A Closer Look At Strikeforce "Fedor vs. Henderson": Scott Smith vs. Tarec Saffiedine

Hello again fans and friends, it’s now time for the second part of my planned six-part series “A Closer Look At strikeforce: ‘Fedor vs. Henderson’”. The first part of the series featured a quick rundown of all the preliminary fights scheduled for this event. Now it’s time to focus on the meat of this event: the five-fight main card that will be televised live on Showtime. First up, we’ve got a battle of fierce Welterweights as Scott Smith takes on Tarec Saffiedine. This is “A Closer Look At Fedor vs. Henderson” Part 2.

Tarec Saffiedine has only been fighting for about four years, but in that time he’s managed to achieve a nice underground following. Saffiedine had some entertaining battles in the Japanese-based DREAM promotion before transitioning to Strikeforce in February of last year.

Tarec quickly established himself in Strikeforce, winning two straight fights that included a fantastic KO victory. After beating former WEC and UFC veteran Brock Larson outside of Strikeforce, Saffiedine was matched up against fellow rising star Tyron Woodley. Woodley would end up winning the bout by Unanimous Decision in only the third loss of Tarec’s career.

Saffiedine’s opponent, Scott Smith, is one of the bigger name-value fighters Strikeforce has. Smith is a UFC, Elite XC, and Strikeforce veteran. He fought for the Elite XC Middleweight Championship. He fought Nick Diaz in a Catchweight super-fight. He gave the UFC one of the best come-from-behind victories ever seen when he KO’d Pete Sell. He gave Strikeforce one of the best come-from-behind victories they had ever seen when he beat Cung Le. Smith has been fighting for over a decade and is a veteran of almost thirty fights.

So, why is Smith fighting someone like Tarec? It’s simple, really: Smith is on a bad two-fight losing-streak. The rematch with Cung Le went exactly like their first bout: Le controlled and dominated Smith. Unlike their first bout, there would be no incredible comeback, and Smith would end up being TKO’d in Round 2. Smith then fought Paul Daley in a major Welterweight showdown. And just like against Le, there would be no major comeback from Strikeforce’s “Comeback King”. After two minutes of action, Smith would eat a killer hook that stone-cold KTFO’d him. It was honestly one of the best knockouts of Paul Daley’s career, which really says something.

Make no mistake, this is a “do or die” fight for Scott Smith. Realistically, this is the perfect fight for Tarec Saffiedine. Smith has him beat in experience, especially in experience against world-caliber opponents, but he’s looked pretty bad in his recent victories. Anyone can get KO’d, I won’t argue that, but it’s the nature in which Smith was KO’d: he was controlled thoroughly and then dropped viciously.

That leads me to believe that Tarec has a good chance of winning this fight. Thanks to the loss to Daley, half of Smith’s professional losses have been by (T)KO. So there is a chance that Tarec could knock out Smith.

Then again, you could make a serious argument for Smith looking great against some people and only really looking bad against top-caliber opponents. That argument also goes hand-in-hand with the argument that Tarec Saffiedine is not a top-caliber opponent at this point in his career. So Smith definitely has a shot of winning, he’s even got a shot at KO’ing Tarec since Smith has an overwhelming majority of his wins (fourteen of seventeen) by (T)KO.

In the end, this fight is going to be a back-and-forth war up until someone gets KTFO’d. Whoever that ends up being depends on a lot of things: pre-fight preparation, the mentality each fighter has going into the fight, etc. But one thing’s for sure: this one has a whole lot of potential.