Doggy Bag: Critiquing Strikeforce

When Strikeforce bought out EliteXC, everyone was speculating about how the organization would start to operate with more fighters, more shows and a bigger TV deal with Showtime. Now that we're a couple months in, they've had one big show and are laying the foundation for the next few months, what do you think of the direction that they're taking the promotion? I really like that they're putting together these catch-weight fights, but how long can that be how they make their main events?
-- Chris Juvera

Jordan Breen, columnist and radio host: I think they're largely headed in the right direction. They did about the smartest thing possible by opening up this chapter in their promotion with the catch-weight bouts. Diaz-Shamrock was promotionally perfect for a host of reasons, and the amount of attention it got from fans reflected it. I'm not sure Lawler-Shields is quite as sexy, but with no immediate challengers for either, and the fact that Shields may be looking to just fulfill the remainder of his former EliteXC contract, the bout was another smart, solid booking.

However, it would be wrong to think Strikeforce is simply going to base their product around those sorts of “superfights.” They have an issue in the fact that one of their champions, Cung Le, has acting ambitions, the fact that their lightweight champion Josh Thomson has injury issues, and their heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem is often a K-1 commodity. However, they'll all provide solid main events once they're available for duty. After they get these fighters back into the cage, and they get their other titles sorted, they'll have established enough in the way of contendership to ensure that they can put a quality Showtime card every 8-10 weeks.

The other encouraging aspect of Strikeforce's expansion is that they haven't abandoned their presence as a regional MMA promotion, but rather they're looking to capitalize on other markets the way they did with their San Jose homebase. They're looking to turn Washington into another strong area for them, and their June 6 card is full of good St. Louis-based talent in an area that is having more and more local shows all the time. This is not a promotion that's aimlessly trying to sell out oversized venues in big cities, or to run shows in traditional casino venues that have been exhausted in the current economic climate. Coker and Co. know how to make money, and how to create and capitalize on markets with local talent, and that was before they had friendly television deals.

However, I do think there are some readily identifiable issues for the promotion, although they're problems that I think are easily fixable. One is the promotion's configuration of preliminary bouts, and the other is its utilization of interesting prospects.

To my mind, Strikeforce's card configuration is the thing most desperately needing an alteration with the promotion taking it to the figurative "next level." In the past, they'd put together a strong four or five fights for a main card, and the undercard would be relatively anonymous San Jose talent. These fighters would be able to put their friends and family in seats and help out the gate while fighting for a couple hundred bucks. This is generally sound practice for regional cards, but with Strikeforce moving onward and upward, they're simply wasting valuable space on their undercards by using 2-1 and 3-2 fighters in their preliminary bouts. A fight like Cody Canterbury-Ben Holscher should be left to smaller Californian promotions at this point in time.

The other difficult issue seems to be Strikeforce choosing which fights get slotted for main card and preliminary duty when they move away from that model. For instance, the first ShoMMA card on Friday, arguably the best fighter on the bill was Fabricio "Morango" Camoes, who was buried in the prelims despite his sparkling performances in EliteXC. This is a guy who will be ready for the likes of Melendez and Thomson soon, and yet he's being given the backseat to the likes of Lavar Johnson-Carl Seumanutafa and Aaron Rosa-Anthony Ruiz. In some cases, there are arguments to be made when less-than-enthusing, decision-prone fighters are relegated to prelim duty in favor of proven bangers, but Camoes is a joy to watch and ready for primetime, certainly more so than some of those who were showcased instead of him.

Strikeforce's June 6 event shows a little improvement in this regard, with undefeated and largely unknown locals Josh Baumgartner and Jesse Finney squaring off, as well as former Mizzou All-American Tyron Woodley, who could be something truly special at 170. These are exactly the kind of guys that Strikeforce needs for their shows: Interesting local prospects. However, there are still at least five fighters with .500 records or poorer scheduled for the undercard, with little chance for being anything more than card filler.

Worse yet, there is talk of slipping in a Brett Rogers tune-up fight as the fifth main card, which would bump blazing arrow prospect Rafael "Feijao" Cavalcante's bout against Jared Hamman into the unaired preliminaries. Not only would this mean that Feijao -- arguably one of the best prospects in the sport regardless of weight -- would have gone from co-feature to prelim bout, but he would be shafted in favor of a bout like Kevin Randleman-Mike Whitehead. This sort of bizarre mishandling of the talent the promotion should be coveting needs to be fixed post-haste for them to be able to develop fighters and develop a next level product.