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« | Home | »

Strikeforce should have a GP-style Middleweight tournament

By Zach Arnold | July 15, 2010

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Update: They’re going ahead with a tournament in October & December, but they are going to do a one-night tournament deal in December — sounds like San Jose to me since California allows it. They’re trying to split the baby here.

That’s the argument presented by Sherdog radio (from last Monday). A caller suggested the idea of a one-night tournament but that’s not going to happen, so he said why not do a PRIDE-style GP since Middleweight is the promotion’s strong division?

This topic is touched upon in a broader context of how Strikeforce and Showtime are not creating any momentum for shows. Every time I bring this point up, there are a few of you out there who start to mock the media for ‘narratives’ or ‘focus’ or whatever you want to poke at. The truth is, however, every major sports league has narratives and themes. Will the Evil Empire buy their way to another championship? Will Phil Jackson be able to achieve a fourth Three-Peat as coach? Will a small-market underdog team like New Orleans be able to repeat as Super Bowl champions? There are always narratives and themes going into every season and every major series in big sports, so why can’t that be expected by fans of MMA promotions? UFC does a good job of creating stars and giving fans what they want. After all, UFC set the expectation level of what fans demand to see in terms of undercard fights and new stars. So, if UFC does, it should raise the stakes for other promotions to meet or exceed those standards.

In thinking about the idea of Strikeforce not having a prolonged Middleweight tournament, it would be a really big blunder on their part… and this is coming from someone who hated the yearly tournament format in Japan. Middleweight is the one division that Strikeforce can actually look at people and say that they have guys who could be competitive with UFC’s roster. They have the talent there to pull off a GP-style tournament, so why not do it? It would give the fans a decisive winner, some great matches, and would earn the respect of a lot of fans. Give the fans what they want and make it happen.

TJ DE SANTIS: “Strikeforce needs to do something and they’re not doing anything right at the moment. I don’t think it’s up to Scott Coker or Mike Afromowitz, I don’t think it’s their problem. We’ve talked many hours about how Strikeforce’s hands are really tied at the mercy of Ken Hershman and Showtime and what they want to do and they just aren’t building the brand. They aren’t, you know, you don’t look at one Strikeforce event and go, ‘Oh, look what’s happening, it’s building to another event, I can’t wait for the next Strikeforce show.’ It’s just, I mean, the fights are good. I have no problems with the fights, you know, a lot of them are great. But they’re not building stars on the undercard. They’re not really saying, look how this main event carries over ot the next main event in this division. It’s… it’s just like, hey, look, some fights are on, watch them. Oh, hey, we’re going to do some more fights down the road, maybe they’ll be good, too.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “The lack of planning is a real big issue and I think this is something we’ve talked about plenty of times before, though I will say about just having a tournament in general, not necessarily in the one-night… I do agree with that because you kind of, that was the first thing you really got people pretty excited for in terms of what Strikeforce was doing. I think that was one of the first things that, all right they’ve talked about this tournament for the Middleweight belt. All right, forget the fact Jake Shields jumped ship. You do the best that you can with the situation that you have and OK, all right, Scott Coker comes out and here he starts talking about maybe 8, 4, maybe 8, maybe 16, who knows, he has no clue, but it’s something to get excited about and if you’re a fan of Strikeforce, if you’re following, you kind of want to see something like that happen. Well, no, all of a sudden it’s going to be Kennedy vs. Jacare and it will determine who has the belt from there.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “That’s not fun. That’s not fun! At all.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “But, I mean, the bout itself I have no real problem with, just the fact…”

