CHICAGO -- Scott Smith is ready to fight for Strikeforce in December. Now he just needs an opponent. Smith is hanging out here in Chicago this week to talk to fans and reporters and help spread the word about Saturday night's CBS show. He's also gearing up to fight on December 19, but he says Strikeforce hasn't yet had time to find him the right opponent.
"I think they're a little bit overwhelmed," Smith said of Strikeforce. "This show on Saturday night on CBS is such a big deal for them that they haven't really had a chance to put together everything on the next show. But they're planning a really stacked event in December and I'm excited that I'm going to be on it."
Smith said that in a perfect world, he'd like to find out who his opponent was at least eight weeks before he fights, but even without having a fight signed for the date, he's been going through a training regimen designed to have him peaking on December 19. Smith, who said he's been focusing on his core strength in his conditioning program, looks absolutely shredded right now, and he said he weighs 208 pounds and won't have a problem getting to 185 in seven weeks.
The 185-pound middleweight class is Strikeforce's deepest division, and Smith named Cung Le and Frank Shamrock as Strikeforce middleweights he'd like to face. That probably won't happen, though: Shamrock said he wants to wait until February to fight again, and Le is currently focusing more on acting than on fighting. Smith said he doesn't think there's any chance he'll get Jake Shields or Mayhem Miller – who fight Saturday night for Strikeforce's middleweight belt – in his next bout, so the search for an opponent continues.
Smith knocked out Benji Radach on April 11 in a back-and-forth battle that some have called the best MMA fight of the year, and he said he knows Strikeforce wants to set up a rematch between himself and Radach. But he doesn't think that fight should happen right away.
"If I beat him again, what does that do for me?" Smith said of Radach. "But if he beats me, that's big for him. Eventually I'd like to give him a rematch – let's be real, he was beating me until I knocked him out – but I think we should both win a fight before that. That'd make the rematch a bigger fight."
A big fight is what Smith wants next month. He just hopes he'll find out who's going to be in the cage with him soon.
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