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Strikeforce 8/13 Phoenix, Arizona at The Dodge Theatre
By Zach Arnold | August 12, 2010
The air date on Showtime is 11 PM EST (Showtime East) and 11 PM PST (Showtime West). Yes, a delay of the broadcast on the West Coast… again.
Dark matches
- Frankie Sainz vs. Jace Crawford
- Andres Acuna vs. Edwin Louis
- Tim Worth vs. Rob Anderson
- Joel Champion vs. Sean Scott
- Jeffrey Anderson vs. Edmon Xhelili
- Christian Grosinsky vs. Jason Karpel
- Ryan Diaz vs. Chris Guertzemacher
- 135-pound women’s tournament alternate fight: Colleen Schneider vs. Liz Carmouche
Main card
- 135-pound women’s tournament featuring Miesha Tate, Carina Damm, Hitomi Akano, & Maiju Kujala (first round matches are two rounds of 3 minutes each, championship match is three rounds of 3 minutes each)
- Lightweights: Ryan Couture vs. Lucas Stark
- 182-pound fight: Joe Riggs vs. Louis Taylor
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 42 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I gotta say, I’m authentically shocked that Joe Riggs is headlining anything on live TV in 2010. Anything at all. Yeah, he got wins over Luke Stewart (more known for tats than fighting) and Phil Baroni (hella washed up), but man, this feels like they’re just desperate to get through his contract. His opponent doesn’t really need to be that great to beat him either. Like, why isn’t Jay Hieron in this position instead?
BTW, I loved that Sherdog interview where he mentioned whatever-her-name-is that has the 135lb women’s strap and was all like “Who the hell is that chick? Way to slap me and Matt Lindland in then face for headlining these right along with you, you random. No one even cares about you.”
I don’t think they’re that desperate to get through his contract. On the MMA Hour this week he was complaining about how long he’s been on the bench. He also said something about him only having 1 fight left on his contract, but for some reason this isn’t that fight.
I thought it was absolutely hilarious because he’s got a point. Nobody really gives a shit about Sarah Kauffman or women’s MMA, and that’s just talking about the hardcores.
Ed. — You’re wrong on that.
Ok maybe I should reword that considering some people do give a shit about WMMA.
Most MMA fans treat womens competition as a second class citizen. They could take it or leave it. Womens’ MMA is no different. Put Sarah Kauffman vs the winner of this tournament on the same night as a fight such as Diego Sanchez vs. Jacob volkman main evented UFC, and see which one will get more viewers…
Prove that I’m wrong.
1st sentence in second paragraph should say Most sports fans.
You could easily counter by saying that Volkman/Sanchez is on in 7 times the households. And you’d be right.
You want an even comparison? OK. Imagine Sarah Kauffman headlining a PPV. Not a Strikeforce one – make it XFC or whatever. Some promotion no one cares about at all and has no TV outlet to promote with. Is it going to sell more PPVs than Shark Fights 13? They’re both gonna tank, but 20,000 people might buy Shark Fights. No one is buying Kauffman fights. No one.
Zach – is anyone (particularly in mainstream media) really demanding the UFC do women’s fights? Or even the WEC? I’m looking around, and I don’t think anyone really cares if they do or not.
Ed. — Women’s fights alone do not sell themselves, but they certainly do have appeal on mixed cards with both men’s and women’s matches.
I think the WEC missed a great opportunity to do their own 115 lbs. women’s division. That would have been great. Bellator obviously didn’t have much trouble putting together an elite field for their 115 lbs. tournament, even getting a quality replacement for Angela Magana on a week’s notice. This should not have been hard to accomplish.
That’s not an answer to the question. There should be people in the virtual street protesting the lack of women’s MMA from Zuffa if there’s really that much interest in it. So where is the outrage? No one seems to care. Dana just goes “There’s not the interest there” and everyone’s moved on. Aside from some articles about how he should get Gina Carano in the WEC (which was some HILARIOUS stuff, especially in retrospect) a couple years ago, what chatter has there been recently?
Let’s face it – its a novelty thing to most MMA fans. Only one women’s fighter has sold on their own, and that wasn’t PPV or anything, just Showtime. Otherwise its filler. The UFC can put out anything and have it be filler. People on the internet get super excited on Phil Baroni fights so long as Dana’s the one promoting them. Its not like there is some great social benefit to women’s MMA that demands Zuffa be a good citizen and do the fights either.
