Fedor Emelianenko: Why Strikeforce's Heavyweight Tournament is All Wrong

When it was announced on Monday that Fedor Emelianenko would be returning to Strikeforce in February against Antonio Silva, the news sounded good.

I found an article on the Wrestling Observer website that I wanted to expand upon.

In it the article, they mention the Strikeforce heavyweight tournament and the surprising way that they have set up the tournament.

For those that haven't heard, Strikeforce is lining up their eight best heavyweight fighters  a tournament.

Conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that Strikeforce was trying to set up the tournament so that Fedor would face Alistair Overeem, Strikeforce's heavyweight champion, in the finals.

However, based on the way the tournament brackets are set up those two would meet in the semifinals.

Overeem's first fight will be against Fabricio Werdum, the man who made Fedor tap last June.

Maybe it's not that big of a deal since we don't really know what this tournament means. Maybe it means nothing, just a tournament for pride and to get people focused on Strikeforce's heavyweight division.

But wouldn't you think that Strikeforce would want their two biggest names to meet in the finals of any tournament that they have?

There are a lot of good things that Strikeforce does. They aren't at the level of UFC, but they do have a healthy number of very good fighters. Their shows are often entertaining.

But this is a mistake on every level.

Why would you put your top three fighters (Overeem, Werdum, Fedor) up against each other in the first two rounds?

It looks like they threw the tournament together and focused on the fights that would get the most people interested early, instead of thinking this whole thing through and setting it up logically.

But like I said, maybe this isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

I just wish that Strikeforce would have put a little more thought into this.

Here are all the first round matchups:

Fedor vs Silva

Werdum vs Overeem

Andrei Arlovski vs Sergei Kharitonov

Josh Barnett vs Brett Rogers