10 Reasons Strikeforce Will Cease To Exist By the End Of 2012

Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson was announced as the newest member of the UFC roster on Monday afternoon when it was announced that he would be fighting Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 139.

But with his move back to the Octagon, serious questions continue to rise regarding the future of the Strikeforce brand. Can the organization continue to survive when it appears that Zuffa has made made it the black sheep of its MMA family?

Henderson is not the first superstar fighter to leave the organization for the Zuffa-owned UFC this year. He’s just the latest in what is becoming a long line of top-level Strikeforce fighters making the move to the UFC.

The Strikeforce brand is on life support and at this point, the only question is when the plug will finally be pulled. The end of 2011 may be too early, but it’s hard to imagine that Strikeforce will be around past the end of 2012. 

10. The “Strikeforce” Brand Doesn’t Mean Much

The Strikeforce MMA brand was created when it first promoted the Strikeforce: Shamrock vs. Gracie event in March 2006.

The event broke ground as the very first mixed martial arts event in the state of California, bringing in an astonishing crowd of over 18,000 fans.

The company grew over the next couple of years and eventually teamed with NBC to promote Strikeforce on NBC in March 2008.

Things got even bigger with the purchasing of several fighter contracts from EliteXC including Nick Diaz and Jake Shields.

Strikeforce had, relatively quickly, established itself as the second-largest MMA promotion in America. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep them from struggling against the iron fist that was Zuffa and the UFC.

Although “Strikeforce” had grown by leaps and bounds since its inception just a half-decade prior, its brand simply could not compete with the “UFC” brand.

To many fans, mixed martial arts is no longer the term used to describe this sport. The entire sport has simply turned, like pro wrestling and the “WWE” brand, into “UFC fighting.”

Hardcore fans understand that there is more than the UFC, but to Zuffa, there just is no point in keeping the Strikeforce brand around. It just doesn’t carry enough meaning with it, even after its success over the past five years.

9. Three Champions Are Gone

With Dan Henderson having officially signed with the UFC, the tally has now gone to three defending Strikeforce champions who vacated their titles in order to fight for the UFC.

First was Nick Diaz, then came Alistair Overeem and now Henderson joins the mix for his fight against Shogun Rua later this year.

What’s worse than the champions leaving is that Strikeforce has not made any sort of effort to replace them as champions.

Instead, only four total champions remain in the organization: Luke Rockhold at middleweight, Gilbert Melendez at lightweight and the two women’s champions Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and Miesha Tate.

The already thinning roster looks even worse without three of its best champions.

8. Fedor Emelianenko’s Luster Is Gone

When Strikeforce signed Fedor Emelianenko in 2009, it was without question the biggest signing the organization had ever made.

Not only were they gaining one of the biggest international stars in the sport, but they were also adding the man whom many believed to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

But Emelianenko has now lost three straight fights and as is to be expected, the hype has since died down heavily on the once perceived-to-be-unstoppable heavyweight.

Not only that, but even if his superstar power was still there, his contract is exclusive to the Showtime TV channel anyway—not Strikeforce—and his next fight will be against Jeff Monson on the M-1 fight card this November.

7. Women’s MMA Hasn’t Caught on in the Mainstream

One of the unfortunate casualties of the seemingly inevitable Strikeforce-UFC merger will likely be women’s MMA.

The company has been fighting to encourage the development of women in the sport, even promoting the first major MMA card with a female main event—Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg—in August 2009.

But it’s hard to blame Zuffa for not seeing the benefit in continuing Strikeforce’s battle.

Unfortunately for many of us who enjoy the fights, women’s MMA has simply not caught on in the mainstream.

Like other female sports, the mass public has found it very difficult to latch onto two females fighting one another.

This isn’t to say that women’s MMA cannot catch on.

But when the President of the UFC, Dana White, has been so vocal against it; it’s hard to believe that he will allow Zuffa to continue promoting it whether in Strikeforce or the UFC.

6. Lack of Advertising

The complete lack of advertising for organization’s most recent event, Strikeforce: Barnett vs. Kharitonov, has to be one of the most obvious indications that the Strikeforce brand will not make it much longer.

Sure, there were a few ads here and there, but when compared to the Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson fight card before it, the promoting was almost non-existent.

Certainly Zuffa doesn’t want to completely drive Strikeforce into the ground, but it is not going out of its way to make sure that it succeeds, either.

At this point, it appears that the media company is looking at Strikeforce as simple icing on the cake for whatever the UFC does.

If it makes money, great. If it doesn’t, no big deal—it’ll be gone soon.

5. Heavyweight Grand Prix Letdown

As great as some of the fights in the Strikeforce heavyweight Grand Prix tournament have been, it would be foolish to think that the desired outcome has come of the tournament itself.

