Jake Shields vs Drew Ficket for EliteXC Title

Jake Shields announced that he will be fighting Drew Fickett at "Strikeforce: Shamrock vs Cung Le" on March 29 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose California. He recently announced the news on his MySpace page.

The winner of the fight will be crowned EliteXC’s first ever welterweight champion of the world. Shields signed a deal with EliteXC in November and has since went 2-0 defeating Renato Verissimo via strikes and Mike Pyle via rear naked choke both in the first round.

Shields is only 29 years old and is considered one of the top ten welterweights in the world.

At 20-4-1 his record speaks for itself and a lot of his success can no doubt be attributed to his team Cesar Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Shields is simply a monster at 170lbs and has looked extremely impressive in his last few fights.

That being said he will have his work cut out for him in Drew Fickett. Fickett is very experienced and has a record that is just as impressive if not more so than Shields. At 31-5 Fickett definitely won’t crumble under the pressure of being on the big stage and under the big lights. He’s been there before with a total of 7 fights in the UFC. He has wins over some big names such as Josh Koscheck, Josh Neer and Kurt Pellegrino. I would have to say actually that Fickett has seen the tougher competition overall.

If Shields takes the win he will be in the company of current lightweight champ K.J. Noons and current middleweight champ Robbie Lawler. He would be only the third EliteXC champion since the organizations debut.