MMA fans have been wondering about the future of Strikeforce since Zuffa purchased the company back in March. The fighters of Strikeforce were also left in the dark until this past Thursday when the new deal betwwen Strikeforce and Showtime was made.
CEO Scott Coker recently sat down for an interview to discuss the new deal, and the future of Strikeforce fighters like Ronda Rousey.
Will Rousey stay at 145 lbs., or will she move down to 135 to face new challenges?
“I think we can do both. We will find girls. There’s girls around the world that will come to fight her. I think there’s some girls that can be competitive with her. She’s a tough girl. There’s some guys that probably would want to fight her, right? She’s a beast. At 45, she’s pretty much dominated that division for awhile now. She said she wants to go to 35 to fight the girls. But personally, I’m not sure she can make 35. She’s talking about fighting at catchweight first. I think that we talk to Sean (Shelby) and Sean was telling me that there gonna find other girls. They have a girl from Russia that he’s looking at right now. We will have some competition for her.”
He continues on to speak on the “Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal” event that occured this past Saturday.
“If you know the fight game, certain fighters are gonna have certain styles that are gonna match up well. Let’s say Gilbert’s wrestling or Gilbert’s jiu-jitsu and Jorge Masvidal is a guy that’s a threat at every different level. So Gilbert did what he had to do. I think if the knockout was there, he would of definitely taken it. The knockout didn’t come and the takedown didn’t come and the submission didn’t come. He clearly won the fight and if you look at the stats of the fight, it was a clear combination. If you look at the post-fight press conference and look at the damage Gilbert took. He was pretty damaged, pretty banged up. Styles make fights and that’s the way it went down.”
Coker also hints on some of the possibilies for Melendez’ future in Strikeforce.
“I’m gonna get together with Sean (Shelby) probably in the next couple days and have a conversation with him. There’s definitely great athletes for Gilbert to fight. Maybe even a fighter that’s not currently signed on our roster right now we might bring in to fight Gilbert.”
The first event of the new deal made between Strikeforce and Showtime will take place on January 7 at The Joint in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“We’re not only doing eight fights, we’re doing right fights, but we’re going to have two big fights on the same night. You’re going to have the undercard fights on Showtime Extreme. But the undercard fights are not gonna be traditionally what you see in the Challengers’ Series on Friday nights like we did in the past. What you’re gonna see in the undercard fights, you’re gonna see the Roger Bowling’s, you’re gonna see the Justin Wilcox’s, you’re gonna see the guys that fight sometimes on the main card. You’re gonna see the undercard fights on Showtime Extreme at 8PM ET/5PM PT, then go to Showtime for the championship fights and that will be at 7PM PT. So in one night, you’re gonna get two big events and it will be equal to the same amount of programming we had this year. Which is we did 16 fights including the Challengers fights for the last three years.”
Another announcement he made that the fans were excited to hear is that Strikeforce will continue Women’s MMA.
“For me personally, I always thought it was a no-brainer. Because when you look at the history of Strikeforce, we were the first female legal fight in the state of California. That was Gina Carano fought Elaina Maxwell to a unanimous decision, it was a one-point decision in September of ’06. Before that, when Strikeforce was originally created it was originally a kickboxing league because MMA wasn’t legal in California yet. From 1992-2006, when we had our martial arts style of competition at that time was kickboxing. We had some of the greatest fights in the history of female kickboxing on ESPN through Strikeforce. To me, I grew up in a martial arts school, martial arts culture where you train with a lot of females in class, females are always around, there’s always sparring, there’s always fighting. I always believed, “Hey, why not let them compete? Let them fight.” Now we’re running two full divisions of females that are showing to the world, look these girls can really fight.”
One other thing people were curious about was whether or not this deal still would have been made if Ken Hershman was still the Executive Vice President of Showtime Sports, considering his relationship with new owners Dana White and the UFC:
On that subject, Coker made this comment:
“I think this deal would have gotten done either way. It was good for Strikeforce, it was good for the network. I think we provided great fights in our three years we’ve been with them. I think the ratings have been great and I think it would’ve continued. Would it have maybe taken longer? Probably, but I still think it would got done because at the end of the day, it’s having great programming and having great ratings.”
