Author: Steven Rondina

Strikeforce has always played second fiddle to the UFC in the United States. It is an unfortunate fact that is based on many things ranging from from its fighters to its venues.

Whether it is the Strikeforce: Nashville post-fight brawl between Cesar Gracie’s team and Jason “Mayhem” Miller or Gilbert Melendez fighting random hobos they find sleeping in the streets of San Jose (I know, it is not actually THAT bad, but you get the point), UFC diehards are quick to dismiss Strikeforce for a variety of reasons.

Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman gives that group yet another reason to be dismissive of the promotion.

The event looked downright amateurish on television, with a non-stop stream of unintentionally hilarious problems.

It is easy to dwell on Strikeforce’s bad commentary. The old saying, of course, is “too many cooks spoil the soup.” With a mandatory three-man crew holding microphones, Mauro Ranallo, Frank Shamrock and Pat Miletich often end up fighting for the chance to deliver soundbites as obviously as the men in the cage are fighting for a win.

Commentating, though, is really hard. Even UFC duos Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg, and Kenny Florian and Jon Anik fail to please everyone.

Focusing in on that would be a true disservice to the wackiness fans saw in this event.

Not all the problems were under Strikeforce’s control. Mike Beltran’s half-beard, half-Fu Manchu hybrid is not something to knock them for. Neither is the “hurry it along” attitude he had with groin shots. Neither is his EliteXC-style willingness to threaten fighters with standing things up while they worked for submissions.

Similarly, it is hard to criticize the promotion itself for the questionable job done by everyone’s favorite referee, Herb Dean, who prematurely ended a bout between Adlan Amagov and Keith Berry after a front kick to Berry’s knee had the commentators screaming.

Bad refereeing, after all, happens in the UFC, too. So what can you point a finger at and say “bad job” to Strikeforce about?

Well, awkward camera angles for one. The first main card bout of the night, between Ovince St. Preux and TJ Cook went to the ground only a couple times. Unfortunately for the production team, the always-important camera that hovers over the cage to let fans see the ground work had a well-placed cable dead-center over the fighters in the second round.

Producers were quick to change angles, but even so, later in the fight, that cord got far more screen time than it should have.

That on its own would not a big deal. Unfortunately, the miscues did not end there.

The next fight, between Lumumba Sayers and Anthony Smith, had a problem that the fighters actually noticed. Smith entered to his walkout music, stripped, and the staff gave him the usual pre-fight treatment. No problem yet.

Sayers, though, was shoved into the arena prematurely. He walked to the cage as slowly as he possibly could, but still arrived right in the middle of Smith’s pat-down and face-greasing. He awkwardly stood behind and waited his turn as Ranallo and Shamrock yukked it up.

Neither of these things marred the fights, though. Strikeforce was totally on-point with that, right?

Well, actually, whoever is in charge of the mat over at Strikeforce coated it with pudding before things kicked off. Fighters slid around with alarming frequency.

This, too, was joked about by the trio of analysts. Perhaps more than it should have been, given how it was entirely possible that it could lead to fight-altering slip.

Make no mistake. Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman was an all-around solid event that delivered more than a few exciting finishes.

That said, Strikeforce is probably the second-biggest MMA promotion in the world. Showtime is no newbie when it comes to being the maestro of fighting events.

How the hell did so many little things things go wrong?

Back in 2010, I watched Eric “Butterbean” Esch’s Moosin: God of Martial Arts event headlined by at-the-time fatty Tim Sylvia and Polish strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski. If you played them side-by-side, you likely would not guess that tonight’s Strikeforce event was the one done on the dime of a major commercial broadcasting network.

While it was a solid batch of fights, the wide variety of problems ended up adding more ammo to the belt of Strikeforce’s naysayers. Once again, some of this was out of their control.

Either way, there is no getting around the fact that I found myself laughing more times here than I have with any UFC event I can remember. UFC events, by the way, are the ones that almost always have a stand-up comedian front-and-center.

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Oct. 4, 2008. BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Fla.

More than 4.5 million people tuning in to CBS to watch an MMA event from Showtime’s early, half-cocked foray into the sport. This confusing alliance with the entertainment company (and on-again, off-again MMA promotion) ProElite was known to the masses as EliteXC.

EliteXC became both famous and infamous to fight fans for its time slinging heavy-handed YouTube star Kimbo Slice to the drunken masses. Sure, they had other fights. Sure, they had actual fighters on their roster like Nick Diaz, Jake Shields, Antonio Silva and many more.

