Cain Velasquez file photo: Dave Mandel | Sherdog.com

The Next Emperor

Boxing vs. MMA: The Never-Ending Story

The Pro Wrestling Rabbit Hole

Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com

Bobby Lashley (top)

Strikeforce vs. Showtime, M-1 Global

I’ve had enough of this silly looking back business, as we all know that making baseless claims about the importance of future events is where the interest is at. With that in mind, the time has come to take a look at the stories that will shape the second half of 2010.Unfortunately, the upcoming fight between Mark Hunt and Sean McCorkle at UFC 119 just missed the cut. However, I venture to guess that will be a sight none of us will soon forget. Brock Lesnar ’s epic comeback win over Shane Carwin certainly galvanized his claim to heavyweight supremacy, but that distinction is not as universally accepted as it was for Fedor Emelianenko -- and with good reason. Carwin’s long-term future looks like a parallel of boxer Earnie Shavers’ career -- a horrifying puncher who came tantalizingly close to the heavyweight title only to lose in heartbreaking fashion every time.Tapping out a super puncher is a nice feather in one’s cap, but it will not have many buying into the notion that Lesnar has emerged as the next heavyweight doom bringer. Lesnar’s upcoming match with the undefeated Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 will serve as his chance to prove that years’ worth of self-serious bravado and overwhelming hype was truly prescient.Hype has accompanied Velasquez ever since he first stepped into the American Kickboxing Academy gym and was proclaimed a heavyweight champion in the making. A darling of the hardcore fans despite his leaden personality, Velasquez seems just as strong a candidate as Lesnar to become the next emperor, and so far, the opinion makers seem to be lining up on his side.Regardless of the insane amounts of prognostication that will go into attempting to predict the winner of this fight, we are getting a step closer to truly realizing a whole new heavyweight scene. At UFC 117 Junior dos Santos will fight Roy Nelson for a title shot, which sets the table for another unbelievably significant heavyweight fight.After years of putting on garbage heavyweight bouts, the UFC is finally setting the table in the division it turned into a headlining attraction. How that story develops will almost certainly give us the next heavyweight kingpin, if not the next emperor.Ever since Art Jimmerson showed up in the Octagon rocking a single boxing glove against Royce Gracie at UFC 1 , the boxing versus MMA narrative has played like Jason Voorhees -- it just keeps coming back.The latest reincarnation of this pointless debate lies in wait right, as former UFC light heavyweight and heavyweight champion Randy Couture will take on the perpetually acerbic James Toney at UFC 118 . All due accolades to Toney, a multi-division boxing champion and pound-for-pound luminary, but it has been a long time since anyone took the soon-to-be 42-year-old seriously as a boxer.In all fairness, no one banks on the 47-year-old Couture as a legitimate contender. Of course, he has the benefit of the fight taking place on his home turf, and, unlike Toney, he is not a blown-up middleweight boxer with a long history of shuttling back-and-forth between training camps and buffet lines. In other words, this fight serves as a pointless exercise that will prove nothing that even a lay fan does not already know -- one needs to train MMA to be any good at MMA.UFC President Dana White maintains he brought Toney onboard as a way to punish “Lights Out” for his derogatory comments about the sport. The amount of media and fan attention being generated by this fight suggests otherwise, and, regardless of the outcome, it will be big news. If it generates enough money to match the hype, one has to wonder if this sort of stunt matchmaking will continue under the UFC banner.There will always be Kimbo Slices and James Toneys around to spew hyperbole. The question revolves around whether the UFC can balance the athletic legitimacy and promotional spectacle of its product while chasing the occasional cheap buck.Up until February, Bobby Lashley was moonlighting as a mixed martial artist and collecting a check for his work as a professional wrestler. Dave Batista, meanwhile, was on the World Wrestling Entertainment payroll as recently as May, and his desire to become a mixed martial artist has produced more one-off sound-bites than grueling training sessions.Yet these are the two men Strikeforce could feature in its still theoretical pay-per-view debut. If your stomach did not turn after reading that sentence, then you are part of the target audience for this sort of tripe.Putting on pay-per-view events remains a high-stakes game and one with which Strikeforce is unfamiliar, so it does make sense that it would want to draw as many buyers as possible. It’s a strategy Zuffa used to great effect after acquiring the UFC by using name attractions like Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie to launch the careers of its next-generation superstars.The second half of the equation was key for the UFC, as it made bankable commodities out of everyone from Tito Ortiz to Matt Hughes . Any potential benefits of pitting Lashley against Batista exist solely in the short-term, as neither man will ever be a threat to the heavyweight elite. After all, we are talking about a 41-year-old Batista with no real combat sport experience and a 34-year-old Lashley, who used to wrestle at 177 pounds before ballooning up to a chiseled 273 in the WWE.Whether or not Strikeforce follows through on this inane idea will be one of those stories future analysts look back on when they try to map the key points in the organization’s history.Just about every complaint levied against Strikeforce comes down to the ongoing handicap match between the promotion and Showtime and M-1 Global. The second-half of 2010 seems as likely a time as any for the conflict to boil over into the public sphere.Though the issues between the three groups are common knowledge, they have remained largely behind closed doors thanks to Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker’s rare brand of diplomacy. However, with Fedor Emelianenko just one fight away from free agency and his handlers at M-1 being their usual enigmatic selves, we are guaranteed at least one storyline that will make the Brett Favre saga feel like a welcome change of pace.Then there is Showtime, a premium cable channel that some believe is attempting to enter the MMA market by micromanaging Strikeforce. Unfortunately for Strikeforce, there is little it can do since the promotion desperately needs the exposure Showtime can afford it. Suddenly, the UFC’s decision to walk away from negotiations with HBO seems downright inspired.Somewhere underneath all the rancor and nonsense exists a fine promotion just dying to get out. Perhaps the most frustrating part of it all is that Strikeforce does not deserve anywhere near the amount of blame it gets for this fiasco. None of that changes the fact that Strikeforce made multiple deals with the devil, and the price will only get steeper as the year trudges along.To put it simply, would any of you bank on Emelianenko fighting again this year? Let us not forget that we are talking about the same promotion that needed nearly three years to get its heavyweight champion to defend his belt.