MMA Game Changer: UFC Purchases Strikeforce

[Boanerges]

The landscape of MMA has once again changed forever. Just like the UFC’s purchase of Pride, the UFC has enveloped another key competitor and solidified their stronghold on the MMA marketplace beyond what was previously thought possible. In his exclusive twenty-one minute interview with star reporter Ariel Helwani , Dana White sticks to the mantra “business as usual”, insisting that Strikeforce will continue to operate as its own entity. Sound familiar? Fortunately, running Strikeforce won’t entail dealing with the Yakuza. In fact, Dana casually likens the deal to purchasing a house. A house full of dudes that beat the crap out of each other for a living on national television.

Excerpts and notes from the interview are after the jump, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing.

On what led to the purchase:

“Well, as we continue to grow and expand into all these other countries one of the things that I keep telling you every time we talk is that we need more fights. We need more fights, more fights, and Let’s face the facts. Strikeforce is a brand that fans have come to like. They do have a following. People enjoy the fights that they’re putting on And it made sense to us.

White was reluctant to disclose details of the purchase, including how long the deal took to negotiate and what those negotiations entailed.

On merging the two organizations into one:

“Strikeforce is going to continue to run business as usual. There’s contracts in place. These guys are on Showtime. Strikeforce pulls good ratings for Showtime. I think Showtime is happy with them. And all of those contracts will be honored. These guys are going to remain Strikeforce fighters. Could guys from the UFC leave and end up over in Strikeforce? Yeah, absolutely.”

On his rocky relationship with Showtime and Ken Hershman:

“The beauty in a business like this is that there’s three partners in the UFC. It’s me, Frank, Lorenzo, and actually Abu Dhabi. So these guys, Lorenzo can go deal with Showtime. I think the last thing Showtime wants to see is me show up at the door and start having conversations. And that’s no big deal. Lorenzo can go deal with Showtime.”

Regarding a Super Bowl style event, pitting fighters from the two organizations against one another:

“There won’t be any super fights. When I say business as usual, we don’t co-promote. We don’t co-promote, period.”

Scott Coker will continue to run Strikeforce autonomously. Dana says repeatedly that he will honor all contracts, including those with M1, Fedor, and UFC lepers Josh Barnett and Paul Daley. On whether that means he’ll be renewing those contracts, that’s a different story.
-Cage Potato

[Boanerges]

Future Shock: Six Possible Outcomes of Zuffa’s Strikeforce Purchase

Saturday’s announcement that Zuffa purchased Strikeforce represented such a monumental shift in the MMA landscape that it was hard to process all at once. There are so many ways that this thing could play out, it’s almost useless to speculate about what might happen. Then again, what else are we going to do? Here are the possible effects that the Strikeforce buyout will (maybe) produce in the coming months, years, and decades…

Strikeforce will go the way of the WEC
When Zuffa bought the WEC in December 2006, they also vowed to keep “business as usual.” And for four years, they did; the WEC existed as a separate entity, and their consistently entertaining cards and smaller fighters were beloved by MMA fans. Eventually, Zuffa decided that the WEC had gone as far as it could as a promotion, and absorbed their featherweight and bantamweight divisions. A similar arc is highly likely for Strikeforce. Zuffa will keep the promotion running for a while because fans appreciate its fighters and entertainment-based matchmaking, but when Strikeforce’s contracts with its fighters and Showtime run out, the UFC will cherry-pick the best talent for its own roster and disband the operation.

The UFC will become the only brand in MMA
50 years from now, MMA fans will think of Strikeforce and PRIDE the same way we think of the ABA for basketball or the AFL for football — temporary competitors to the major leagues that had to be swallowed up for the sport to enter its unified, modern period. Some fans and fighters seem to be nervous about what a “monopoly” might mean for MMA. And maybe for good reason. If you’re a fighter like Josh Barnett or Paul Daley who’s on a permanent UFC blacklist, your career options just took a hit, especially with the Japanese MMA scene taking its dying breaths. Plus, the UFC’s revenue model is pay-per-view driven, which makes the comparison to basketball and football an imperfect one, especially in terms of how fans consume the sport. But in the long run, a single major-league promotion might be the best arrangement — the UFC as the NFL/NBA of MMA, with smaller regional promotions standing in for the collegiate system that those other leagues rely on. (Hell, maybe there will even be a full-fledged annual UFC draft at some point.) By comparison, boxing’s decline can be blamed in large part on the glut of competing promoters and sanctioning bodies. There’s reason to be optimistic here.

The fighters will get a union
Assuming the UFC can achieve their goal of being the only major league in MMA, the fighters will have no choice but to organize, in order to balance the distribution of power. The UFC has been against unions thus far, because health care and pensions would cost a fortune, and because unions tend to make firing an employee over bullcrap more difficult to do. (And there’s always the potential of a complete meltdown like we just saw take place in football.) But they’re an inevitability in any major sports league. The fact that MMA is an individual sport means that fighters wouldn’t hold any free-agency power whatsoever within the UFC; you can’t just fly off to a different city’s team when your contract ends. The UFC’s employees will need more of their rights guaranteed through collective bargaining.

