« The legacy of Keith Kizer is cemented thanks to Evander Holyfield | Home | Dana White comments on Chuck Liddell’s body »
A look at potential problems for the Strikeforce 4/17 Nashville event
By Zach Arnold | March 3, 2010
Let’s state the obvious: Having three title fights (5 minutes per round, 5 rounds) is going to be a scheduling nightmare if the fights go the distance. Two of the three could very easily do so — Aoki/Melendez and Shields/Henderson (most likely). It’s unlikely Mousasi vs. King Mo would go the distance, but you never know. If the time frame for the CBS telecast is two hours long, Strikeforce is going to have to haul ass and rush fighters in and out of the cage in order to make it on time or have a small over-run. If the show goes over time by a half-hour or longer, there’s going to be a lot of pissed off network affiliates across the country.
The second problem is the sheer amount of MMA and boxing content in April. The April 17th date is going to prove to be busy.
- I hope that Holyfield vs. Botha isn’t on PPV or on free TV, but it might be. For reference: Botha and Holyfield were originally scheduled to fight on February 20th… in Uganda. Crown Boxing will be promoting the fight. One report claims the venue will the Orleans Hotel & Casino, where Crown has promoted boxing cards in the past.
Carl Froch vs. Mikkel Kessler (in Denmark) and Allan Green vs. Andre Ward (in Oakland) as part of their Super Six tournament on Showtime.(The matches have been moved to April 24th as a friendly commentor pointed out).- HBO will have Edison Miranda vs. Lucian Bute (in Montreal) and Kelly Pavlik vs. Sergio Martinez (in Atlantic City).
On PPV, we will have Roy Jones Jr. vs. Bernard Hopkins (in Las Vegas).(That fight will happen on April 3rd. Don’t rely on Boxing Scene’s calendar!
In other words, if you’re looking for a good fight on TV on April 17th, you got a ton of options to pick from. As for MMA content in April, you have the UFC show in Abu Dhabi and then the WEC 4/24 Sacramento PPV.
Without Herschel Walker, it’s going to be tough to see Strikeforce pulling a big ratings number on CBS. For certain, Dan Henderson is a huge star after his win over Michael Bisping, but if we end up getting the same Jake Shields as the one that showed up for the Mayhem Miller fight on the last CBS broadcast, this could be an ugly fight to watch. Plus, Strikeforce will not have Fedor on this card and they spent a lot of capital on their last CBS event to build their telecast around him. He dispatched of Brett Rogers in a tough fight. And now, there’s not going to be any follow-up. Kelly Kahl admitting on radio to Mauro Ranallo yesterday that there is a dispute between M-1 and Strikeforce should sound alarm bells for Scott Coker.
A lot of boxing insiders like to say that there isn’t a heavy cross-over between boxing and MMA, but April 17th is going to be so loaded with shows that if the CBS show gets boring in a hurry, an MMA fan will have a lot of options in terms of channel surfing for a good fight.
A final note — we’re only a month away from the actual event date for Strikeforce and we’re just getting a card now. It’s also a card that hasn’t received much media attention. It’s going to be tough to fill so many seats in such a short amount of time without papering the crowd. One of the very solid things UFC does is get fight cards lined up in advance and get the structure in place. As unpredictable as MMA can be with all the booking cancellations and injuries, UFC management generally does a good job of having structure in place to be able to promote events and get tickets sold for shows in advance. They blow the hinges off Strikeforce/Showtime in this regard.
Jordan Breen raised the question about fan interest in Strikeforce:
Surprisingly low amount of email over all things Strikeforce. In the past, days half this major meant major volume. Wonder if fans are tired.
Answer: Fans are never tired of good fight cards or fight cards with big stars. March 27th in New Jersey with Georges St. Pierre and Frank Mir will prove this. There is no substitute for star power and there is no substitute for PR infrastructure. Comparing the infrastructure of UFC vis-à-vis Strikeforce is night and day.
Jonathan Snowden asks if Aoki can be the savior.
Topics: Boxing, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 31 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Showtime is doing a free preview weekend that week giving the 2 Super 6 tourney fights to people for free.