TJ DE SANTIS: “No, no, no, let me rephrase that. The fight itself is fine. I don’t have a problem with that. I think Jacare, if you’re going to have a title fight, Jacare definitely needs to be in it. However, let’s build up to it. I mean this is the golden opportunity… Let’s take a field of fighters, let’s tell you their story, let’s have them fight each other and build up, I mean really look at the titles right now. Who are the champions in Strikeforce, Lutfi?”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “Oh goodness… Overeem.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “Correct. And… Overeem is the Heavyweight champion. No one even remembers when he fought Paul Buentello to win that title.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “No, I mean, we do but that’s because we do the show.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “I mean, literally the only thing that we’ve seen of Alistair Overeem in Strikeforce in recent memory is defeating Brett Rogers, who had just lost to Fedor. So… that title basically has no luster whatsoever. There’s no real lineage on it, no one really even you know looks at… I mean for a long time… but while Fedor was on his winning streak and fighting you know in Strikeforce, people really looked at Fedor as the champion. Various media outlets even forgot that Overeem was the champion and just, it’s almost instinct to call Fedor the Heavyweight champion of Strikeforce. So… no real history there. Let’s talk Light Heavyweight. Who’s the Light Heavyweight champion, Lutfi?”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “King Mo.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “Who basically dominated Gegard Mousasi, who took it from Renato Babalu in, you know, I mean I guess King Mo’s great. It’s great that he’s a champion, but you know Mousasi was supposed to be really big elite-level Light Heavyweight that was dominate their division and run game through everybody and we’re supposed to be excited about Mousasi and this guy who hasn’t been doing MMA very long took their title, so, you know, I’m not saying that King Mo isn’t a great fighter, but he’s not the level of, he doesn’t have the hype that everyone thought Mousasi was going to have. And then we have this Middleweight title, which again doesn’t really have you know anything, Jake Shields leaves, you know, we’re sort of sitting there shrugging our shoulders. I guess we’ll do this, just throw it at somebody. It’s just… we don’t have to go through everything. It’s just… none of their titles are really established. I mean… when we introduce a fighter as a Strikeforce champion, I mean it sounds nice but I don’t think anyone looks at a Strikeforce title holder as some elite-level fighter who, Oh my God, he’s their champion, he must be a killer. It’s just missing that and I think that’s straight on Strikeforce and Showtime that they really haven’t… I mean… this goes to their champions to their preliminary fighters who we don’t get to see. You aren’t really doing anything to promote, they’re not promoting the brand, they’re not really not promoting the fighters. They’re promoting the fights, which I mean we all loves and this is something my old partner, Josh Gross, would always talk about — just promote the fighters and the fights. They’re promoting the fights but they’re really just not promoting the fighters and by not promoting the fighters, they’re really not promoting the brand. And I mean Strikeforce is something that we care about, we cover because it has really good talent, it’s just it’s not captivating the crowd that pays the bills.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “There is a big issue in terms of how to, not necessarily a big issue, just a big discussion in terms of what is the best way to run a promotion, is there a best way to run a promoting. UFC came along, followed the pro-wrestling model, and has had the success that it’s had. And one of the bigger discussions that we’ve had surrounding Strikeforce is just how successful it can be putting the fighter first and trying to emphasize the fighter as opposed to the brand itself and it’s gone that route in terms of focusing on hype, Dan Henderson’s going to get all this money and it’s going to be focused on Dan Henderson and we’re going to push Dan Henderson and maybe to the extent of, at the expense of Strikeforce.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “Look at the talent, though, Lutfi! Look at the talent that Strikeforce has at 185 pounds. It’s one of their better divisions. Let’s have these guys fight other. Let’s, I mean, I know everyone that is a boxing fan has made just a big deal out of the Super Six. Let’s do something like that with these guys.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “And I’m with you, I’m absolutely with you on that. But I’m saying it goes back to just overall how they decided to run the promotion strictly based on more the individual fighters as opposed to the brand itself because if you go and you do the brand and if you go and you run your promotion the same way the UFC is running their promotion more on the name of the brand as opposed to the individual fighters, then you probably do get this Middleweight tournament off the ground. Then you probably do focus on Strikeforce’s Middleweight tournament featuring all these different guys as opposed to just trying to pander to each individual fighter’s specific interests and not getting anything done to begin with.”

TJ DE SANTIS: “It just seems like putting the title on Jacare and Tim Kennedy, I think both of those guys if they beat each other are worth of carrying that you know banner as champion, but it just seems like throwing those guys together without having a tournament just seems like, ah, we got a problem here, let’s just get a quick fix when this is a golden opportunity to promote the brand, to promote the fighters, and to really promote their best division.”

LUTFI SARIAHMED: “Yeah. No, I’m with ya. There’s no reason not to take advantage of the opportunity in front of you and hopefully they still will. Hopefully it’s one of those things where you have your title fight and then maybe you still do a tournament for the sake of a #1 contender, who knows. But I think this is something that they have to take advantage of because of the fighters in their Middleweight division and hopefully they can pull something off.”

Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

3 Responses to “Strikeforce should have a GP-style Middleweight tournament”

  1. Nicholai says:

    Texas put a Kibosh on having a Tournament in One Night. I wonder which other States will do the same.

  2. Mr. Roadblock says:

    I disagree.

    I could see a 4 man tourney but not an 8 or 16.

    A big tourney will take too long and then Jo does the champ fight? You’ll have burned through the roster of fighters.

    Jacare and Kennedy are the only two guys who aren’t retreads. It’s not like the 185 class in SF are a bunch of world beaters.

  3. robthom says:

    I’d love to see some kind of tournament.
    It would be a great way to primer over the memory of Shields.

    Tournaments always make instant new stars at the end.

    I’ve been saying that UFC should have been doing multi-event tournaments for years.
    Proper matchmaking would be pretty much the same effect, but giving it a name and sticking to the course till the end gives it the gravitas.

    I dont see why it would have to be multi-fights in one night.
    They’d probably have more to gain by spreading out this “storyline” to sustain a few more cards.

    It’d be exciting and IMO a great idea.
    Not sure about the fans should “expect” and “demand” things like that though.
    That sounds like the wrong attitude to me for some reason.

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