Did Jake Shields cost the Chicago Cubs another shot at a World Series? Ye gods. Shields received so much heat Saturday night that South Side hero/North Side goat Steve Bartman announced he would return from the underground world he entered following the Cubs’ 2003 playoff exit.
Chicago, it seems, is not the place to host your middleweight title fights. Just over a calendar year passed since Anderson Silva mocked and embarassed Patrick Cote in the UFC Octagon before Cote blew his knee out. While Silva danced circles around Cote, Shields brought opponent Jason Miller’s hug-a-thon prognostication to fruition.
Yet, while Shields initiated the ground war of attrition, Miller has escaped any sort of blame for the entertainment value of the fight. It was Miller, not Shields, who lacked the ability to maintain a vertical base. It was Miller, not Shields, who entered the cage as the larger fighter. It was Miller, not Shields, who guaranteed he would turn the fight into a brawl.
It’s also hard to find fault in the reaction from Sears Center patrons. For all the build the first two fights provided, Shields and Miller unleashed a buzzkill more potent than flashing red and blue lights outside of a high school house party.
The blame should rest squarely on the shoulders of Scott Coker and the Strikeforce matchmaking team. Not only did the fight look like a turd for casual fans on paper, but Strikeforce found a way to increase the turdness exponentially when it put up the vacated (and meaningless) Strikeforce middleweight title, adding two rounds to a fight that promised to go fifteen.
And now, instead of crowning a champion with exposure to a national network audience, Jake Shields is stuck with a case of MMA’s genital herpes, the Scarlet Letter “B” for “boring”.
Like a real case of the herp, no cure exists. You only hope to contain the symptoms. He’ll have to have his next fight on Showtime with the virus still fresh on his skin. He won’t be able to headline an event for the foreseeable future. And you’ll constantly have to apply high-priced lotions like Gina Carano to keep that bothersome itch in check.
It’s unfortunate for Shields because he went out and did exactly what he needed to do. You could hear the faint whispers of Randy Couture gushing about Shields’s ability to impose his will on Miller. But now, because he couldn’t finish a guy that makes Gumby look rigid, Shields, and Shields alone, has to deal with the backlash for putting on an “underwhelming” performance.