No one is demanding that Zuffa do female fights because
1) Dana White has already shown an aversion to it and so no one thinks it’s a realistic possibility, and 2) StrikeForce and Bellator already have the most of the top female talent at this point. There’s barely a demand for Men’s Flyweight matches in the WEC despite the fact they actually said already that they were going to do it (about 20 months ago at this point), and contrary to popular belief there is a ton of talent available.
Following the demise of EliteXC though, I’m pretty sure there was indeed some clamoring for Zuffa to sign Carano and Cyborg, despite it being obvious that it wasn’t gonna happen.
It’s funny how everyone who doesn’t like Women’s MMA makes the absolutely asinine claim that _no_ _one_ does. You think I’m tuning into StrikeForce tomorrow to see Joe fucking Riggs?
When I was making the initial point I was speaking on things more of as a whole rather than every single “hardcore” MMA fan. I personally have watched almost every SF card this year, and would’ve ewatched bellator if I could’ve found it. Just because an event has women fighting in it doesn’t mean I will turn it off.
I’m just trying to be honest with the fact that women are not a draw in mma. They are not a draw really in any sport out there except tennis, besides a few notables. The WNBA(which is backed by the NBA) gets squat for viewers.
To get to Sarah Kauffman: Joe Riggs absolutely had a point. I would go with scenarios for examples, but I think Alan’s done a lot better job than I could do on making my point. The only reason you could argue that Sarah belongs on a SF main card is the fact that she has their belt. Not because Sarah is bringing in so many viewers. Not because Sarah is so exciting that she makes the world stop when she’s competing. It’s because SF gave her the opportunity to win their belt and she did.
IMO once it becomes clear that Women’s MMA is not really ever gonna be a big draw, Strikeforce will scale back their fights more and more until they only have a certain few superstars left.
About Jay Hieron, I believe he is no longer under contract with StrikeForce. His contract was for two fights plus a Championship clause. Hieron was very unhappy with the way things turned out since he turned down a offer from the UFC mainly because he was offered a title fight with StrikeForce. I believe he actually was offered a shot against Zarumski for the vacant title over Diaz but he declined. I think things are up in the air now for him and he is technically a free agent.
I\’m surprised Zuffa hasn\’t signed him yet. If they want to cement a monopoly on the Welterweight division there\’s only about five or six guys they would have to sign and he\’s one of them.
You think it’s 5 or 6 chrom? I’d go with Diaz and Hieron. Good and Askren could also be in the fold, but neither of them have really beat anyone unless you consider Hornbuckle a great win. Which I am kinda 50/50 on.
By Askren beating Hornbuckle the way he did, he kind of made it a less impressive win. Let me explain….
Hornbuckles stock fell more then Askren’s went up. The fact that we now all know that Hornbuckle doesn’t have solid wrestling means he is virtually useless at Welterweight. GSP, Fitch, Koscheck, Shields, Askren, an a few others basically have guaranteed victories over him if those fights ever happened.
I think Hornbuckle would be better off at Middleweight which has fewer top level wrestlers.
But don’t let my bashing of Hornbuckle take too much away from Askren. That guy is going to be a force at Welterweight. He still needs to show improvements on his striking. His head is far too exposed. But his nasty wrestling will do wonders for him for years….
I’ll go with Diaz, Hieron, Askren, Hornbuckle, Gono, and theoretically bringing Paul Daley back. Also I like Hieron but who has he beat? Unless I’m missing someone, Joe Riggs and a young Jake Ellenberger are his two biggest wins. Anyway I’m not talking about people who could conceivably beat GSP. Just anyone who could be used to build a credible Welterweight division around.
Additionally, Hornbuckle is with American Top Team now so I expect his wrestling may improve in future fights. I don’t expect him to ever have world class MMA wrestling but that’s a hole in his game that’s a lot easier to fix when you can train full time with a top camp than when you also have to work a day job.
This is easily one of the worst Strikeforce shows ever. Ranking right up (down?) there with Strikeforce at the Dome and the Playboy Mansion shows. Riggs hasn’t been relevant since he showed up fat for his title shot versus Hughes, and Couture is a non-prospect with a famous last name. Unless you are a hardcore women’s MMA fan, this show is just awful, even by Challengers standards.
I would be skipping it if it were Saturday. Bad Chad baby!
But since it’s Friday I’ll have to watch.
Anybody know how much the Pulver/Sylvia PPV will be?
Yeah Riggs really let loose during the MMA hour. He said that Challengers fights don’t count towards his contract because he gets a reduced pay percentage, but he gets a cut from the live gate?
Since its not his normal going rate it doesn’t count as full fight. huh= my first reaction. Got to love his complete and utter honesty though.
