Sports on TV busy Saturday night: Baseball game goes 20 innings and there’s a riot in the ring at MMA Strikeforce Nashville

I checked out FOX 8 TV and they had a baseball game with St.Louis and the New York Mets going on Saturday afternoon and then I flipped back to FOX last night in the 10 o’clock hour to try and catch some sports from the FOX 8 Ten O’Clock news and the baseball game was still going on….I thought they were just showing highlights from the afternoon game, but they were in the 19th inning and New York had just gone on top 1-0, but wouldn’t you know it, the Cardinals tied it up at 1-1 and sent the game to the 20th inning….

The Mets proceeded to win the game from there, getting a run off of a Cardinal position player and the NY Mets were the winners, 2-1 over the St. Louis Cardinals….

I still can’t believe that game was starting up Saturday afternoon and it was still going late Saturday night….I think they said it was just about a six hour game…..WOW!!!!!

WOW!!!!! What about the end of the MMA Strikeforce Nashville show last night on CBS?????Gus Johnson is in the middle of the ring and he is trying to interview the winner of the middleweight bout, Jake Shields, and here comes Jason “Mayhem” Miller and he says a few words up in Shields’ face about challenging Shields for the middleweight title and a riot erupts……Shields’ camp of training associates are in the ring and they go after “Mayhem” Miller and his crew and there is a full-fledged brawl going on right in the middle of that ring and they are LIVE on CBS television and Gus Johnson even says, “Gentleman were are LIVE on CBS and we need to take a break and get out of here for a few minutes”…..

This was one of the wildest brawls that I have ever seen….It was like a madhouse in there. A riot had broken out and a Pier-Six Brawl was in progress…..(The evening’s results on CBS were:Shields over Dan Henderson to retain his title, King Mo Lawal took the belt from Gegard Mousasi and Gilbert Melendez topped Shinya Aoki to keep his title…..)

Here is what they were saying over at sportsuntapped.com:
In what will certainly be perceived as a tarnished night for the San Jose based promotion(Strikeforce) and a stain on the sport itself, Strikeforce: Nashville has put CEO Scott Coker in a difficult spot after an in-cage melee erupted after Jake Shields defeated challenger Dan Henderson in the evening’s headlining middleweight title bout.

Unfortunately, the brawl between Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Shield’s camp, during the last five minutes of the CBS broadcast, will have many newcomers to the sport wondering how mixed martial arts and professional wrestling differs.

Many will formulate negative generalizations from one incident that developed on a national broadcast: the fighters are simply street-brawling thugs or the sport has no integrity. In a recent interview with MMAfighting.com, Scott Coker expressed concerns about the effects the event will have on the sport.
(CEO Scott Coker is saying this is going to look real bad for their promotion/sport coming out of Nashville.)

from bleacherreport.com:
Strikeforce Nashville Brawl: Is MMA Becoming Professional Wrestling?

Jake Shields defeated Dan Henderson in a successful title defense of the Strikeforce middleweight belt. After the victory, Jason “Mayhem” Miller came out to greet Shields in what seemed like a gentleman-like request to have a rematch with the champ Shields.
What happened from there onward was simply embarrassing.

Strikeforce lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez and Shields decided to shove Miller, which progressed to an all-out brawl that included Shields’s training partners Nate and Nick Diaz, as well as everyone else in the cage. Even though Shields “didn’t think it was that big a deal,” the post-fight conversations in MMA have been increasing in cheesy antics reminiscent of WWE.

These types of confrontational post-fight approaches have been around for a while now, the most salient one being between Rashad Evans and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

Despite both men being very talented fighters, their showdown after UFC 96 crossed the hype-buffer and dove full on into WWE territory. How many more times could we have heard, “I’m gonna get my belt back” and remained sane?

Immediately after his victory over Frank Mir at UFC 100, Brock Lesnar had what appeared to be a whole WWE meltdown that no UFC fan will ever forget. He eloquently said, “I’m gonna go home and drink a Coors Lite—that’s Coors Light—because Bud Light won’t pay me nothing,” and followed it up with, “Hell, I might even go home and get on top of my wife tonight.”

Some fighters still show respect for their opponents, such as Georges St. Pierre greeting Dan Hardy as a respectable opponent after Hardy’s win over Mike Swick at UFC 105.

However, with the likes of Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, the presence of professional wrestling is undoubtedly in MMA. However, even MMA fighters that have never been associated with WWE are giving way to such attention-seeking behavior.

After Strikeforce Nashville ended, “Mayhem” lived up to his name, although he really isn’t to blame. Perhaps his timing was off, but can you blame Miller for wanting to offer a rematch to the champ Shields on live television? MMA is a lot about hype, and grudge matches typically make for better ratings.

Nevertheless, the display seen at the end of the Shields/Hendo match should never have happened. Perhaps it isn’t directly a result of the growing presence of WWE fans and fighters in MMA, but one can’t help but notice the direction that MMA appears to be heading.

*****Note from Greensborosports.com:I don’t blame Jake Shields for what he did. “Mayhem” Miller had no business sticking his nose in there right after Shields had won his fight. That was Shields’ turf and his moment and Miller had no right to be stealing Shields’s moment in the sun, by asking/begging for a future bout for the belt….Who cares about Miller?

This wasn’t “Miller Time”, this was Shields time to be interviewed on National TV, right after a huge win over Dan Henderson. If I were Shields, I would have popped Miller right in the face and said get out of my space Miller….This is my time Miller man and I don’t won’t you stealing my spotlight that I just got through working so hard to attain……”Miller Time”, can come another time mister…..*****