Strikeforce to the Big Time
Posted by Alan Conceicao on February 5th, 2009
A week ago, noticable from the absence of every calendar of upcoming events was any sort of Strikeforce event. No developmental MMA/kickboxing shows, no major events, nothing for HDNet, nothing for NBC. Oddly, this raised no suspicion whatsoever from bloggers or even major writers, who were apparently convinced that nothing was happening. Imagine the surprise then when yesterday the news of an imminent EXC sale to Strikeforce hit the rumor mill. It must have, to some extent, been shocking. There’s little to be said, however, of the internet announcing that they may have been wrong. And with that, I offer the first Lesson of 2009 (TM): If something is making money hand over fist in the middle of a deep, horrible recession, there’s a good chance that what little investment capital is out there has a distinct shot of heading for it.
Strikeforce has proved quite canny when it comes to putting together cards and acquiring talent, using nonexclusive contracts to draw in bigger name fighters than many promotions can hustle together. They also are very smart about their money, often cheaping way out on undercards to reserve spending for the “main card”. The downside was a long list of sometimes unwatchable MMA shows in 2008 featuring old names (Sapp, Mo Smith, Rick Roufus), underwhelming young talent (remember Raymond Daniels?), and onesided matchmaking (Ashe Bowman/Josh Thomson?). Strikeforce should be able to keep their costs lower but it’ll be interesting to see if they can produce as interesting a product as EXC often did on their ShoXC events or even on their main Showtime and CBS cards.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:01 am
I guess you could say no one on the internet was writing about Strikeforce and Elite XC if you ignore the huge piece Dave Meltzer wrote on exactly that topic a month ago,
February 6th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
i am obviously very excited about this
February 13th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I guess you could say no one on the internet was writing about Strikeforce and Elite XC if you ignore the huge piece Dave Meltzer wrote on exactly that topic a month ago,
And that I indirectly linked to? There was no followup until immediately before the sale became public.