Strikeforce, Matchmaking, and the Power of Storytelling

I am, by any definition of the label, a hardcore MMA fan. So I've sometimes wondered why watching events put on by Strikeforce - unarguably the #2 domestic MMA organization - sometimes leaves me a little unfulfilled, as though something is missing.  I've experienced this sensation following more Strikeforce events than not; it's a feeling I very rarely get after watching a live UFC event.  Since both organizations are high-level MMA, with world-class athletes, varied stylistic representation, and on a theatrical level feature solid production values, my natural curiosity is piqued as to the reason for this difference.

Without a great deal of introspection I arrive at the answer. I believe the reason is the same as the biggest part of why Strikeforce's ratings are also suffering.  While the most recent Fedor vs. Werdum event struck gold, a couple of other recent events were ratings flops.  That reason: matchmaking.

The UFC excels at many aspects of the MMA game. In a way they are a parallel of an ideally well-rounded mixed martial artist: they may not be master of every aspect - in fact not necessarily master of ANY - but they are sufficiently talented in enough aspects of the game to be far and away the lead dog. But for all their advantages - financial, competitive, experiential, talentwise - over their competitors, one of them is as important to me, from a fan's perspective, as any other:  they have superb matchmaking.  Let me explain.

One of the main reasons I love the UFC is the same reason I love corny sci-fi "soap operas" like V and The 4400:  the story is always evolving, but never completing.  The wave always seems on the crest of breaking, but it never does fully break; the picture is forever in motion.  I think Joe Silva and Dana White do a fantastic job on this front.

What do I mean with these analogies - the ever-evolving story and the never-clear picture?  I refer to the storylines in each weight class.  The title picture.  The pecking order.  MMA matchmaking is, to me, first and foremost about storytelling.  The purist may object that it should be about identifying The Best, but I maintain that the two are not mutually exclusive.  You can identify The Best but in a manner in which matters are never fully settled; more contenders lurk around the corner; more "must-have" matches always remain; there is ample room for the imagination.  There's ample room for discussion, simply put.  As a sports fan this is what you want.

I want to step back and introduce two concepts well-known to the entertainment industry before I contrast the UFC's approach with that of Scott Coker and Strikeforce.  The concepts, which are admittedly contradictory, are "leave 'em wanting more" and "give 'em what they came to see."

Leave 'em wanting more.  A guiding axiom of show business as long as there has been show business.  Don't fully sate your audience.  Give them a little bit - give them maybe even enough - but always leave them wanting more, so that they hunger to come back for more.  It's not an accident that ABBA was reportedly offered a billion dollars to reunite, or that Seinfeld, which went off the air at the top of its game, is still pulling in dozens of millions a year in reruns alone, making it the most profitable show in the history of television.  Michael Jordan broke the golden rule when, following his retirement after hitting "the shot" to win his second three-peat, he finally relented and returned to competitive basketball.  He was still an exceptional player, but in the eyes of many, the perfect storybook ending was ripped out and thrown away.

Give 'em what they came to see.  Another entertainment guidepost.  Speaking of Jordan and "the shot", the recent game 7 of the NBA Finals between the LA Lakers and Boston Celtics was the most-watched NBA game since that final Jordan championship game.  The ratings for this year's Finals in general were the highest in many years.  Why was this?  Was it the talent assembled on the floor - Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce?  Was it two big-market teams slugging it out?  To be sure these among others were factors.  But there have been big-market teams, talented teams, slugging it out in recent years producing ratings which paled by comparison.  What was the difference?  The difference was:  This was the series fans wanted to see.  From the season's opening tip, this was the Finals most fans wanted.

Enough of basketball and ABBA.  They serve to illustrate two contradictory yet critical rules in entertainment: give 'em what they want, but also leave them wanting more.

