Strikeforce, Tournaments and Transparency -- A Snark Fights Production

By having a GP belt up for grabs, and not the SF HW belt proper, he’s building in a parachute for Overeem, and extending the publicity built from the ealry announcement. The 3 round format provides a convenient excuse for not having the real belt involved.

The tournament is tailor made to highlight the one advantage SF has over UFC, and that is the HW names in their stable.

If Fedor and company act up after the first event, he will be tossed out and replaced. He is still a fan favorite, but now that the luster has faded in the wake of the Werdum loss, he just doesn’t have the leverage to hold Coker’s feet over the fire.

With Overeem winning K1 and then Dream belts in such a short time, he’s the new face of SF. I can’t wait to see these matchups. It appears that all the hand picked opponent garbage is going away for at least a year, until either Overeem is cemented as the ulitmate champion of mma, or they have a new toy to play with and promote, should he be dethroned.

It’s going to be an interesting year.

The end result is a brutally ironic media environment that sees the UFC benefit from their Draconian policies while Strikeforce suffers for generally respecting the media’s role.

I don’t see how this is ironic unless you’re implying that the UFC’s policies are so brutal because they feel like being bullies for no reason. It’s completely expected that their strict policies to control media result in them getting fluffier coverage than a competitor with less leverage. Is there a level I’m missing here, or are you talking Alannis Moressete style irony?

The unforgivable mistake is lying

LOL really? Tomas Rios, we’re dealing with fight promoters. You know as well as I do this comes with the territory. Further, your overbearing finger wagging falls a little short of proving the case he is outright lying ;

Scott Coker :
“We didn’t feel it was fair for one person to fight five rounds, another person to fight three rounds. There was debate about, well, should the final fight be a title fight? But what if Alistair wasn’t there? It just became very confusing.

Thus the commission was not the only stated reason. If anything he was putting a bit of spin on it. Spin =/= lying. You understand this. Further we don’t know all the places the events will be held or the markets they are looking at. You and Gross have mentioned 4 commissions, not 44. This leaves a net of 40 commissions.

Further complicating the issues at hand is the fact that this was not a move Strikeforce was forced into.

Clearly, the fighters and their managers were the ones to object to this. What is Strikeforce supposed to say? Had they been completely frank about the backdoor conversations the narrative in these types of hit pieces would be “the inmates are running the asylum, M-1’s gonna screw this up, the sky is falling” no doubt.

Overeem’s title will not be on the line in the tournament, but the winner is guaranteed a shot against Overeem for the title. Which means that if Overeem wins the tournament he has no opponent lined up and should he be eliminated prior to the final he will hold a meaningless belt that must be defended. The first scenario was possible regardless, but the second one opens the door to Strikeforce being stuck with a paper champion that would fracture the division’s narrative and hierarchy.

Ten thousand facepalms, here in another post I made I answer this criticism ;

While a lot of fans initial reaction to this will be negative, as was mine, this actually makes business sense in the long run. There is a lot of flack saying this tournament makes no sense now. This is unfounded. It puts the tournament in line with UFC, K1 and Pride tradition where there was a tournament title and a GP belt that is independent and separate. It also makes the tournament more fair and uniform, as five round fights take longer to prepare and recover from possibly.

It still gives is the fights people want to see, the lineal title can still change hands(save it), and it creates essentially another tournament final after the final. I really doubt anyone who would have turned into see the tournament now won’t because of this(though negative press from may cause a small dip, any issue along that is more than justified by a second major fight after the final being created, creating an overall net gain in eyes on Strikeforce even with the worst case scenario PR damage this move causes)

Those who watched MMA before the TUF recent era or those who have taken the time to learn the sport remember that the then-number 1 promotion Pride had a situation like this develop when Ricardo Arona defeated Wanderlei Silva during the tournament, setting up a rematch which Wanderlei delectably won. It creates storylines, controversy and intrigue with things like this.

In short, this extends the tournament another bout, and creates another headliner for a major card in the fall. If PPV is a goal, the more big fights they can create with this the better. The way they’re doing this is perfectly in sync with the sport this is a part of. I realize Gross started this fire and you’re just running with the torch, but this just comes across as a hit piece, which makes your bit about the brutal irony of the Strikeforce media problem all the more brutal and ironic.

In an effort for transparency, let me first say I am not a fan of yours. I was a vocal critic of stuff you did… well, pretty much everywhere. The latest debacle, I was securely in favor of Joe Rogan and had finally just written you off for good.

That said, this is good shit and your site is fantastic.

You said ;

First, you’re either willfully misrepresenting my points or simply misunderstanding them.

In my response I said ;

Tomas Rios takes the criticism a notch further in his new blog. The dissection and immolation of his arguments can be seen in the comments here.

But you said ;

How can you expect someone to take you seriously when you run around in comments sections claiming to have "immolated" someone?

I said your arguments were destroyed, which I hold to. But here you go, spinning the details. Maybe I should write an entire piece where I first examine how the blogsphere and mma fans have unfairly written you off and then lead into a bit where I accuse you of lying to the point it destroys your legitimacy and credibility as if no one in this business as ever lied or spun anything before.