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Talk Radio: Time to get rid of the Strikeforce Challenger series and complete restructure the company’s schedule of events
By Zach Arnold | May 27, 2010
Larry Pepe of Pro MMA radio had a very good deconstruction of Strikeforce on his radio show this week, talking about all of the problems that are currently ailing the promotion and what kind of wholesale changes the company needs to make.
As of when I am writing this, ratings haven’t been released for the last SF Challengers show that took place last Friday night at The Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. (Read the comments section for more on ratings.)
When it comes to debating the idea of Strikeforce having an A-show and a B-show, I am reminded of the old saying in the NFL that if your team is using two quarterbacks instead of one great one, you really have no quarterbacks. In the case of Strikeforce, they are struggling to make their A-show work, so a B-show is naturally going to be an anchor that weighs on them as opposed to helps make new stars. After all, if you can’t draw eyeballs for the A-show, the B-show won’t do numbers either.
I understand and get the concept on paper of why there are ‘main shows’ and B-shows. Talent development and Showtime paying more in television rights.
The argument posed by Larry is a good one — instead of dilly-dallying around with booking amateurs on undercard fights, why not book main-level shows once a month with stacked cards and consistent structure? Strikeforce has a lot of fighters who are inactive because the promotion can’t get them enough bookings and sometimes those fighters end up taking bookings outside the promotions. There’s really no reason for this.
First, let’s get to Larry’s comments on the Challengers series and why is it a failure:
“To me, this is a concept that has to go. Nobody’s watching, the ratings for these Challenger shows are horrible and I think the problem with Strikeforce… I really see Strikeforce more as a super fight promotion and we’ll get to that in a second, but these Challenger series versus the regular events, there’s no continuity and I know that the concept with the Challenger series was that up-and-coming guys would come on here to start to get noticed and recognized before they moved on to the bigger events. Well, last time I checked Matt Lindland isn’t an up-and-coming guy. He’s a guy who came in with two losses and whom most people thought was on the downside of his stellar career, he’s not a young talent like a Tyron Woodley who should be on their bigger shows getting more publicity or a Roger Bowling who I think is an absolute star waiting to happen. But on these Challenger shows that the ratings are so low on and there is such, there’s irregularity, there’s no continuity with Strikeforce. If I were them, instead of running a Challenger show in between a regular event and the spacing of the events is all over the place. Sometimes when they we don’t get what I call a main event show for months, other times we get them bunched together. It would seem to make more sense to me if Strikeforce is going to develop some momentum, develop an interest in the fan base of what’s coming next. Do a show once a month, abandon this Challenger concept because it’s horrible, and do regular shows once a month. For example, this Tyron Woodley fight that was on here that turned out to be a good fight, the Roger Bowling fight, those could be the first two fights out of a five-fight card on a main event type of card like we talked about like Heavy Artillery or the one coming up in Los Angeles and start introducing people to these fighters because no one’s seeing them on Challengers and I think that’s a problem.”
As I noted on the site before, Tyron Woodley not fighting on the St. Louis show was a mistake. The Challenger shows present more problems than they do answers, and as Larry points out below, the problems are many and great.