Kimbo Slice, though, was their bread and butter and they made no apologies about that. They made money off him, and he made money off them. They helped each other where they could.

On that October night, where Kimbo Slice’s bout with porcelain-chinned UFC veteran Ken Shamrock got scrapped very shortly before it was to take place, both sides figured they were doing the other a favor.

Slice chose to fight whatever can they threw in front of him and the promotion figured they had an easy win in TUF2 washout Seth Petruzelli, a light heavyweight who was supposed to fight Aaron Rosa that same night.

The rest is history. Petruzelli knocked out Slice. The straight right that put Slice onto all fours was as much a knockout blow to EliteXC, who closed doors about a month later amidst an investigation into whether promotional brass were trying to massage Slice’s chances of winning. It was an ugly day all around.

Strikeforce has numerous similarities to EliteXC. Not in the allegations of crookedness, mind you. Strikeforce has never had the sort of controversies that marred nearly every major event staged by EliteXC.

 

Strikeforce, like EliteXC before it, has made a practice of putting too many eggs into the basket of one of its top fighters. Strikeforce has gotten away with this for a while now as they, unlike Elite XC, have effectively groomed talent (and gotten some lucky breaks as well), which has kept a replacement star handy at all times.

Early on, it was the Shamrock brothers and Cung Le. Then Nick Diaz and Gilbert Melendez rose to the top. Then was the fast rise and faster fall of Gina Carano. Then came the Fedor Emelianenko era. Now? Strikeforce can be accurately labeled as “that group that Ronda Rousey fights for.”

Yes, Strikeforce still has some quality fighters. It still has Gilbert Melendez. It has Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett. It picked up longtime UFC contender Nate Marquardt. Still, Strikeforce is the Ronda Rousey show.

With Rousey’s first fight since becoming an A-list personality set for this Saturday, Strikeforce bigwig Scott Coker’s stomach is undoubtedly in knots.

He knows Strikeforce’s future with Showtime is only secure through 2012. He knows that the UFC’s light heavyweight and middleweight divisions are downright aching for new talent like Gegard Mousasi, Luke Rockhold and Lorenz Larkin.

He knows that Dana White is lusting over the idea of setting up fights like Gilbert Melendez vs. Ben Henderson and a heavyweight title eliminator featuring Daniel Cormier vs. Alistair Overeem.

He knows that if Ronda Rousey loses, there are very few reasons for both the UFC and Showtime to keep Strikeforce around. Worst of all, he knows that there is a very good chance that Rousey’s opponent, Sarah Kaufman, will win this fight.

 

While Rousey has an incredible amount of skill, best demonstrated by her Olympic bronze medal in judo, she undeniably has holes in her game. The fight that propelled her into stardom and offered her the springboard she used to jump to ESPN The Magazine‘s “The Body Issue” and a seat next to Conan O’Brien was a championship bout with Miesha Tate.

Though Rousey won with an elbow-snapping armbar in the first round, Rousey displayed awkward, tentative striking when the two were upright. Kaufman has some of the best kickboxing in women’s MMA, and actually started her career with eight straight knockouts.

Though the lone loss on her record is an armbar at the hands of Marloes Coenen, she has solid submission defense and good stamina. Though Rousey is strongly favored going into the fight this will be, at the very least, a very tough test for her.

Not one of those Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson “tough” tests. No, Sarah Kaufman has the striking to knock Rousey out and the stamina to take a decision.

With Strikeforce’s inability to draw strong gate numbers, and the UFC looking for excuses to finally give it the ax, a Rousey loss could easily be the final nail in the coffin for the California-based promotion.

It is worth pointing out that Strikeforce, its individual fighters and Showtime are all so contractually intertwined that somebody of this writer’s pay grade would not be able to decipher what legal hoops there are to jump through if the UFC intends to absorb Strikeforce in full.

However, there is little doubt as to whether the UFC would prefer to have Gilbert Melendez and Daniel Cormier on their roster. Meanwhile, there would be little reason for Showtime to keep Strikeforce around if it was not as profitable as re-airing semi-popular movies like Powder or Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.

That, ultimately, is what this boils down to.

It is no secret that one loss can destroy an MMA career, and it can easily derail the Ronda Rousey Gravy Train. It happened before with EliteXC. It could very easily happen again this Saturday to Strikeforce.

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