Luke Rockhold defends his Strikeforce middleweight title against journeyman extraordinaire Keith Jardine tonight, but does this really matter in the grand scheme of MMA?
Is it important at all?
Many were expecting the dissolution of MMA’s perennial “B-league” when Zuffa purchased the organization in March 2011.
The notion that the plug was being pulled on the San Jose-based promotion was only furthered when prominent fighters like Nick Diaz, Cung Le, Dan Henderson and Alistair Overeem were moved from Strikeforce into the UFC.
Somehow, Strikeforce persisted and eventually a new deal was signed between Zuffa and Showtime (the network that airs Strikeforce) that not only kept them on the air throughout 2012, but also made plans to rob Strikeforce of its heavyweight division in the near future.
Now that Zuffa is officially backing the Strikeforce brand and product, it will undergo a new renaissance, right?
Wrong.
First, Strikeforce will always face an identity crisis. As the second largest promotion in the United States, they will enjoy more name recognition than King of the Cage and Shark Fights. However, the flip-side of that statement is that Strikeforce is the UFC’s eternal understudy—the Luigi to the UFC’s Mario.
Furthermore, recent developments regarding Strikeforce women’s featherweight champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos failing her post-fight drug test have also hurt the organization.
Strikeforce was the de facto home of women’s MMA. With Santos suspended, the fate of the female 145-pound division is in question.
While the women’s bantamweight division is growing in popularity thanks to the feud between Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey, one lone division cannot represent women’s MMA and grow it to new heights.
Thus, is there a point to Strikeforce now that it will always be known as the UFC’s minor league and that women’s MMA has hit a devastating roadblock?
There is no point other than to entertain and help give lower-level fighters more name recognition (and perhaps give MMA writers an excuse to avoid a family function on some weekends).
Strikeforce won’t help grow the sport the same way other smaller organizations in other countries like BAMMA or Superior Challenge might. It’ll only help the MMA world by giving up its good fighters to the whims of UFC matchmaker Joe Silva.
But it doesn’t need to do anymore than that, truthfully. If you watch tonight and smile and walk away remembering one of the fighters, then Strikeforce lived up to what limited purpose it has and justified its own place in MMA.
Strikeforce will simply coast along for the duration of its existence, but it’ll excite fans and build fighters in the process.
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