Botha/Holyfield? Really? 4 Round SuperFight somewhere I assume? This fight is basically the Boxing equivalent to King Kong Bundy vs Jake Roberts in the Meckleburg County High School Gym on a Saturday Night indy show. They gonna do an autograph signing for 25 bucks a pop in the ring during intermission too?
Zack
Showtime SuperSix doubleheader with Froch/Kessler and Ward/Green has been moved to April 24th. That’s why the Strikeforce show is on the 17th. From what I understand the same crew produces Boxing & Strikeforce shows for CBS/Showtime.
You are right about the move to 24th. Duly noted. Thank you.
Regarding production of shows, I remember doing a transcript of a Kelly Kahl interview during the CBS Chicago event. He was asked why SF was under CBS Entertainment and not CBS Sports and he mentioned something about production crews for CBS Sports doing college and pro football, so the entertainment division handled the production for the MMA shows. Beats me.
Jones/Hopkins is on April 3rd on PPV.
I shouldn’t have relied on Boxing Scene’s calendar. Thank you. Do you know where there is a more timely calendar of boxing events?
This is the best boxing schedule out there.
http://boxrec.com/schedule.php
Put in what you’re looking for in the pull down menus on that page to narrow down the results. You can get information overload with it.
I’m personally watching the HBO card and DVRing the CBS one. I like the fights on the CBS card, but Bute is a top 4 guy in his division in possibly the toughest fight of his career, and Kelly Pavlik is the undisputed champ in what’s historically a glory division fighting the top guy at 154 lbs.
Botha/Holyfield is a PPV-only option. Who the hell would want it on their station? Versus is all about MMA now, it’s beneath HBO and Showtime, ESPN wouldn’t carry it. Maybe public access?
Weird, in my mind I had Aoki/Melendez as the one ending quick and Mo/Mousasi possibly going the distance.
I think they need to make sure they tape the undercard (that includes having something slightly interesting on the undercard) in case things end. They should also find a way to not cut to commercial in between every round.
Regarding the scheduling issues of three 5×5 fights, I think the bigger concern (from a fan standpoint) is what happens if two or three fights end quickly?
Strikeforce doesn’t even bother to tape their prelims, and even if they did their prelims are usually flat-out awful. There is going to be a lot of dead air time if a couple of those fights end in quick stoppages. What is even worse is that any dead air will have to filled with the musings of Mauro, Frank, and Gus. I don’t think I can take 40 minutes of those guys waxing philosophical.
Re: Attendance
I live in Nashville. My gym’s last event was on February 20th, on the same night as a UFC event, and we still almost sold out a 1200 cap venue with $25 being the cheapest seats.
There’s no question that Tennessee is a great market for MMA. Before UFC came to Memphis last December, my old radio co-host Rob Sayers used to go to Memphis a few times (he also went to Little Rock) for BJJ events and he would always tell me that the grass-roots in TN was excellent.
The problem is that they’re running a huge building (in Japan, the press release hyped up that it was a 20,000-seat arena) and they have exactly one month to make it work given the card announced. UFC ran a Fight Night and did well, but UFC is UFC.
I don’t see any of the three title fights going the distance. Maybe Aoki/Melendez, maybe.
I don’t think Aoki will be able to get the sub on Melendez and eventually Gilbert will wear him down to a TKO in round 2 or 3. King Mo and Mousasi are too explosive to have a chance to go the full 25 minutes. And Shields will be going to sleep since he will not be able to take Hendo down, or hold him down even if he does complete a takedown.
Believe me, I don’t want to see Shields/Henderson go five rounds. I’d be very happy with a finish like the one you proposed.
I think less people have emailed Jordan about Strikeforce because of his tiresome rants about the promotion on his radio show. Look, Strikeforce has tons of kinks to work out and there are many frustrating things going on in that promotion, but it’s WAY better for the fans now that it was before.
Do you prefer seeing Fedor/Hendo/etc live for free..or having Strikeforce put on Jan Nortje vs Bob Sapp and Buentello vs Tank Abbott on shows that don’t air live?
