The Strikeforce Build-Up
Posted by Dave Walsh on September 24th, 2008
Of late I almost feel like a disciple of Scott Coker’s Strikeforce promotion. While this year, you could argue, has had a few throwaway Strikeforce shows (ie: Sapp vs. Nortje), Strikeforce still tosses together shows that make sense. I’ve seen a lot of negative talk on the net about this past weekend’s Playboy Mansion show, due to the matches not being competitive enough or that the company didn’t draw too much. These are actually somewhat valid concerns, but I think miss the point of this show.
The show was broadcast on Sherdog.com, the most mainstream of the MMA sites, sure, but I think it was understood that Sherdog.com was not going to pull in 500,000 viewers. The show was intended to be a “builder” show for the company, as opposed to a show to make them filthy rich. The show featured strong performances by Lightweight Champion Josh Thomson, former UFC and Affliction slugger Terry Martin, the debuting Ishida and got to see Misaki in a competitive victory over somewhat name fighter Joe Riggs.
Strikeforce doesn’t book like Joe Silva books the UFC. The UFC book non-stop competitive bouts in hopes of a fighter surviving the onslaught to become a star. This helps them to build up strong stars, no doubt, but smaller companies like Strikeforce don’t have this luxury. As opposed to simply tossing say, Ishida vs. Thomson at fans right away and possibly making Ishida seem less special if he loses to Thomson, or make their champion look weak, both fighters had strong performances. If Strikeforce were to match any combination of Melendez, Ishida and Thomson together at this point, we as fans can be happy, and Strikeforce has helped to build them up by having these warm-up fights.
I remember when the strong rumor for this show a while back was Cung Le vs. Misaki, you can probably pull up a podcast from over this summer and hear me flat out say, “Who cares?” If they simply threw that fight at us, it would have been a who cares situation in my eyes. Misaki isn’t established to their fanbase as well as he could be, Cung Le is the local hero, and they don’t have much to gain. If Misaki beats Le, they lose their draw. If Le beats Misaki, well, that is great, it is another win for Cung Le, but so what? Misaki defeating a name like Joe Riggs establishes him as a tough fighter to give Cung a run for his money. Instead of Misaki vs. Le being “so what?” it can be, “this should be good.” So now if Cung Le heroically knocks Misaki out it will mean a whole lot more, even after Misaki having one fight.