Missed opportunities for Strikeforce on CBS
Published by Zach Arnold on November 9th, 2009 in Current Events

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The Strikeforce event this past week demonstrated both the good and the bad of the promotion’s current deal with CBS & Showtime.

The good was the fact that the show, for the most part, went off without a hitch and the fights were entertaining.

The bad is that CBS did a terrible job of promoting the show (despite what executive Kelly Kahl says in multiple media interviews) and that an event-only MMA promotion will have limited business success under its currently model. Without an episodic programming vehicle to build up new stars, Strikeforce will have to rely on MMA fans treating their product and star-making ability in the same way boxing fans are conditioned to look at their respective sport. UFC has already laid out the blue print on how you get casual fans to get interested in MMA. With the Strikeforce show on CBS drawing a 1.7 rating on the overnights, it makes the 1.8+ ratings that this season’s edition of The Ultimate Fighter get on Spike TV look more impressive for UFC.

The biggest issue with star-making for Scott Coker is with the women’s division. After Cyborg dispatched of Gina Carano, Carano headed off into the sunset to go make a movie. This left Coker with booking a #1 contender’s match between veterans Marloes Coenan and Roxanne Modafferi. The end result was Coenen putting on a gritty performance and quickly submitting Modafferi, but you wouldn’t know that this fight existed if you only watched the CBS telecast. A fight that is important to Strikeforce’s long-term booking never made it to television. Unacceptable. Even worse is that both women, on the microphone, are very likeable personalities.

“Yeah, I’m really happy. I was like frustrated for over two years, yeah it will be a good night, I will be partying,” exulted Coenen in a post-fight interview with Fanhouse.com.

“Well I was so relaxed and really calm in my mind, I’ve never had that before, so it was almost strange the way how calm and confident I felt and I will take a shower now and rush to the ring and see Gegard of course and Fedor, to me I’m an MMA fan just as much as everybody is so a perfect night.

I’ve got this philosophy, if you step into the ring you step into the ring, you do not complain after a loss, but I was really ill fighting the tournament and I was vomiting before I had to enter the third fight and I hadn’t been at any energy whatsoever and this time I feel really uh healthy and good and so I’ve been having medical issues for over more like 7, 8 years but I kept on fighting. I couldn’t tell any one because then they knew I would have like bad energy, so now I can tell you because I won so now I can be honest you know.”

Coenen will be a very dangerous opponent for Cyborg when they fight, tentatively discussed for Miami in January. The problem? Nobody in CBS, Showtime, or Strikeforce has done much promotion for Coenen. So we will have an excellent fight that the hardcore fans will want to see but a bout involving two top female MMA fighters who the public has little clue about.

The big question going into the Coenen/Cyborg fight will be the size difference. It will play a role in their fight, much like the size difference played a role in Coenen’s fight on Saturday night.

“Well, you know, I’ve fought also a woman who was more than 60 pounds heavier than I was, so if you step into the ring you just like I said you step into the ring, you don’t complain about somebody was 10 kilos like 22 pounds heavier or not so it’s you know fighting is in your mind, it’s not the size of course there’s a size advantage but who’s got the toughest mind you know.”

A fighter that CBS should have had no problems putting over on their telecast is Gegard Mousasi, who really is one of the few Aces in the Hole that Scott Coker has that can be used against UFC in a public debate over which roster has more talent. Mousasi is not the most charismatic guy in the world, but he makes up for it by being such a tough finisher in his fights that people really get excited about him.

For as disappointing as it was to see Mousasi not getting a heavy push before his fight with Sokoudjou, Mousasi seemed more disappointed in his own fight performance based on comments he made a Fanhouse.com interview.

“I did some mistakes but um he’s a tough opponent and people I don’t believe people give the credit that he deserves. I changed some stuff in my training that actually worked against me, so for the next fight I’m going to do what I always do, so. Basically, I went every week I went three times to the sauna and OK, it’s a shitty story, so, about there was um I thought it would help my conditioning. Instead, I lost a lot of um important vitamins and stuff and so it made me tired earlier so. That’s something that I won’t do again. He’s a dangerous opponent striking-wise so I had to be careful and the distance I had to keep the distance with him so I know I would eventually get my shots whether it’s on the ground or stand-up so I wanted I just wanted to take my time and because I didn’t want to make the same mistakes that Nogueira and Ricardo Arona did so.

I don’t feel any emotions, it’s difficult to show but I got very excited about Fedor once so I was more happy for that fight. Yeah, because um yeah I was more yeah I was on the edge of my seat.”

Mousasi cannot rely on hardcore fans on the Sherdog forums to make him into a mainstream star in America.

“No, it was news for me that people were talking about me so but now it’s always the same thing so no I won’t go read them, this time I will go and have a dinner and maybe celebrate.”

Mousasi shouldn’t be disappointed in himself. If there was one person who should be, it was Kelly Kahl, the CBS executive who before the Strikeforce event touted in the media about what a supposedly great job CBS did in airing 10-second TV ads to promote Fedor vs. Rogers. I can’t even begin to explain just how laughable Mr. Kahl came off in various media interviews about the job CBS did in promoting Fedor. Remember, the show did a 1.7 rating on CBS, and it’s biggest audience was men but an audience that skews way older than UFC’s audience does. In other words, this is the ex-boxing/current boxing crowd of fans who like MMA but may not make it their #1 favorite sport to watch. Yet despite the numbers, Kahl was busy tut-tutting the overall event in an interview with Mike Straka of Fox News.