I've already alluded to how the UFC does a fantastic job of riding the tension between these two forces.  They've given us Lesnar vs. Carwin, Liddell vs. Silva, Penn vs. GSP, Anderson Silva vs. Dan Henderson, and many more "must have" fights in recent years.  They've defined a clear champion at each weight class, while all the while allowing storylines to build and break in the undercards - heels like Tito Ortiz and Josh Koscheck; smack talking by the likes of Frank Mir, Chael Sonnen, Rampage and Rashad; seemingly past-expiration-date fighters coming back to life (Leben, Stevenson, Cro Cop), passing of the torch (Matt Hughes to GSP; Tito Ortiz to Chuck Liddell; Rich Franklin to Anderson Silva); the ageless Randy Couture continuing to fight and defeat world-class fighters nearly young enough to be his children; the rise of fighters from out of nowhere, e.g. Cain Velasquez, Junior Dos Santos, Jon Jones, Brock Lesnar - the list goes on.  Through creative matchmaking, constant mining of talent from smaller organizations (quite often fighters whom even hardcore fans are unfamiliar with), and a nearly Six Sigma approach to results which often weeds out fighters even before fans think they should be handed their walking papers, the UFC keeps all the balls in the air in all five weight classes with admirable tenacity. Aspects and details of the picture come into focus - it would be a frustrating mess if that were never true - but the storyline as a whole is, like a daytime serial, always in the process of "becoming".

By contrast, Scott Coker and Strikeforce go directly for the kill with their matchmaking.  They "waste" (quote, unquote) very little time allowing stories and rivalries to rise organically.  They also "waste" (again quote, unquote) little time in allowing the viewing public to become familiar with much of their talent and to develop a rooting interest.  Both are important factors in building public interest in a particular matchup.  You don't drop a Lakers vs. Celtics series out of the blue on fans who don't appreciate it and therefore could take it or leave it.  This violates BOTH principles enumerated earlier - it neither gives 'em what they came for nor leaves 'em wanting more.

Strikeforce Nashville.  As a hardcore fan I LOVED that card.  LOVED it.  Both the matchmaking prior the event, and the actual fights themselves.  I LOVED that we got to see Jake Shields at middleweight vs. Hendo, Shinya Aoki vs. Gil Melendez (closest thing to an extra-UFC dream fight you can ask for), and King Mo vs. Mousasi - all three with belts on the line.  But, frankly, I am not the audience Strikeforce needs to go after.  They've already won me over. They need to go after the casual fan, the interested prospective fan.  They need to create the grounds for storylines to build in the minds of the fans, leading the FANS to ask for particular matchups rather than have them handed to them.  King Mo is a great fighter and was a terrific MMA prospect - so you bring him in, with nobody knowing him from Adam, and have him fight for a title?  Even worse was Aoki vs. Melendez.  Shinya Aoki is a VERY exciting fighter that, if marketed correctly, could be very popular here - he could engender a new admiration for the ground game and the polarizing aspects of his personality could give fans a fighter they would love or love to hate.  In matching him with Melendez, Strikeforce gave us a matchup of two unarguable top-ten fighters in the world, with a belt on the line - but to put it frankly, nobody cared!  Well, more precisely casual fans didn't care. Now, Aoki is frankly damaged goods in the US market.  American fans saw a badly limited one-dimensional fighter (this is not my characterization of him but rather what the fight hammered home for 25 minutes) who didn't appear to belong in the same arena with Melendez.  A colossal waste.

Coker and Strikeforce err too much on the "give 'em what they want" side of the line - FAR too much.  Like the bygone Affliction organization (RIP), Strikeforce is putting together matches that hardcore fans love to see but which completely suck the air out of further matchmaking from a casual-fan perspective.  How many permutations of Fedor, Overeem, Werdum, Bigfoot Silva can be trotted out before the thrill is gone?  Cung Le and Scott Smith gave us great fights, but that's been done twice.  Likewise, Robbie Lawler and Smith's battles were also exciting - both of them.  The UFC had great "twofers" like Matt Hughes/Frank Trigg, even Bonnar/Griffin, but if that's all they had to offer I daresay the shine would fade quickly.

