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A mixed bag coming out of this weekend’s events for both Bellator and Strikeforce
By Zach Arnold | August 13, 2010
Having watched both the Bellator (Thursday from Hollywood, Florida) and Strikeforce (Friday from Phoenix, Arizona) events, I came away feeling entertained by one product and pessimistic about another one.
Before I get to my thoughts on the show, Josh Thomson announced yesterday on CSN Bay Area that he will be in the semi-main event slot of Strikeforce’s San Jose event in October at the HP Pavilion.
In regards to Thursday’s Bellator event, their business stats look awful and yet the in-cage product is entertaining. The crowd was smallish at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and they are running so many shows that it’s almost impossible to make money on a big scale with their current schedule. On top of that, their TV support from Fox Sports Net/Comcast Sportsnet is awful, just awful. The Thursday shows are often pre-empted and there is no advertising of the shows ahead of time on the networks. For example, the Bellator show did not air until 1 AM PST on CSN Bay Area (a huge market for MMA) and there was no warning ahead of schedule. The Bellator program is so far down the food chain for CSNBA that they aired a replay of a day Giants game with the Cubs, aired Sportsnet Central, aired a replay of a BBQ festival for Chronicle Live, aired another run of Sportsnet Central, and then got around to Bellator. The pre-emptions are destructive.
And yet, with all of these problems, the in-cage product for Bellator is excellent. I dig the production values. I like the announcers a lot. I think the matchmaking is good for what it is. I don’t have major-league expectations going in and as long as you don’t expect to see a UFC-level product, it’s a really fun show to watch. The way they have set up the 115-pound women’s tournament is excellent. I thought Megumi Fujii and Jessica Aguilar did well last night and I’m really glad to see a tournament set up the right way. As far as what the promotion does with the 115-pound division after the tournament ends, your guess is as good as mine.
But here’s what I can say about Bellator — they have their act together on matchmaking unlike Strikeforce. These one-night tournaments are an absolute abomination and I hate the promotion for booking them. 3-minute rounds? Ugh. Two rounds for a semi-final fight? The whole 135-pound one-night women’s tournament was a mess from start to finish. Not announcing match-ups until the day before the show? On top of that, horrible officiating that screwed over Maiju Kujala (who is talented). At the end of the one-night tournament, it became clear to me that Miesha Tate is unlikely going to beat Sarah Kaufman in their re-match.
Miesha Tate vs. Sarah Kaufman should happen next
The worst aspect, however, of the Phoenix show was putting Joe Riggs in the main event slot. I say that more as a criticism of Strikeforce than Riggs himself. After all, anyone who read this MMA Fighting.com article about what Riggs said Strikeforce allegedly did to him contractually in order to work the show is appalling. He claims the promotion made him sign an amendment to his contract so that the Challengers fight against Louis Taylor wouldn’t count as a fight on his deal? Then, on top of that, his win bonus would be determined by local attendance? Everyone knows that SF doesn’t have the infrastructure to run all these shows across the country and draw big gates. So, naturally, it’s like saying to the guy that his bonus will be small. It’s almost as bad as having undercard fighters sell tickets in order to possibly earn a chance to get booked on the show (indy-riffic). These are, in my opinion, such low-rent moves by a promotion that is getting paid by Showtime.
After his January loss to Jay Hieron, Riggs only had one more fight left on his Strikeforce contract. But, as he explains it, due to the fact that this fight is on a Challengers card, the 27-year-old had to sign an amendment to extend his contract one more fight because he wasn’t get paid his contractual money.
“My pay got chopped down by 55%, so that sucks. And my bonus is attendance based, so it’s pretty sh**ty. I gotta look out and think, ‘Oh my God, how many people are there,’ just to get my bonus. So that sucks.”
Both promotions have some big problems ahead of them and yet you get the feeling that the promotion putting out the better product right now will be the first one to fade away…
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 17 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Strikeforce’s contractual shenanigans with Joe Riggs are not right. As a promotion, they should either honor contracts or not sign them in the first place. And if they don’t think that Riggs is worth X price anymore, then releasing him would be more ethical than trying to screw him out of the amount-per-fight for which they signed him.
Regarding the one-night women’s tournament in Strikeforce, as I wrote in the other thread:
BELLATOR FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP
1) The big thing I noticed at Bellator was how small that crowd was. How many times have they gone to that Hard Rock Florida Arena in the last year? It’s got to be 3 or 4 times. It was obvious that the well was dry in that market by now.
2) Bellator’s biggest problem, which I have pointed out before, and Kid Nate wrote a fantastic article about, is that they do not know their pecking order on the MMA food chain. Hector Lombard should be in the UFC by now being tested. His last two opponents had no business in there with him. Instead, of building up talent and then letting them prosper, they hold onto them at all costs. This is certainly a precursor to bigger problems when Bellator runs out of money an Rebney thinks that all of his fighters are his property and makes it impossible for them to get their releases.
