One could hardly imagine what it took to put together the upcoming Strikeforce World Grand Prix heavyweight tournament. It must have been one heck of a headache for Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker having to put up with all of the fighters, plus their managers, who are slotted to take part in the tournament.
Now that he’s got the tournament put together Coker will start working on putting together a broadcast deal for the Finale, whether it be on television or pay-per-view.
Coker recently spoke to MMAFighting.com about putting the tournament together, noting that as a fan he’d pay to see the Finale on PPV.
“You’re dealing with eight managers, from eight different camps, wanting eight different things. But in the end, everybody wanted to fight in the tournament, and they said, ‘Sign me up.’ From Fedor [Emelianenko] to Alistair [Overeem] to, you know, Andrei [Arlovski], they all wanted to be in the tournament, because in the old days, let’s say, in Pride, the tournament was very, very popular. I think this is kind of a throwback to that era.”
“Very rarely in a tournament does it ever work out where the last two guys are the guys everyone wants to see fight. So I said to my guys, ‘What about this scenario: let them fight in the semi-finals, and let them get it on, and whoever wins moves forward.’ …Let’s say Fedor does get past ‘Bigfoot’ and then Alistair wins that fight, then we’re guaranteed to see a big fight…”
“We’re going to put the first two [rounds] on Showtime…and then we’re going to take it from there. I’ll tell you, it’s something that definitely, I would buy it on pay-per-view.”