“And I think the bigger issue that they have going on is there’s no momentum from card to card. When we get done with UFC 114, we’re going to already start talking about UFC 115 and then we’re really going to start thinking about UFC 116 because that’s Brock (Lesnar) vs. Shane (Carwin). And you don’t have any of that with Strikeforce. There’s no sense of what’s going on in the divisions. There’s no divisional momentum. There’s no continuity. To me, you do one show a month, make it rock, they certainly have talent they could be putting out there. We sit here and say, ‘well, geez, who’s Nick Diaz going to fight?’ because they don’t have any Welterweights because we don’t going on with Jay Hieron, we don’t have any Welterweights to fight on these main cards so where’s Nick going? He’s going out of the country to fight. But they do have guys, they could be building Tyron Woodley more, they could be building Roger Bowling more, those two guys could fight to establish a #1 contender but if they’re getting wasted on this Challenger series instead of being on the main cards and getting more publicity and getting more eyes, nobody looks at those fighters, nobody thinks about those fights and I think that’s part of the problem. When you look at what’s going on with the divisions in Strikeforce, it’s a mess. (Alistair) Overeem didn’t defend (the title) for two years, now he’s back. (Robbie) Lawler and (Renato) Babalu at a catch weight — are you serious? Like that, they’re going to do catch weight fights now? And again that goes back to my argument that this really is a super fight promotion. (Shinya) Aoki and (Marius) Zaromskis come over and make debuts in title shots when nobody domestically really knew who they were. And (Gilbert) Melendez, (Nick) Diaz, and (Jake) Shields after they win their belts, who are they talking about fighting? Guys who aren’t even in Strikeforce. Eddie Alvarez for Melendez, both Diaz and Shields have talked about wanting to fight GSP, so I think it says something when guys in your company, there’s so little divisional structure and divisional depth the way that you are running these shows that they’re actually looking outside the promotion the day they get the belts for who their biggest challenge might be and who they want to fight. And Brett Rogers gets a title shot after a loss. Last time I checked, you’re supposed to win to get a title shot, so I think that’s why I make the argument that this is really a super fight promotion. If it’s me, put on 12 great cards, put on a card a month, abandon this Challengers thing because it’s a failure as far as ratings, as far as people really hooking onto it and paying attention, and start to build these divisions and build some continuity and I’m not sure I wouldn’t institute a numbering system because you know again, going back to the UFC because they do it better than anybody, you go 114 and now you say, OK, who’s coming up at 115? With Strikeforce, you don’t have that sense because it’s like ‘oh yeah, Heavy Artillery was the one in… where was it, San Francisco? No, it wasn’t in San Francisco, it was in St. Louis, that’s right.’ Like you don’t’ have that continuity from card to card and what are the implications of this guy winning on this card, who might he fight next time. We just don’t have that and I think if they did it monthly and really did it as a super fight type thing and built these divisions so you start building placement in the division, it would really go a long way.”
How would you restructure the promotion to make it a successful #2 company in the States? Do you agree on a 12-show-a-year format with stacked cards? Where would the female fighters fit in as far as the matchmaking is concerned?
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Ratings information obtained by MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) shows a peak audience of 294,000 for the May 21 headliner.
Overall, the show, which took place at the Rose Garden in Portland, Ore., averaged 249,000 viewers.
http://mmajunkie.com/news/19277/strikeforce-challengers-8-ratings-audience-peaks-with-300000-showtime-viewers.mma
I always wonder how much influence that Showtime is exerting. The Challengers thing never has really worked for me.
Showtime wants Challenger cards, they have such in boxing and they want them in MMA. I doubt Strikeforce can do anything to restructure this format.
You know..I wrote about Strikeforce discontinuing the Challenger events back in March…
http://www.mmaforreal.com/2010/3/16/1373204/should-strikeforce-drop-the
“I know Strikeforce is hellbent on doing twenty shows this year, but when over half of them consist of shows like this does that really count? How are they benefiting from these shows? My thinking is that Strikeforce should do 12 shows a year with 4 of those shows airing on CBS. That would mean one CBS event per quarter, and roughly one Strikeforce event per month. Just stop trying to do too much too fast and concentrate on quality instead of quantity.”
Another problem I’ve had on SF cards (UFC prelims as well) are that I can’t schedule my dvr for them as easily as boxing matches a lot of the time. For boxing I go to Showtime or and click on a boxing card and get all new events flying to me as they happen, same for HDNet Fights and MMA. When it comes to other MMA cards though for some reason they all want to schedule them as ‘Showtime: Lawler vs Babalu’ or whatever which then makes me manually have to schedule it for each and every one. That makes it potentially harder to catch for any casual and a needless pain for the hardcore, especially for the low key events.