I said this when the card was announced very interested to see how a card headlined by Riggs vs. a no name fighter ( no offense to L Taylor, who’s a solid Midwest guy) and four women tournament will do at the box office.
I still cannot believe Scott Coker didn’t clear the tournament format ahead of time with the Arizona State Athletic Commission. How much time did he have to do that? He should have done that while SF still had time to move to another venue in another state that would let the women fight for 25 minutes total in a night.
As for Riggs, he is not relevant and while I’ll probably watch his fight, he actually has to win it just to reach stepping stone status again at this point. He is not the draw here.
As for Ryan Couture, did he really need to debut on live television? Couldn’t they have put Daniel Cormier on the televised part of the Challengers show and Ryan Couture on the StrikeForce: Houston prelims?
I thought all of the female weight classes went to the same round number and length as male weight classes.
They changed it last minute.
the plan for this was always for 3 minute rounds, but the number of rounds has been changed at the last second.
If you are having a 1 night tournament, some changes have to be made because many commissions won’t allow someone to be scheduled for more than 5 5 minute rounds, so you can’t be scheduled for multiple 3 round fights in the same day.
But they shortened the number of rounds AND the lengths of them. Which is the worst of both. And did so on short notice.
It’s a complete mess. 1 night tournaments are useless. It has been proven time and time again in Japan that there are far too many issues with them.
And let’s step back here for a moment. Let’s say Strikeforce put on a man’s tournament with 4 fighters. Put them in there for the same types of rounds as they are the females. And then declared the winner of this tournament worthy of a title shot. People would be laughing and hardly justifying it.
What they are doing is a joke. Instead of building up female MMA properly, all they use it for is a cheap filler to fill card space with inexpensive talent. It’s obvious that they could care less about the competitors.
Why do female MMA at all if they are going to do it this poorly?
So let me get this Strikeforce scam correctly…
1) They put way too many fighters on the books.
2) They have about a 50/50 split of Regular vs. Challenger Series shows. Basically, they don’t have enough slots for all of their established talent to fill up the regular shows.
3) They don’t offer fighters any sort of fight for months and months. This has been documented on multiple occassions through various fighters.
4) When they do offer them a fight, many times it’s for a challenger series card which means they get less money and the fight doesn’t even help go towards ending their contract.
WTF??? How is that any way to treat fighters? A fighters pay should be based on who he is, not what card you can place him on. An established fighter’s pay should not be based on how many tickets he can help sell. That is the job of the promoter to sell tickets.
That is one big scam. It is no way to treat professional fighters. Bellator is doing bad things as well. It’s as if these organizations try any way to get these fighters into contracts, and then make it impossible for them to get despite fighters not being offered fighters in over 6 months and a lot of lies and half truths going on.
To make matters worse, the way that the woman’s tournament has been treated is downright pathetic. 2 rounds for 3 minutes? Why even fight? And to change these rules so close to the fights is bush league.
What are they going to do in the event that a fighter wins rd 1, and loses rd 2, each with 10-9 scores?
60 second overtime…
from what I heard the judges will declare a winner if the fight is tied 19-19 after two rounds.
A sudden victory round was originally proposed but shot down by the Athletic Commission
They are literally leaving it in the judge’s hand if its a draw after 2
Last time they did a tourney like this, the ref chose a winner.
This tournament is going to wind up looking like the YAMMA tournament, where almost all of the fights were won by lay & pray. Miesha Tate should be able to smother everyone in the tournament with relative ease (assuming she fights smart).
Strikeforce’s disorganization strikes again.
If Strikeforce had actually prepared for this event ahead of time instead of throwing it together in the past couple of weeks, they would have known months ago that Arizona’s athletic commission was not going to allow any fighter to fight more than five rounds in one night.
With that knowledge, they could have made the tournament semi-finals two rounds of five minutes each (instead of three minutes), and they could have made the tournament finals three rounds of five minutes each (instead of three minutes).
Instead, they had to change it at the last minute to make the semi-final fights two rounds instead of three. And if they changed the rounds to being five minutes long, that would have been another last-minute change thrown at the fighters, who had been told to train for three-minute rounds.
So, now we’ve got semi-final fights that are going to be a total of six minutes. A six-minute fight is like a YAMMA fight with a round break / stand-up in the middle of it.
On the subject of Joe Riggs’ ignorant comments about Sarah Kaufman, Kaufman deserves to be on major Strikeforce events a lot more than Riggs. Kaufman is the #1 fighter in her weight class. Riggs is nowhere near the top ten in his weight class. Given those basic facts, the only possible justification for Riggs being more deserving of a “major show spot” is that Riggs is a man and Kaufman is a woman.