Here is a link to the article I talked about with Kid Nate: http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/8/13/1620809/bellator-is-a-gilded-cage-and-a
3) The fights are decent, but really half of their fights are pointless. Yves Edwards in 2010 is irrelevent. Watching 2 UFC washout Heavyweights was fun but neither is going to make waves MMA. And a Japanese female MMA fighter has zero appeal to an American audience. Look at season 2. Out of 11 cards, the only thing that shined from all of those fights was exactly ONE fighter, which was Ben Askren.
STRIKEFORCE
1) The tournament was bad. The bouts were way too short. The ref was horrible. Heck, at one point the ref almost stood up the action while another fighter ha back control.
2) Why do organizations screw fighters out of money? Typically it is when they are losing money. The fact that they had to pay Joe Riggs less money is a big sign that Strikeforce is struggling for money. Heck, for them to have to reduce fighter pay on a card that had extremely cheap female talent means they probably had to do that in order to break even at best.
3) The only reason they showed a prelim fight is because they had to have more time between the fights. So for people thinking this was some huge progress for Strikeforce, it is still highly unlikely we will see this in the future.
OVERALL
It’s hard to care for either organization when there are many stories out there of them financially trying to hurt their own fighters. Both organizations are proving that while female MMA is cheap, it also comes with minimal crowd and audience appeal. I agree with Zach that Bellator is likely to go first. And Bellator worries me on their exit from the sport.
I can’t defend Strikeforce, but with Bellator, what would you have them do? Let one of their best fighter in Lombard leave their organization and go to the UFC? What exactly does that get them? It’s not like the UFC is going to help them out.
But whatever, I know that nothing is going to make 45 Huddle happy until every show on the freaking earth is destroyed and all you have is the UFC. That is what will make him happy. Forget the fact that the UFC would never put the world’s best female MMA fighter (Mega Megu) on television or a fight card.
45 Huddle, I sure as hell hope you get your way and everything else dies and the only fucking show in the entire globe so that you would stop finding things to bitch about regarding the smaller promotions.
If the UFC was running weekly fight cards like Bellator in lieu of there being a Bellator, don’t you think that would be a better solution to MMA’s ills? They’d rather just let other people do it though, so get used to this sort of disappointment in perpetuity.
Please explain to me your logic where the UFC will run weekly cards once Bellator folds? What has lead you to believe this?
I have heard 45 Huddle and others complain that the UFC is running too many cards, and that they are having to water down each card to get them ready.
This would seem to be exactly opposite of them running weekly show.
So please, which is it Alan/45 Huddle?
1) If the females want to start their own fight league…. With entire cards of only female fighters… Then they should do that. But them taking up TV time from male fighters is pointless.
2) Yes, Bellator needs to let these guys go. That is where they fall in the MMA food chain. They cannot in any way compete with the UFC or even Strikeforce. So why even try? All they are doing is slowing the progress of fighters in the sport. What good does that do anybody? It doesn’t help Lombard. It doesn’t benefit the fans. Heck, Bellator is likely not even making money. So NOBODY is winning right now. So what’s the point?
3) I prefer Bellator to go out of business. They are serving zero purpose to MMA right now. They can’t make money. They refuse to let their prospects fight better competition. I’d rather see them gone and see more fighters having access to fighting the best. I also would prefer to see Sengoku go out of business soon as well.
They are putting on fight cards. They show casing some of the best fighters in the world, and they are giving the fans exciting fights.
What you’re saying just falls in line with your myopic viewpoint that every fight organization on all seven continents is out of business and only the UFC remains. This is further evident of that.
If it is not so, then please, provide evidence otherwise.
Also, I think its “cute” that you say that they female fighters should just form their own organization. See, I thought it was fighters job to fight and promoters jobs to promote. But your idea is so enlightened. I’m sure you hold the same viewpoint for male fighters as well? Or are you a segregationist and prejudice son of a bitch to? “Well since I don’t like female MMA, then they shouldn’t have the ability to fight anywhere on any card unless it is an “all female” card/league that they put on themselves?
Please, explain your white-trash, small minded views to us all.
Bellator serves several major purposes:
1- They provide the only ‘tournament’ style MMA that is in anyway considered relevant. This is key to their survival, their weekly cards are there only advantage, that and the quality of their fighters.
2- They provide a good spot for Athletes (such as boxers, wrestlers, judoka’s etc.) to transition into MMA, because their opponents don’t have weeks to prepare just for there style, it allows them to face good competition and get experience without getting destroyed.
