Chris Cariaso Submits Figueroa at Strikeforce 6/27/08

Thanks to all the FnF fans who braved the crazy traffic to San Jose on Friday night. As always, your support and attendance means everything to the fighters.

After a crazy 24 hours, Luke Stewart was scratched from the card and didn't get to fight. At weigh-ins on the previous night, Joe Riggs revealed to the commission that he was on prescription drugs. As a result, they wouldn't allow him to fight. Strikeforce immediately found a new opponent, Drew Fickett and flew him in. Problems arose when Maximum Fighting Championship promoter Mark Pavelich made several calls informing both Strikeforce and Fickett’s management team that he was under contract to fight for his promotion on July 25. As a part of Fickett’s contract, there was a five-week no compete clause that prevented him from competing in any fight within that time frame prior to his scheduled bout for MFC. Therefore, Strikeforce had no choice but to pull the fight.

Chris Cariaso fought Anthony Figueroa from Cung Le's gym in San Jose. The pair had fought about a year ago on the Shamrock/Baroni undercard. At that time, Chris defeated Anthony via unanimous decision. The fight was mostly a stand-up war. Anthony had been asking Chris for a rematch for many months. Strikeforce promoter, Scott Coker, asked Chris to take the rematch and he agreed.

Chris decided that he really wanted to showcase his jiu jitsu in their rematch. He was able to successfully carry out his game plan.

Here is how mmaweekly.com reported the fight on Saturday night:

R1- Cariaso takes Figueroa down quickly where he transitions to half guard and then moves to mount. Cariaso goes for a key lock from the mount, but Figueroa reverses before Cariaso gets the fight back down again. Cariaso stays aggressive on the ground for most of the round.
MMAWeekly scores R1 10-9 for Chris Cariaso

R2- Cariaso gets the fight down again and ends up mounting Figueroa, while again trying to go for a keylock again. Cariaso starts to reign down punches, Figueroa gives up his back. The fighters move on the ground a bit before Cariaso locks on a fight ending rear naked choke

Chris Cariaso def. Anthony Figueroa by submission (rear naked choke) at 4:34 R2
Check out the mmaweekly article on Chris:

http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=6605&zoneid=13