All currently headaches aside, Strikeforce is way better now than it was when it was a regional.
Zack, its simple. The sport doesn’t matter, and people care more about trying to analyze the business aspects online than to talk about the events themselves. Its “smarter” or something, I hear. That’s why Strikeforce was putting on rancid event after rancid event and getting loved.
They were getting love because Dana said it was okay to love them. Then they strike up a deal that’s good for the fans and good for the fighters, then suddenly it’s back to 2nd grade name calling and “Strikefarce.” Then all his minions turned against them.
Rumor mill is already turning that Wanderlei/Bisping will be counterprogramming this. Hilarious.
This is going to be a very interesting night in fights. The question is will UFC do a live counter program to the SF show with such a good boxing match on HBO. I would imagine they would.
Spike doesn’t do very well on Saturday nights so if UFC can give them 1.5-2 million viewers I’m sure they’d be thrilled. Really the UFC goal would be to drop the number CBS gets and make SF less attractive to them. Between a live UFC show and HBO it will be a competitive night for the eyeballs of fight fans.
The HBO boxing is what I’d probably be watching if I was still back East. This is going to be the first time ever stupid West Coast delays will work out for me.
From a live event perspective this is tricky to do 3 title fights on TV inside of 2 hours. Shields/Hendo will need to start around 10:20 to end on time if it goes long. The thing is that’s a fight you want over sooner rather than later because if it goes long it will probably be awfully boring. So maybe they’ll hang on to a swing bout to run or just be ready on taped prelims.
I really feel a Herchel Walker/Jose Canseco co-main event being forced on SF.
James Toney: A UFC fighter. LOL this sport.
They didn’t sign Toney, did they?
Bloody Elbow and FanHouse are reporting it but there is no official announcement.
James Toney vs. Kimbo. I don’t see any other fight that would make since. Other than to prove boxers just can’t cross over to become Mixed martial artists.
Oh it’s been confirmed by Dana’s #1 sycophant Kevin Iole. It’s true, it’s damned true.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=ki-toney030310&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
Anyone else think it was a dumb idea for Strikeforce to NOT run their show on the 24th? That’s the only way they would’ve guaranteed to be in charged of their own counterprogrammed destiny.
Showtime fucked them – they rescheduled the April 17th card to April 24th. So that was no longer an option.
It was dumb not to run on the 24th as they could really hurt the WEC’s buyrate.
It was dumb to put this card on CBS. This high level card for Strikeforce. I just don’t see where the mass appeal is. Nobody knows about Aoki, and I question if they will like his style….
If Aoki catches Melendez with a spectacular sub then I could see them liking him from here on. Hell, US audiences by and large have never seen a gogoplata finished live. The closest is when Diaz beat Gomi but the casuals didn’t know/care. If Aoki does something crazy, I could see it making Sportscenter’s top 10.
I gotta agree this show screams of the Lawler/Smith EXC show. Hopefully Strikeforce gets a 3rd shot on CBS when this rating dips hard.
As I have said before this is nothing like Smith/Lawler II. Dan Henderson is a star, not a Brock or Kimbo level superstar, but still very well known. Scott Smith’s shining moment was during a prelim fight 3 years before the EliteXC show and Robbie Lawler washed out of the UFC a year or so before the TUF boom so nobody knew who he was outside of the hardcores. I’m not saying it’s going to beat the Fedor-Rogers rating and certainly won’t come close to what the Kimbo & Gina combo did, but it’s not going to be a dud either. Plus Strikeforce is going to have the (hopeful) promotion during March Madness whereas the July EliteXC show was thrown together and barely promoted.
Mark..I actually like Jake Shields a lot, and thought the first three rounds against Mayhem were awesome. I just think he’s an uninteresting opponent vs Hendo in a main event to the masses. Think Anderson Silva vs Leites & Cote…they weren’t a big deal. Put him against a star like Forrest and it’s a big deal.
I don’t know if Strikeforce had any other options @ 185 though. It’s a shame that Babalu has been on a slide because he and Hendo @ 205 would’ve been awesome. Also, Strikeforce really fucked up by not signing Lil Nog.