3- Bellator is a good spot for upcoming talent to get some fights without being tossed into the savagely competitive UFC as well as old veterans, no longer able to compete at the highest level to stick around a while longer and test themselves against young, inexperienced talent.
I don’t know why you are complaining so much about Hector Lombard, he’s not the greatest fighter in there, far from it. The two top fighters who could probably get to the UFC are ben askren and dan hornbuckle.
I just had to say that I agree completely with your sentiments here mostly. Bellator continues to improve and put on a great show with good production. I feel more interested in them each time I watch.
But Strikeforce? I am officially done with them. I may catch the really big fights that interest me (rare for them) but they are being run so incredibly inept that I will not invest my time and interest into a venture that is doomed for failure and doesn’t even seem to care. Horrible matchmaking, extremely poor production (King of the Cage on HDNET is infinitely better than any SF show), disdain for what fans really want to see, tournament idiocy, Frank Shamrock worship, Daley, Batista. It’s really endless the amount of mishaps they’re guilty of. This could go on forever though since they aren’t blowing money like Affliction (except for Fedor/M-1 association).
I feel bad for the fighters, but they gotta fight somewhere and get paid, I just don’t have to watch and feel violated for doing so. So I’ll sit out their shows and do something more significant, like watch Bizarre Foods reruns.
I’d love to hear the attendance numbers for the show that Bellator did here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area a couple of months ago. I don’t think they drew 1,000.
“On top of that, horrible officiating that screwed over Maiju Kujala (who is talented).”
Good article a lot of valid points. I just don’t see where Kujala got screwed. IMO she got helped out immensely when the ref stood their fight up when Tate was passing to side control from the failed guillotine attempt…
Is there something I am missing?
Yeah, it was definitely Tate that got screwed in the standup since she was going for the von flue choke at the time. But what was even worse about the ref was later on in the night when he was going to stand up the fighters as Tate had Akano’s back with both hooks in. Is he going to standup a fight when they have full mount too? Horrible ref.
As for the Bellator pre-empting. I tend to DVR their shows because they are almost always pre-empted here in Chicago for a White Sox game. They usually air the show at 11PM here. But this past Thursday it was scheduled for 11PM but it didn’t get aired until about 11:20 or 11:30. My DVR cut out after the first round of the Yves Edwards fight.
I was going to check out the Strikeforce show last night, purely for the novalty of seeing how bad a show they could put on, but work came up. I was planning on buying the cheap seats ($20.00) and just moving to a better location,as I’m sure there was plenty of seats avaiable.
What a mess this show was,…I think I would have enjoyed it the way people watch videos of polices chases with a crash or car rolling at the end of the chase.
I can’t understand how these people don’t learn ANYTHING from their mistakes. They have some decent talent, and even though most don’t enjoy seeing the women fight, I’d personally enjoy it if it competative. But three minute rounds & only two rounds for a semi-final fight?
A tounament is a good thing if done over multiple shows, as this may actually be what SF needs. Since they can’t seem to plan any advance booking or stick to any planned booking if things don’t turn out the way they hope for, if they did it right, it could work out well for them.
*IF* they did it rignt,…but thay seems to be too much to ask from them.
I stopped watching Strikeforce Challengers shows when they basically became a promotional vehicle for women’s MMA. Like I said – I don’t hate women’s MMA, but I’m not a fan of it either and really, I’m ambivalent to watching it. I did watch the Bellator event because I cared about the men’s fights, and none of them were really any good and none of the talent excited me.
The only B-show that excited me this weekend was KOTC. That KOTC show was great – the whole time I thought to myself, “this is what ShoXC was like when it was really good.” Of course I’d think that. ShoXC when it was really good WAS KING OF THE CAGE. Terry Trebilcock was in charge of those shows (not sure if Shingo Kashiwagi was booking them, though), tickets for them were sold as KOTC events, etc etc etc. None of the fights on the KOTC show were classics, but the developmental talent was really really good and they all got growth fights. None of this shit where a dude fights someone they easily takedown, mount, and either pound out or get the back of when the guy flips over and choke them out. Serious pushback in every fight.
You give Trebilcock a checkbook, he can embarrass these guys. When he doesn’t have money getting handed to him, he runs shit or charges someone to run shit under his banner. That’s just the way it is.
People hoping Bellator goes out of business or suggesting that Bellator should release their best fighters are in need of getting their heads examined. The more mma promotions there are, the more fighters get fed, and the more product there is for fans to view. Smaller promotions are needed keep the flow of talent going.
Riggs was interviewed by Sherdog this week and didn’t seem upset with the Strikeforce situation at all.
It Wasn’t Tate who benefited from the stand up, it was Kujala. Tate was passing to side control. She also had gotten her arm through and it looked like she was about to lock in a Von Flue choke.