According to UFC President Dana White, the future of the Strikeforce promotion is dependent upon whether or not Showtime wants to keep them around.
White made that revelation during Wednesday’s UFC 135 pre-fight press conference after a fan inquired about what would happen to the future of the female fighters if Strikeforce was to disappear.
“Who knows what’s going to happen? The way this thing works is, it depends on Showtime. The ball’s in their court. They need to decide whether they want to keep Strikeforce around or not. It depends on whether they seriously want to stay in the business, the mixed martial arts business,”
“I don’t think you need to scale it down or run a Challengers show. I think you can put on great fights on Showtime, if Showtime really wants to be in the business. If you really want to be in the business, then commit and get in the business. If you don’t, then don’t.”
“I’m UFC, man. I’m all UFC and you guys know that. I wanted nothing to do with this thing. And it’s not like I’m Showtime’s best friend. Lorenzo’s (Fertitta) much nicer than me. Let Lorenzo go deal with that.”
Despite White’s statement, Strikeforce has seen little love from the Zuffa/UFC masters over the past several months with Showtime doing most of the promoting for events outside of the show notices attached to UFC emails sent out to fans.
Strikeforce has seen several of it’s champions, and some of it’s best talent, move over to the UFC with Nick Diaz, Alistair Overeem, and just yesterday, Dan Henderson, who all leave behind vacant titles with no current plans to fill them.
White and Zuffa are not making the decision easy for Showtime, by offering little to no support, and poaching it’s best talent. I guess “business as usual” only refers to those working under the UFC name.