Strikeforce’s Heavyweight Grand Prix Saturday is also a grand finale for the heavyweight division. Though there may be one more fight left in the league for the participants in the main event, Strikeforce is set to move on without a heavyweight division after that.

So, can Strikeforce really keep driving even while the wheels are falling off? Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker seems to think so.

Coker, who is one of just a handful of former executives still retained by Strikeforce after the takeover, is convinced that we’ll see Strikeforce on Showtime “for many years to come.” 

Coker also explained in the same recent Heavyweight Grand Prix conference call that the company has “a great relationship with Showtime.”  

Coker’s remarks focusing on the renewal of Strikeforce’s cable television deal with Showtime also belie the main reason why the UFC hasn’t completely consumed the brand just yet. 

The “business as usual” promises made by Zuffa President Dana White back in March 2011 seemed hollow from the start, and subsequent changes proved White’s words were pure hype.

Multiple moves made since the purchase transformed Strikeforce into an entity obviously being groomed for ultimate demolition. Still, the league hung on despite losing a slew of popular fighters to the UFC. 

Rather than take the structure down like one of those controlled explosions instantly reducing everything to dust, Zuffa seems to be taking their sweet time removing one brick at a time from Strikeforce’s foundation.

The bigger and bolder promotion that snatched up the second-tier fight club for a song is under a more intense microscope these days, and their past evisceration of PRIDE went a long way to taint the UFC’s image. Those scars are still fresh.

MMA fans might seem more ready, willing, and able to see Strikeforce lumped in with the UFC these days, but Zuffa’s brass is still slow playing this one.

Few people were privy to intimate details of the purchase agreement hatched to make the Zuffa/Strikeforce deal happen, but it’s probably a pretty safe bet that there was something in that contract to prevent a complete collapse of Strikeforce.

Additionally, there are some fringe benefits Zuffa enjoys by keeping the other fight club a going concern. For one, women’s MMA is starting to gain a foothold with fans, and keeping Strikeforce running allows Zuffa to be on the cutting edge of developing the women’s field.

Dana White‘s been outspoken about not wanting to add women to the UFC, and he’s taken some heat for that stance. Thanks to the dynamic fighting of women’s MMA sensation Ronda Rousey, White and Lorenzo Fertitta are coming around to the idea that girls really can fight. If they folded Strikeforce into the UFC completely, White would have to eat crow and let the ladies fight in the octagon. 

The Showtime exposure is also key, as indicated by Coker’s confidence in that partnership. Zuffa is trying to ensure that the sport of MMA continues to be seen as “the fastest growing sport in the world.” They even claim their own operation is “the fastest growing sports organization in the world.“

So, keeping the Strikeforce train rolling down the tracks will keep a brand of mixed martial arts under the Zuffa label on a major cable network sharing the spotlight with boxing. The Showtime team also had their own independent media machine, which is a big plus for Zuffa, even though they still supplement that PR production and marketing on their own. 

As much as Strikeforce’s doomsday seems imminent, it could actually be a long way off at this pace. What’s more likely is that the league will wind up in a situation like the WEC, hosting lighter-weight fight cards and maintaining a long, healthy, independent history until it simply is no longer feasible or desirable for any reason to keep the entity separated from the UFC.

While some might see the UFC’s acquisition of the best fighters in Strikeforce as the beginning of the end, it’s really not. It’s actually the beginning of the metamorphosis. The competitor is now part of the team, and it’s taking on the look of the guy who gets picked last every gym class. That’s where the UFC wants their underling: underneath them when it comes to quality.

If the intent was to actually build Strikeforce into a powerhouse, the league would be adding more superstars instead of siphoning them off to fight in the UFC.

Keeping the league in a confined space where it can’t grow into an upstart threat to the UFC’s domination might seem silly to fans who want to see everything blended together, but right now Zuffa wants and may actually need Strikeforce to stay independent.

As fighter contracts begin to expire, there will be more Strikeforce guys making the exodus to the UFC, but not enough to kill the whole business model. Whatever the ultimate plan is, if Strikeforce winds up getting folded into the UFC completely, it’s going to take a lot longer than most MMA analysts are speculating. 

While we watch and wait, Scott Coker is doing his level best to maintain the legitimacy of his operation. He takes the tone of someone who knows something we don’t. He goes to great lengths to defend and promote what’s left like a trained executive should.