Affliction isn't the only extinct organization whose mistakes Coker & co are reliving. EliteXC's demise was brought about because they chose to focus their entire organizational strategy around basically two people: Gina Carano and Kimbo Slice.  Scott Coker has not learned from these mistakes.  Witness this quote from Yahoo Sports:

CBS makes kings...[t]hey made Kimbo. They made Gina. They made Cyborg.

Nor is this an offhand choice of words taken in isolation or out of context.  In a previous interview (which alas I cannot track down) Scott Coker used the phrase "king-make" in reference to his strategy for fighters on CBS.  It's clear that Coker - and Strikeforce - are comfortable with building one or two baskets via network TV and then putting all their eggs into those few baskets.  This is not only a risky strategy in the abstract (are they going to push Werdum now that he defeated the best fighter on earth?), but it's a lesson that has already been written for them on the hulls of organizational ghost ships littering Dana White's seabed.

There are multiple contributing causes to this inability of Strikeforce to foster storylines and build fights. One is what appears to be Coker's mindset of focusing on the "charismatic hero" - that problem, being a limitation of imagination or understanding, can be shored up.  What, however, is harder to shore up is a limitation of resources - in the form of both talent and airtime / number of shows.  

First, the frequency of shows. The UFC has TUF to crank out promising talent with a built-in audience.  They put on 20-25 live events per year (not including TUF fights) and they maintain a steady stream of UFC Unleashed reruns on Spike TV.  The sheer number of events gives the UFC significantly more flexibility in fostering new storylines, allowing new talent to stake its claim, and the freedom to balance both "critical" and "enabling/supporting" matchups. Strikeforce, by contrast, put on fewer than half the events in 2009; they don't have a vehicle like The Ultimate Fighter; and they don't have an outlet like Unleashed to keep the players fresh in the minds of fans.

The question of talent is separate from but related to the frequency of events. UFC has, as mentioned earlier, a constant stream of highly talented fighters walking in the door and out the door.  This allows them to pick and choose matchups very freely, capitalize on fan interests, and, crucially, strike gold with the occasional Cain Velasquez, Junior Dos Santos or Jon Jones.  This last point is highly important. With the flow of fighters into/out of the UFC, it's inevitable that some percent of them will prove to be diamonds in the rough - which the UFC has proven very adept at gradually polishing to a high shine.  This approach - as well as this luxury - stands in contradiction to the "kingmaking" approach Scott Coker appears to favor.  Both organizations like to put home run hitters in their stable, but Strikeforce's approach seems to be to reserve their promotional muscle for just a couple of sluggers while the UFC is constantly on the search for more levers to pull.  Flexibility is very important in the ability to stack big cards; an organization that has 3-5 superstars and another 5-15 big names is obviously going to prevail consistently over one that stocks between 1-3 superstars and just a couple big names.

I think I've demonstrated that Strikeforce, from a matchmaking perspective, is broken.  The question of how to fix it is tougher to assess.  Ultimately you have to play the hand you're dealt. They won't wake up overnight and have access to TUF, Unleashed, and 12+ PPVs per year like the UFC. The UFC has worked themselves into a position of industry number one (by a great margin) through admirable vision, execution and determination, and they are enjoying the benefits accordingly.  I see Strikeforce fast approaching a fork in the road - on one side, defining themselves as an organization that competes openly with the UFC (which until very recently they were deliberately avoiding) and on the other side acknowledging that maybe the competitive advantages the UFC enjoys as top dog - the muscle they were able to bring to bear to sink EliteXC, IFL, Affliction - is too much to overcome and they must be content with simply being one of "the smaller organizations" that White, Rogan and Goldberg refer to in fighter bios.  And we're all familiar with Yogi Berra's advice when faced with a fork in the road.