Bellator will become the #2 MMA league in the world, by default
Weird, right? Don’t get me wrong, the gulf between 1 and 2 is enormous and will stay that way. But right now, there isn’t another league outside of the UFC/Strikeforce conglomerate that is on basic cable, signing well-known fighters, and scheduling future events. And right now, Bjorn Rebney has no interest in selling his baby. I don’t see Bellator growing much larger than the mid-size player it is now, but it’ll be interesting to see what moves they make if Strikeforce ceases to exist. Will they pick up the fighters that the UFC refuses to do business with? Will they take over Strikeforce’s Showtime contract? Will Bellator, in effect, become Strikeforce? And when all is said and done, will Bellator be the only promotion that hosts women’s divisions?

Fedor Emelianenko will never fight again
Dana White has no interest in dealing with M-1 Global or covering Fedor’s price tag, especially now that he’s been “exposed” in his last two fights. There’s a chance that Emelianenko will get in one more match before Strikeforce’s doors are shuttered for good, but that would rely on a number of factors coming together. For example, it’s hard to imagine that Fedor has enough motivation left at this point to drop to light-heavyweight for the first time in his career and fight Dan Henderson. And in the short term, Scott Coker doesn’t really need him as a heavyweight, unless there are multiple injuries in his heavyweight tournament (which now seems even less likely to reach a conclusion.) After the dissolution of Strikeforce, M-1 will try to convince Fedor to fight nobodies in Europe for a fraction of the pay. You know, like his brother. Fedor will choose retirement over such an existence.

Scott Coker will have the last laugh
I try to think of where Scott Coker will be in ten years, and I’m reminded of the last scene in Casino — Ace Rothstein in big-ass geriatric glasses, back to doing what made him successful in the first place, but now in relative obscurity. He thinks fondly of the Wild West boom period of his industry, before it all went Disney-fied.

Scott Coker came up promoting kickboxing shows, and then regional MMA shows, and he always managed to turn a profit by being smart and not getting emotional. It seems that he cashed out of Strikeforce (or was pressured to cash out by his partners) right when the storm-clouds began to form on the horizon. The number of men who got into the MMA promotion business and left with their dignity and wallets intact can be counted on one hand. Scott Coker will be one of them. And that’s that.
-Cage Potato

[RhacHead]

Crazy stuff! Dana White is loaded I wonder how much hes worth...

[Boanerges]

Crazy stuff! Dana White is loaded I wonder how much hes worth...

I was thinking the same thing!! Dana maybe a bit of a tool but he is without a doubt a beast when it comes to this kind of stuff. He is no joke

[Boanerges]

Zuffa Buys Strikeforce: Winners and Losers
By Raphael Garcia @ mmaratings

The mixed martial arts community is still clamoring over Zuffa’s purchase of Strikeforce. As the overall response continues to pour in, this will be the topic that powers MMA talk radio and press coverage for the next few weeks to months. Still, just as the fighters and other promotion employees are left to speculate their place in the promotion, the media will not have any concrete answers until they develop. I have decided to look at a few individuals who are big winners and losers after the purchase.

Winner – Dana WhiteThis one is an easy one. Even through White is the UFC President and not the outright owner, I believe that he is the biggest winner of all from this deal. A few years ago, FIGHT magazine did a story on the most powerful individuals in the business of mixed martial arts. Dana White was a solid number one on that list. After this deal, no one will ever have the chance of catching him. Once everything is smoothed over, he will have a laundry list of new toys to play with and pit against one another. Dana White may have just claimed the position that Don King and Bob Arum fought over for years.

Losers – Free Agent FightersMonopolies have always hurt the talent on the field. Look at other sports organizations for example. If a college football player can’t make it in the National Football League, where else can he play and make the same money? What about a Major League Baseball player? The same thing is now true for mixed martial artists. Dan Henderson and Jake Shields are two big names who benefited from UFC and Strikeforce bidding against each other for their services. Now, that won’t happen. Their choices are now accept the offer from Zuffa or toil away in obscurity in smaller promotions. Mixed martial artists were already facing parity when it comes to paychecks, and Zuffa’s purchase of Strikeforce just made the gap much wider.

Winner – The FansThis is another easy choice. While MMA fans may not reap the benefits of this purchase right out of the gate, the long term bonuses will be there to enjoy. We may be looking at a time in which a big name MMA event will occur every weekend throughout the year. With all of the WEC and Strikeforce fighters now under the Zuffa banner, that goal can be reached. Also, more of those events can be made available on free television. Along with this, more of these free events will potentially feature household names that could not fit on Pay per View cards. Fans may also get to witness fights between the biggest names in the sport. Their excitement is well worth it.

Losers – Women’s MMAWith names such as Cristiane Santos, Marloes Coenen, and Miesha Tate, Strikeforce was on its way to developing the women’s division. Other organizations such as Bellator and Shark Fights have followed suit and put on great fights featuring Tara LaRosa and Zoila Gurgel. Dana White has made his stance against women’s MMA adamant so this places them at odds with the Zuffa organization. Without Strikeforce as the major platform, women fighters may be forced to smaller organizations which mean smaller pay scales. The lack of coverage can also hurt their overall earning potential.

Honorable mentions:Winners: Joe Silva, Bellator, and upstart promoters
Losers: Those on Dana White’s Hate List, fighter management teams

It will be interesting to see where he goes with the women fighting in mma. He should keep it but if he does not agree with it then who knows...

[Simple Man]

I follow closely and have for many years, pretty much since the beginning. I like what the second post has to say. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

Regards,

B

[lance]

so pretty much Strikeforce is gonna go downhill or be eliminated like pride :'(