The lack of any kind of narrative to focus the public attention on is a severe problem with Strikeforce right now, no doubt about it. They have been unable to leverage their Challenger series at all and even their big events fail to provide any kind of clue as to what comes next to begin gearing up the wheels of hype or even continue the momentum of the few prospects that have emerged. It’s no accident that Zuffa plugs their next event and headliners into their broadcasts, yet SF seems to not be aware of if the next card even exists enough to mention it or promote it.
I can’t say a monthly structure is the right move, but given the amount of fighters they have on the shelf and lack of structure at present I have a hard time seeing how they could plan it out any worse long-term. Perhaps that’s just my optimism shining through, though…
If you had asked me a couple of months ago, I would have agreed with everything Pepe said.
But then the ratings for the last couple Challengers shows came out and nearly topped the ratings for Heavy Artillery.
http://www.profighting-fans.com/articles/strikeforce-challengers-8-ratings_052610.html
Challengers 7 drew an average of 300K viewers and Challengers 8 drew an average of 250K viewers. Now I don’t know what the hell to think.
“As of when I am writing this, ratings haven’t been released for the last SF Challengers show that took place last Friday night at The Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. ”
http://mmajunkie.com/news/19277/strikeforce-challengers-8-ratings-audience-peaks-with-300000-showtime-viewers.mma
Larry’s premise is incorrect. The Challengers Series shows have actually been improving in the ratings, so obviously you can’t claim “nobody is watching” when they’re now not too far behind the baseline for the main Showtime events. I think that can be chalked up to a growing interest in the Strikeforce brand, and the good timing of having the show a week after the St. Louis card. I think the continuity between shows is improving, even if none of the pundits care to notice.
Also, does Larry really not understand why they would put established fighters with some measure of name recognition
in the main event slot of those shows? Are they being “impure” in their matchmaking by not having a card exclusively filled with prospects nobody knows about yet? Suffice to say if this guy was running Strikeforce, they wouldn’t be experiencing the gains they are right now.
I think there is merit in the idea that they should just aim for one big event every month, but the reality is that they’ve signed up to do 20-24 a year, and their current format serves that reality quite nicely. Aside from ignorance of the ratings success they’ve had with SFCS, I can’t think of any good reason why one would think they need a drastic overhaul.
Strikeforce has been on TV for less than 14 months. They’ve undoubtedly had some growing pains, but it is disappointing how the MMA blog echo chamber chooses to ignore any of the positive moves they’re making in favor of endless nitpicking and armchair matchmaking. The MMA fans who read their sites increasingly seem to be embracing the Challengers events and tuning in.
I agree with the idea of trying to do big, exciting shows.
If I had the book I’d go with a route like WCW (sort of) used when it was hot and that PRIDE used. Put names at the top of the cards, preferably against upcoming midcard guys you have under contract.
Put explosive young guys, and freak fights on the undercard.
I thought PRIDE did this so well. Each event would usually have at least one, usually two excellent matches. One freak fight, at least one brawl and at least one matchup between great grapplers. That gave the cards a little bit of everything and differentiated the fights. That’s a knock I have against UFC too. It feels like almost every damned UFC fight features two guys doing the same thing.
As for the B-shows. I say keep ’em. But change them. Showtime does a real fun job with its ShoBox series which is the boxing equivalent of the show. It features guys new to TV in matches where they generally put in two guys who are going to bang in every fight. Telefutura used to do this religiously, occasionally ESPN ‘Friday Night Fights’ does this when it they’re not getting jobbed by promoters and HBO ‘Boxing After Dark’ used to do this great and is now doing it again.
I’d book those shows with guys in the 2-0 – 6-2 range as far as experience. I’ve been to a lot of small shows all over the country and seen some great fights. I generally think the best fights are between two young B-level fighters.
Put on fun to watch shows and don’t worry if the guys are 2-3 years away from being in the opening fights on the A-show. Treat it as a separate promotion. If the fights are good it will grow an audience like HBO ‘Boxing After Dark’ did. Then you advertise your A-show on the B-show.
I don’t think Coker gets how to do this. That’s why I think eventually you’ll see another promoter get the book there.