Strikeforce Melendez vs. Healy Cancellation Highlights Its Grim Irrelevance

For a second-tier promotion owned by Zuffa, it's surprising how little a canceled Strikeforce card can affect the mixed martial arts world.

Sure, it's sad that 19 other fighters have been dumped by one injury.

However, with the state that Strikeforce has been in since the "merger" with UFC, the dissolution of the heavyweight division and the various defeats of Fedor Emelianenko, the sad truth is the promotion has barely rated higher than any other regional show.

That's ultimately been the problem since the great purge of talent in 2011 that sent Nick Diaz, Alistair Overeem and Dan Henderson to the Octagon.

Strikeforce once had enough talent to fill out a main card from top to bottom, but now has to make do with two-fight cards at best. Moreover, the one time there's a single-fight card like Melendez vs. Healy, the worst happens and everything implodes.

Basically, Showtime had no choice.

Hardly anyone was going to watch this event in the first place. With Melendez gone, there was no point in even broadcasting it.

If that's not prophetic, I don't know what is.

At the very least, there is a silver lining for those that wanted action this weekend, with an awesome UFC lineup that same night.

As the polar opposite of the canceled Strikeforce event, UFC on Fuel: Struve vs. Miocic has everything that makes an MMA night matter, with deep weight classes, division relevance and legitimate star power.

With the exception of a Ronda Rousey fight, it seems that Strikeforce can no longer deliver even one of those three criteria on a regular basis anymore.

[McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist and FightFans Radio writer. His work has appeared in GamePro, Macworld, & PC World. Talk with him on Twitter.]