Scott Carson was recently a guest on Ariel Helwani's 'The MMA Hour', during which he thoroughly confused the host, as well as most of the MMA fanscape by appearing to be unaware of the general bewilderment surrounding his being chosen to fight Herschel Walker, which is in stark contrast to a press release supposedly released by Carson himself railing against "keyboard warriors" whom he would supposedly silence.
It gets weirder.
During the conversation, he even seemed to be unable to pinpoint his most recent fight before a loss earlier this year to Lorenz Larkin at a regional show, bouncing from 2003 to 2001, then settling on not being able to remember at all. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and even talked about how he used to fight full-time, then he had an injury that forced him to take on a full-time job to pay for the medical bills as well as the costs of a family life, only finding time here and there to train with friends at a local gym. Apparently, these friends were the ones that convinced him to agree to the Larkin fight, in which he was knocked out in less than 3 minutes. When asked if he had any notable trainers or other fighters helping to prepare him for the Walker fight, he seemed to not really have an answer, and proceeded to name a couple of gyms I'd never heard of.
It's painfully obvious that Strikeforce is not only cherry-picking Herschel's opponents (which is actually the more understandable part of this mess considering his last performance), but they're not even doing a good job of concealing their lack of faith in him as a Mixed Martial Artist.
Do I think he IS a viable Mixed Martial Artist? Absolutely. Viability and relevance aside, the man puts his time in at AKA (among other facilities and camps) and has an obvious passion to compete. However, what good can any of this nonsense be for Walker? It's already a foregone conclusion that he will beat Carson, and it will be all-too-obvious that Carson has no business being in a Strikeforce cage after taking a 9-year layoff, then coming back to a sub-3 minute KO loss.
How long can Strikeforce carry on with this charade involving Walker and his drawing power? Worse yet, what if Carson somehow manages to brutally starch Walker? Not only will his Drawing power be gone, but they'll actually have to give Carson another fight in the organization against a REAL opponent who could do some serious damage. If Scott Coker really has any plans for his organization beyond acting as a de-facto feeder to the UFC, this is the kind of thing that needs to be expunged from the sport completely. Give Walker a regional-level belt contender and see if he is really as committed to the sport as he purports. This will truly silence all those "keyboard warriors" with whom Scott Coke- I mean, Carson has such a problem.
