With Strikeforce Women’s Lightweight Champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos sidelined due to injury, Strikeforce will aim to determine the next challenger for Santos’s title on November 7th when top contenders Marloes Coenen and Erin Toughill battle in a rematch from their 2004 bout.
Toughill (10-2-1) won their first meeting and hasn’t lost in nearly five years, but the rematch with Coenen (19-3-0), which may or may not be televised, will be contested at 145 pounds and Toughill will not enjoy the same weight advantage that she had in 2004.
Coenen and Toughill first met in the semi-finals of the 2004 SmackGIRL World ReMix Grand Prix, which was an open-weight tournament. Toughill outweighed Coenen by roughly 15 pounds at fight time and picked up the victory at the very end of the first round.
The back-and-forth battle came to an end after Toughill dropped Coenen with a punch. Coenen was given a standing count – a practice which is common among promotions in Japan – and seemed to be okay, but the referee deemed her unfit to continue and Toughill advanced to the finals with a knockout win.
In the finals, Toughill lost via controversial disqualification for an illegal elbow strike against Japanese gatekeeper Megumi Yabushita. Toughill has only competed four times since then, but has won all four fights.
Coenen’s biggest accomplishments to date came in winning the 2000 ReMix World Cup and making it to the finals of the 2007 K-GRACE tournament, in which she lost a contested Split Decision to Roxanne Modafferi in the final bout of the evening.
She was present at Strikeforce: “Carano vs Cyborg” in August as a replacement in case either fighter was injured, and was announced as the #1 contender for new champion Cristiane Santos’s title.
However, Coenen’s career since the loss to Modafferi has come under question, both for her pair of victories over winless and vastly undersized 17-year-old Asci Kubra and for her shocking loss to MMA debutant Cindy “Battlecat” Dandois in January of 2009.
Perhaps as a result of her inconsistencies and Toughill’s persistence, Coenen will now have to fight her way to a title shot and will battle Toughill in a rematch on the upcoming November 7th Strikeforce card. The bout will only air on the CBS telecast if one of the other main card bouts is cancelled in the next few weeks.
Coenen and Toughill are incredibly talented fighters and both will be looking to make an immediate impact in front of a large Strikeforce audience. It is unfortunate, however, that the bout will likely not be featured on CBS because past women’s bouts proved to be hugely successful for the former EliteXC promotion.
Fans can take solace in the fact that the fight is at least taking place, though it begs the question as to whether it would have been better to feature it in a (co-)main event on another card.
Strikeforce: “Fedor vs Rogers” is set for November 7th at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.