With the long-rumored April 17 Strikeforce on CBS card now official, new details continue to leak out.Among Tuesday's news items revealed on Sirius' The Fight Show with Mauro Ranallo: the CBS broadcast portion of the event -- scheduled for a two-hour block -- may feature only three bouts.
The cause of the decision is simple: all three fights will be conducted as championship matches, and the network has to plan for the possibility that all three fights could go the 25-minute time limit, making a fourth match a difficult proposition.
Speaking to Ranallo, CBS executive Kelly Kahl said the network is still considering a fourth fight, but no decision has yet been made.
"We still might put somebody interesting on the card just to round it out a little bit, but it's not like we feel that we need anything but these three fights," Kahl said.
The three title bouts officially signed for the event are a middleweight match pitting Jake Shields against Dan Henderson, a light-heavyweight bout pairing Gegard Mousasi and "King Mo" Muhammed Lawal, and a lightweight tilt with Gilbert Melendez squaring off against Shinya Aoki.
The Shields-Henderson match will serve as the night's main event.
One Strikeforce fighter who was rumored but is unlikely to be featured is recently debuting heavyweight Herschel Walker. The 47-year-old former Heisman Trophy winner captured his first victory in a January bout, and though CBS was interested in featuring Walker in a bout that would undoubtedly offer the event a promotional boost, the timing just didn't seem right.
"I'd still love to get him on CBS at some point, but it sounds like this was a little too close to the last fight," Kahl said. "The thing I love about Herschel is he's not going to jump in until he's ready, and he takes the training very seriously, so I'm going to give him all the time he needs."
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