It Was All Fake; Lorenz Larkin Doesn't Believe Luke Rockhold Was Ever Going to Fight Him
It's safe to say Lorenz Larkin was not a happy man when he got the news that Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold was out of their fight scheduled for the Jan. 12 Strikeforce event in Oklahoma City.
Larkin got the news just a couple of weeks after signing a new bout agreement to face Rockhold in January, after the champion was forced to pull out of their originally scheduled fight on Nov. 3.
An angry and irate Larkin hasn't slowed down, even when going back and forth with Rockhold on Twitter on Monday. The two competitors went at it via the social networking site, tossing barbs at one another, and in one response Rockhold disclosed that he never even signed a bout agreement for the fight.
“Everybody in this business knows before you start a camp, especially at this level we're at, if one person hasn't signed it, the matchmaker is going to tell you that something is going on. Both people sign the bout agreements, that's when you know the fight's confirmed,” Larkin told MMAWeekly Radio.
“They're not going to put Rockhold and me on the Strikeforce website as a confirmed bout if it's not confirmed. That's why I don't get what he's talking about; it makes no sense to me.”
Strikeforce did promote the title fight in an initial press release about the show, and featured the bout on its website for the Jan. 12 fight card titled “Champions.” Regardless, Rockhold maintains he never signed on for the fight, but Larkin is sure he knows the real reason behind his posturing at this stage of the game.
Larkin believes that Rockhold never had any intention of fighting him, and this all boils down to his desire to carry the Strikeforce middleweight title into his first fight in the UFC.
“Now that today has gone the way it's gone and he said what he said, no (I don't think he ever had the intention of fighting). It was pretty much all fake. He signed the bout agreement just to let it drag on and then right before the fight, say he's not going to fight,” said Larkin.
“For him not to fight me just so he comes in with the belt makes no sense. He's going one way or the other, I'm not taking that way from him. I know for sure that he's going to get picked up. The thing is, why sign up for the fight?”
The Twitter exchange took a turn for the nasty when Rockhold said it would be “easy money” to take out Larkin, and told him to “know your place.” Obviously, Larkin wasn't amused by the comments.
“Know your place? That's something a parent says to their child. Know my place? My place is supposed to be fighting you on Jan. 12,” said Larkin. “He's going to say what he's going to say and I'm going to say what I'm going to say; we're just cut from a different cloth.”
At this stage, Larkin is just moving on from the whole ordeal and he's moving on from the desire to face Luke Rockhold. He knows they won't be fighting on the final Strikeforce card, and he's not even concerned about settling their rivalry in the UFC either.
Larkin just wants to fight and he's hoping that is still going to be on the Jan. 12 Strikeforce show, with or without a title on the line.
“I want to fight, it doesn't matter who it is. I just like fighting, period; that's why I got in this sport. I still want to fight on Jan. 12. It doesn't have to be Rockhold. Truthfully, now, I don't even want to fight him in the UFC if that ever happens,” said Larkin.
“Cause all that's going to happen is I'm going to train again, put myself through a diet, and then a couple weeks or a month before he's going to pull out.”
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