Whatever agreement he signed to keep his job may hold the clue to why Strikeforce is still allowed to live on while so many other Zuffa acquisitions suffered a much different fate. 

Now, if Coker suddenly decides to quit or gets his walking papers for some reason, that’s when Strikeforce fans can really panic. Then the speculators pointing to imminent disaster for Strikeforce will have something to really back up their claims. Meanwhile, enjoy the show while it lasts. 

Read more Strikeforce news on BleacherReport.com

Courtesy of :Bleacher Report – Strikeforce

MMA is a three-syllable acronym that could also be expressed in two words and two syllables: “It hurts!”

And playing or even just watching this hurting game is not everyone’s cup of tea. The sight of two athletes trying to beat the other through striking and grappling appeals to sports fans who prefer combat sports.

Others fans prefer watching ball games, or even the less physically demanding sports like chess or bridge.

Well, people have always been divided on the merits and demerits of any given sport. Whether as fans or athletes.

That’s just the way it is, and it’s been like that even in Ancient Greece (if it’s any consolation).

Further stressing the point that the appreciation, or the lack of it, of certain sports over others has always been contentious, the great Greek philosopher Plato was reported to have said about pankration, MMA’s progenitor: “It is devoid of aesthetics.”

Take note that Plato trained in another closely related combat sport: wrestling, of which he was even said to have won in the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games.

And there are those who derided any kind of athletic competition as undeserving of patronage, or even practitioners! In short, there were—and still are—those who are absolutely anti-sports in general.

Take the case of the philosopher and founding Cynic Diogenes. Nursing a fever, Diogenes cried out to those who were passing by to watch the ancient games, “Wretches, will you not stay?  But to see the struggle of ruined athletes you go all the way to Olympia; don’t you want to see a struggle between a fever and a human being?”

Jerk.

Moving on to the Roman Empire, the following is an assessment of athletes by Galen, the highly renowned second-century AD medical doctor. In discouraging young men from getting involved in sports, he wrote,

All natural blessings are either mental or physical. . . . Athletes have never even dreamed of anything mental. . . . They are so lacking in reasoning that they don’t even know if they have a brain. . . . They cannot think logically at all – they are as mindless as dumb animals. . . . They lead lives like those of swine; except swine do not exercise to excess nor force food down their throats as athletes do.

Troll.

Speaking of the Roman Empire, it became notorious for holding fight-to-the-death gladiatorial contests. These competitions pitted gladiators against their own kind, or against animals (most probably with the exception of harmless swine) and convicted criminals.

Ultimately, these spectacles ceased in the early 5th century when Christianity was adopted as the state religion.

Presently, many critics of MMA still compare our sport with those lethal gladiatorial contests. They preach that our sport has no place in today’s “civilized” society. (“Civilized” in quotation marks; just read the daily news.)

We know that MMA is the most complete hand-to-hand combat sport, allowing various holds and strikes to beat an opponent—via points or finish. And injuries or worse happen.

But its events are now held with equally comprehensive rules in place to make it safer and fairer.

And its athletes join out of personal choice as free individuals and not as soldier-prisoners or slaves of the Roman Empire as herded by its ruling class.

Still, for a long time the UFC itself used the image of the gladiator in promoting MMA. Question: How many years did the world’s top MMA promotion used The Gladiator promotional video to usher in its events?

For years the UFC evoked associations with the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome until it replaced it with its new promo video last February.

Well, with or without that video, there will always be sectors that will voice out contrary opinions against MMA.  

The greater leeway that MMA allows one athlete to win over the other, compared to more “specialized” combat sports like boxing or wrestling, is what its fans ultimately find special and appealing about it.

Unfortunately, this same wide array of moves allowed to inflict pain and potential harm to one’s opponent is what critics find as basis for perceiving MMA as, indeed, the modern-day resurrection of the inhuman Roman gladiatorial fights.

We find it exciting and acceptable; some don’t. But that’s just the way it is.

And to quote from a Latin saying, De gustibus non est disputandum. In English: “In matters of taste there is no dispute.” Ideally, that is.

Meanwhile, MMA continues to grow into “mainstreamhood” (wherever, whenever and whatever that really is). And perhaps, it will someday face a decline.

That’s just the way it goes, and “it” still hurts.

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Courtesy of :Bleacher Report – UFC