Strikeforce apparently doesn’t disagree with this line of thinking too much, as they put both Sarah Kaufman and the women’s tournament finals in non-main-event spots on Strikeforce Challengers shows, while Riggs somehow got a main event spot on a Strikeforce Challengers show.
I wouldn’t say that Riggs is ignorant.
Forget about gender. Let’s just talk straight up fighting. Kaufman is not Top 50 in the world at 135 pounds. And it’s not like 135 pounds is so stacked weight class.
Which means she has no business making any sort of demands about how her fights are shown.
The ONLY reason she is on TV is because she is a SHE. Nothing more, nothing less.
So stop with this BS about Kaufman being #1. She is a #1 FEMALE fighter, which is about as relevent as being a Pancrase fighter in the year 2010….
I wish SF would just stay in San Jose unless they had a big fight that they know they can sell out a building with. This isn’t it. Yea, Joe riggs and the guys on the undercard can probably do a decent job selling tickets, but I don’t understand why they would try to do something like this tournament outside of CA.
Besides the familiarity of the CSAC and Strikeforce, they’d have an easier time selling tickets at their home base, and they have already run a tournament in that state.
Would people in San Jose really support 8-9 events a year like this? I seriously doubt they would, and they’d probably have trouble getting the dates.
They operate like a second rate promotion because they are. They just get lots of money to be. Good for them, I guess?
Who is Sarah Kauffman without Strikeforce? I’m serious. Her reputation as the best in her weight class is a result of them giving her a belt, because otherwise the weight class basically doesn’t exist. Where does she fight? Hook N’ Shoot? LOL
Joe Riggs is the only person on that card I have ever heard of. I literally wouldn’t go to this show if it were being held in my backyard and it were free to attend.
Alan — putting aside your comments on there not being demand for women’s MMA, just wanted to ask you personally if you like or dislike women fighting MMA and what your overall thoughts are on the subject from your personal level.
I don’t personally dislike it, nor am I really a fan. I can recognize what it is. Women’s MMA is pushed by Bellator and Strikeforce because the fighters are cheap and as promoters, their options are incredibly limited in terms of being able to promote people as “world class”. Most male MMA talent that is really elite fights for the UFC and we all know it, and they have to basically say “so and so was in the UFC!” to prove that their stacks of journeymen have some value. Women’s fighters are something that they can use to identify themselves with and theoretically have unlimited potential as far as marketing goes. Whether or not its a realistic set of expectations is a different story.
“I can recognize what it is. Women’s MMA is pushed by Bellator and Strikeforce because the fighters are cheap and as promoters, their options are incredibly limited in terms of being able to promote people as “world class”.”
This is women’s MMA in a nutshell.
There isn’t even much fan demand for it. Outside of 1 fight, females don’t see tickets. They don’t bring in viewers. If anything, it makes an organization look more second rate to the casual viewer because they are filling up there cards with what anybody can see is lesser competition.
I’m watching the Tate first round fight… And besides the horrible stand-up by the ref…
Tate is a perfect example of why I have a hard time taking female MMA seriously. She has taken 3 or 4 shots and each time she leaves one of her arms far from her body which allows her opponent to get the underhook in.
That is a BASIC wrestling mistake. As in even remotely decent high school wrestlers don’t make that mistake when shooting in.
And I wouldn’t be shocked if the female finals gets more viewers then the Riggs fight. The telecast felt like it came to an end with that female finals fights. I actually changed the channel. Then I realized there was still a fight left.
“Who is Sarah Kauffman without Strikeforce? I’m serious. Her reputation as the best in her weight class is a result of them giving her a belt, because otherwise the weight class basically doesn’t exist. Where does she fight? Hook N’ Shoot? LOL”
Who is Sarah Kaufman without Strikeforce? So far (fighting only on Strikeforce Challengers cards), Sarah Kaufman without Strikeforce would be “Sarah Kaufman getting seen by more viewers on Bellator’s NBC show.” That may not be the case if Strikeforce really does put her on the major Strikeforce cards, but even Bellator (with its horrible timeslot) has more exposure than Strikeforce Challengers shows.
Also, the 135-pound weight class is arguably the deepest in all of women’s MMA, and Strikeforce didn’t “give her a belt.” She beat Shayna Baszler, Miesha Tate, and Takayo Hashi in Strikeforce fights. That’s how she got a Strikeforce belt. All three of those opponents are highly respected, world-class fighters, as is Roxanne Modafferi.