Miller on his back for quite some time but the former UFC fighter roused the crowd at moments with a series of powerful punch combinations and a pair of equally powerful slams.
By the second round, Shields began bleeding due to an accidental clash of heads in the last seconds of the opening round. And in many ways, such accidents placed a metaphor of sloppiness upon the championship bout.
Referee Big John McCarthy stopped the action at the midway point of the bout to fix the tape of Miller as both fighters looked extremely tired breathing from their mouths. From this point the fight slowed with both fighters jockeying for position and Shields winning the percentage of mount attempts.
In the closing seconds of round three, Miller landed a deep guillotine choke almost stopping the fight but Shields luckily escaped being saved by the bell.
Shields’ activity in the bout won him the edge on the cards with Miller’s lack of steady aggressiveness potentially beating himself out of the title. Referees scored the fight unanimous in favor of Jake Shields 49-47 across the board.
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