Strikeforce Heavy Weight Tournament

[Boanerges]

1/04/2011 12:49 PM ET By Mike Chiappetta

Eight Strikeforce heavyweights have all signed to compete in a single-elimination tournament to begin on Feb. 12, sources have confirmed to MMA Fighting.

While several of the matchups have been rumored for some time, MMA Fighting can report the addition of Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem to the field. A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed that Overeem will take on Fabricio Werdum.

The first two quarterfinal bouts will take place on Feb. 12, with Fedor Emelianenko taking on Antonio SIlva, while Andrei Arlovski will face Sergei Kharitonov. Earlier Tuesday, MMA Fighting reported Emelianenko's contract extension with Strikeforce, paving the way for his entrance into the field.

The other two quarterfinal bouts include Brett Rogers facing Josh Barnett, and Overeem taking on Werdum, the last man to beat Emelianenko.

While the Emelianenko-Silva and Arlovski-Kharitonov fights will take place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the location and date of the second set of quarterfinals is still to be determined.

Overeem's presence in the field is particularly relevant, as the promotion's champion has defended the belt only once, in a May 2010 knockout over Rogers. Since then he's won the K-1 World Grand Prix kickboxing title and fought in a DREAM interim heavyweight title fight, defeating Todd Duffee. But his participation in the tournament field may give fans a chance to see him multiple times in the U.S. in 2011.

The stacked field should also capture some attention away from rival promotion UFC, which has had problems with its heavyweight division, including injuries to heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez and contender Shane Carwin, contract issues with Roy Nelson, and the uncertain status of major drawing card Brock Lesnar.

Looks interesting

[Boanerges]

Scott Coker Explains Lopsided Nature of Strikeforce Tournament Bracket
There’s just something about brackets, man. The human male would probably tune in to a tiddlywinks tournament if it could be neatly arranged in the elegant efficiency of a single elimination bracket. Nothing else allows us to channel our inner fanboy or bring out the modern jackass in our personalities quite like it. Once a year, the mythical lure of the bracket even makes college basketball seem interesting; it’s that powerful. Now, draw up a bracket populated by 265-pound behemoths who are charged with beating the dog crap out of each other until only one is left standing? Well, let’s just say you’ve got our attention.

Suffice it to say that upon poring over the proposed pairings for the 2011 Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix this week, it didn’t take long for the keen bracketologists in the MMA community to notice that the left-hand side of that badboy seemed a bit, um, stacked, while the right side appeared to be Josh Barnett and three other dudes. With Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, Fabricio Werdum and Alistair Overeem all on the same side of the tournament draw, eyebrows were raised in a collective: WTF? Werdum said he thought it was meant to sell pay-per-views. Overeem said he thought it was weird, but wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Barnett hasn’t said crap yet, but we assume he’ll take it. Now, the speculation can (sort of) end as company CEO Scott Coker explains to MMA Fighting.com exactly why Strikeforce overstocked one side of the bracket with all its top talent. It turns out not even the promotion itself believed it could engineer the desired Overeem vs. Fedor final, so it fudged things a little bit.

"Very rarely in a tournament does it ever work out where the last two guys are the guys everyone wants to see fight," Coker told Ariel Helwani during The MMA Hour. "So I said to my guys, 'What about this scenario: Let them fight in the semifinals ... whoever wins moves forward.' ... Let's say Fedor does get past 'Bigfoot' and then Alistair wins his fight (against Werdum), then we're guaranteed to see a big fight."

Hmmm, maybe. As long as you’re using the loosest possible definition of the word “guaranteed.” Strikeforce is “guaranteed” Overeem vs. Fedor in the semis as long as Fedor doesn’t shatter his right hand on Bigfoot Silva’s enormous jaw or Overeem doesn’t swan dive into a Werdum submission. OR so long as Overeem doesn’t get wind of some kind of rinky-dink kickboxing tournament in Fiji that he’d rather fight in this June. OR if M-1 Global doesn’t hold Fedor for ransom after the first round of the tournament. Not that those Crazy Russians would use the added bargaining power of an ongoing, high-publicized grand prix to try to get the upper hand in a negotiation …

Even Coker indicated that he knows he’ll have his work cut out for him in keeping this thing together. But you know what he’s relying on to keep all these notoriously fickle and disinterested dudes duly interested? Brackets, man. The power of brackets.

"You're dealing with eight managers, from eight different camps, wanting eight different things," Coker said. "But in the end, everybody wanted to fight in the tournament and they said, 'Sign me up.' From Fedor to Alistair to, you know, Andrei (Arlovski). They all wanted to be in the tournament, because in the old days, let's say, in Pride the tournament was very, very popular. I think this is kind of a throwback to that era."

Who knows, maybe it will all work out. As we’ve established, there is nothing like a bracket to make people stay the course. No matter what happens however, Strikeforce might want to slow its roll a little bit with the Pride comparisons. Let’s get through the first round here, Coker, and then see where we’re at in the history books.

-Cage Potato

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Strikeforce Shifts Gears: Overeem’s Belt Safe, Tourney Fights Three Rounds
Posted on January 13, 2011 by Ken Pishna

Strikeforce, on a media conference call on Thursday, formalized plans for its eight-man Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament.

Company CEO Scott Coker, in an initial interview with MMAWeekly.com last week, had hoped to make all bouts in the tournament five five-minute rounds with heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem’s belt at risk throughout the tournament.


Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker
“The goal is to have Alistair put up his belt against Fabricio Werdum. If Werdum wins, then he will have to put up the belt, but at the end, you will have one champion,” Coker said.

That was the goal, but Coker also said that they had to make sure that their plans worked in conjunction with the state athletic commissions that will oversee the multi-event tournament. The various rounds of the tournament will be split amongst separate events in various locations.

Of chief concern to Strikeforce was the number of rounds for each of the bouts if the title were at risk through the tournament.

“We’re working with the athletic commissions because of the round issue,” Coker told MMAWeekly.com. Most commissions deem title fights five-round bouts; non-title fights are typically three rounds.

That proved to be the point where Strikeforce shifted gears and decided not to put Overeem’s title on the line in the Grand Prix.

“We just didn’t feel like it would be fair for one fight to be three rounds, one fight to be five rounds,” Coker said on Thursday.

He pointed out that, over the course of the tournament, Strikeforce could end up working with as many as six different commissions.

“We would have to have all those commissions on the same page and we just couldn’t do it,” he added.

So the tournament is set to be three five-minute rounds per fight up until the final bout, which will be a five-round championship fight.

If any fight is ruled a draw, there will be a fourth judge that will determine which fighter should continue on in the tournament. As well, if a fighter cannot continue on in the tournament due to injury or other circumstances, a five-person Strikeforce committee, headed up by Strikeforce rules director Cory Schafer, will determine a replacement from reserve bout winners and eliminated tournament fighters.

The winner of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix will be the tournament champion and challenge Overeem for the Strikeforce heavyweight title. If Overeem makes it through the tournament, then his belt will be on the line in final with the winner declared both the Strikeforce heavyweight champion and Grand Prix tournament champion.