“Well I thought we delivered for the audience, I think we you know maybe this time around made a real decision to bring quality MMA fights and I think every fight you know lived up to it and I think the you know that last main title, um, sorry main event fight you know showed the world what MMA’s all about, these are some warriors who step in there.”

That comment, of course, raised eyebrows immediately because it was a signal that he regretted doing business with Gary Shaw.

“Well, I don’t think it was the wrong decision and I think you know Kimbo for instance you know he got people interested and he got them there and through Kimbo we did expose people to say Brett Rogers and Jake Shields and I think tonight you know having you know them being on our air before really paid off.”

In the end, it didn’t pay off. Don’t blame Rogers, though — he put up a good showing and has a crowd-pleasing style. Shields, on the other hand, basically fought a style of fight against Mayhem Miller that would give TV executives heartburn. You want to talk about a human wet blanket…

But let’s continue hearing the CBS executive strut his stuff.

“Uh, I think it was great but you know I think [Fedor] got tested tonight, too, all you know all the favorites got tested tonight, that’s why I thought it was a really great night of fights, there weren’t a lot of obvious you know people thought they knew you know there was some obvious fights going in and they didn’t turn out that way.”

Not having Fedor speak English is a problem, no matter whether or not you want to edit it.

“Well, in the case of you know say Fedor, we sell the myth, we sell the legend and um you know that was kind of the goal going into this and um you know we’ll see whether we were successful or not but you know we got a great night of fights and I think everybody saw what the myth and legend is all about tonight.”

Everyone who’s tried to promote Fedor before has said exactly the same things… right before they went bankrupt.

As for keeping the doors open to work with the UFC in the future, notice the hemming and hawing here by Kahl.

“We talk to everybody. We’re never going to say no, we like MMA and you know like I said, Strikeforce put on a great show for us tonight and we’re very happy with Strikeforce but we’re not going to close the door on anybody.”

The issue for Strikeforce in the future with CBS & Showtime isn’t whether or not Scott Coker knows what he doing. Clearly, he knows how to book exciting shows. He understands what it takes to put on a good product. It’s everyone else that leaves you scratching your head in the process.

Coker told Fanhouse.com that he was happy overall with how everything turned out.

“I feel like it’s time to take a vacation. It was uh you know it was a great show. I’m very happy, the main event was unbelievable, one of the best fights I’ve ever seen, uh and I think this fight will go down in history in MMA. Brett Rogers did an amazing job, I mean he proved to me that he’s a complete fighter, not just a puncher, and uh when Fedor had a hard time uh trying to keep him on the ground and he got up and he reversed out of some of Fedor’s you know ground tactics and I was really impressed with his ground skills, it was a lot better than I thought, as far as escaping ability, it was a lot better than I thought.”

It almost became the Buster Douglas moment and I tell you it’s interesting because I’m sitting there and I’m going, I better not like cheer, I can’t cheer, I can’t scream, I can’t get up, I can’t I’m not supposed to be that guy, I’m the co-promoter so, you know I had to tell myself you know don’t go nuts because it was a fight that you could emotionally easily engage in.

How could you not watch this fight and become a fan of Fedor? And become a fan of Brett Rogers?” Brett Rogers did not lose any stock in this fight. Sure, if he would have beat Fedor it would have been the biggest upset like the Buster Douglas moment, sure, but he did not lose any stock, believe me, he’s going to have some fans there because of you know like Fedor said he thinks Brett’s top 2 or 3 because those other guys that he fought uh that were former champions from other leagues you know got beat in less than 45 seconds or a minute and Brett went what, a minute, a full round and a half, and was competitive and I thought he hurt Fedor a couple of times and especially when he hit him and Fedor’s head was bouncing off the mat I said, I thought is he going to get knocked out right here? Brett’s a heavy puncher.”

The biggest issue facing Coker is that he doesn’t have the kind of roster and the depth on that roster that can compete long-term with UFC on a national stage. He needs to make stars and make stars fast. However, the current model he is under with CBS & Showtime prohibits that. Unless Showtime is willing to take a significant role in doing weekly TV shows (in a similar fashion to Inside the NFL), it’s very hard to see how Strikeforce can make new stars on a consistent basis and have a fully developed core of stars.

“Yeah, I mean, you know we do have an agreement with CBS and but you know there’s a lot of details in that contract and one of the details is you know let’s see how this thing does and you know I think we came out uh with Fedor and Rogers and I think that it lived up to the expectation and the hype and hopefully you know people tuned in.”

Unfortunately, people didn’t tune in. I had a lot of friends who are into MMA, who are semi-hardcore who had zero clue about the show. Kelly Kahl, heading into the show, said in an interview that if fans didn’t know that Fedor and Rogers were fighting on CBS then maybe they weren’t real MMA fans to begin with. Ridiculous. I had to try several friends to watch the show and remind them in the process. They liked what they saw, but they had no clue that it was even taking place. When you don’t have that kind of emotional connection with the fans established, it’s a lot harder to sell the events than just putting a bunch of big name-fighters on a piece of paper and saying, hey, go watch.

The result? Not many “real” MMA fans watched the show.