A field filled with such superstars as Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, Andrei Arlovski, Josh Barnett, Antonio “Big Foot” Silva and Alistair Overeem has turned out just one of those stars—Josh Barnett—in the finals.

What’s worse is that the other finalist, Daniel Cormier, wasn’t even a part of the original eight contestants and was instead an injury replacement for Overeem who then left for the UFC.

Cormier has the talent to win the whole thing and is a great new face to the tournament, but when we all saw the original brackets, this isn’t exactly the outcome that we had in mind.

Many will still tune in and watch what might be the best fight of the whole tournament, but still there will be others who simply do not give a finals without Overeem the credit that it should deserve.

This lack of respect could lead to quite a few less viewers than it otherwise would have.

4. No Challengers for Gilbert Melendez

The one remaining star champion in Strikeforce is Gilbert Melendez.

The current 155-pound champion. Melendez is not only the champion of the division, but he is also a consensus top-3 lightweight in the world.

His dominance over the division has been obvious since he defeated Josh Thomson to become the champion in December 2009, but his competition hasn’t been quite what it should be.

A cashed-out Strikeforce lightweight division has developed no new legitimate contenders for Melendez’s crown, thus the promotion has brought in two Japanese fighters for each of the champion’s two defenses.

Shinya Aoki and Tatsuya Kawajiri are both excellent fighters, but their lack of size and strength were obvious in the bout. Neither challenger put up much of a fight.

It is unfortunate to say for those who have come to enjoy Strikeforce, but it appears increasingly obvious that Melendez will be the next champion to leave the company in favor of the eight-sided cage in the UFC. 

3. Champion vs. Champion Fights in the UFC

If and when Melendez does leave Strikeforce, he will be the fourth champion who has left the company since Zuffa took control.

Like the defectors before him, Melendez has unquestionably earned his place among the elite within his division and thus is every bit as deserving as any other contender for the championship in the UFC.

Melendez’s Cesar Gracie jiu-jitsu teammate Nick Diaz was originally scheduled to be a part of the first “champion-versus-champion” fight featuring Strikeforce’s 170-pound champion (himself) and the UFC’s 170-pound champion Georges St-Pierre.

We all know how that one has turned out now, but the fact that Zuffa was so willing to promote Diaz into an immediate title shot is very telling of what they may eventually plan to do with the other champions.

Not only that, but Dana White recently announced that the fight between Alistair Overeem and Brock Lesnar will determine who the next No. 1 contender is at the UFC heavyweight championship.

It is also assumed that Dan Henderson would be earning himself a UFC light heavyweight title fight if he defeats Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 139.

They may no longer be the official champions in Strikeforce, but these fighters all bring a certain mystique as challengers with them that the UFC could easily promote, particularly in divisions without current clear-cut No. 1 contenders.

2. Cost-Cutting

As is true with any business, the end goal is always to make a profit.

The advertising costs, fighter contracts, employee salaries and various other expenses are not as high as what the UFC has.

The difference is that while Strikeforce has struggled to get things going on Showtime in terms of viewers, the UFC is regularly pulling in pay-per-view buys in excess of 500,000.

There have even been a handful which have gone over 1 million buys. At $44.99/ea., that’s a lot of money.

Strikeforce is not operating at a loss, but the amount of profit that the company is pocketing is just not on the same level as the UFC.

By eliminating the Strikeforce brand and merging its core parts with the UFC, Zuffa is creating a more profitable business model that can make use of the talent from the Strikeforce roster with the dominant name-brand that is the UFC.  

The cost-cutting will lead to significantly greater profits for the organization and after all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

1. Showtime Contract Will Be Done

Even with all of the signs pointing toward Zuffa just not caring much about Strikeforce anymore, there is one giant reason that the company hasn’t already closed its doors.

That reason is its contract with Showtime.

According to reports, Strikeforce’s television deal with Showtime ends sometime in early 2012 with the television company having the right to extend the contract through 2014.

But with the way that Zuffa has been treating the Strikeforce brand while simultaneously picking out its best talent, it is extremely hard to believe that Showtime is going to want to pick up two more years of low-drawing events and less-than-stellar TV viewership.

Even UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta would not go as far as to say that he is planning for Strikeforce to stay on Showtime.

“At the end of the day, Showtime is contracted to receive a product, and we’re going to keep giving it to them,” he told MMAWeekly.

“They want us to do the eight Strikeforce shows, the Challengers shows. We’re going to do no different than what we’ve been doing the last four or five months, since we owned the company; keep delivering great fights and keep that going as long as the contract says, and then, at that time, we’ll reevaluate.”

At the moment, the contract with Showtime is earning Strikeforce quite a bit of its profits.

But without that contract, it is going to become increasingly difficult for Zuffa to justify keeping the struggling brand alive...

Especially when it can easily be argued that Zuffa’s profits will increase, the talent will be happier and the fans will receive a better product if and when the UFC finally swallows up Strikeforce.