UFC NEWS: Dana White complimentary of Strikeforce heavyweight tournament, but finds flaws in their business model

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

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When it comes to the topic of Strikeforce and Showtime, UFC President Dana White has never shied away from expressing his opinion. Prior to Strikeforce getting on Showtime, White had kind words about Scott Coker and the way the organization was run as a regional promotion.

Now, with Strikeforce's Heavyweight World Grand Prix set to kick off next week, White is again somewhat complimentary to the organization.

"When you're in the fight promotion business, especially when you're at the level Strikeforce is at, you're trying to peak the interest of the fans," White said in an interview with Ariel Helwani at MMAFighting.com. "You want to put on fights that fans care about. If they came up with this tournament and people are behind it and dig it then they did the right thing."

However, where White thought the organization was run well as a regional promotion, he's much more critical about the way Strikeforce's penchant for open contracts hinders their ability to get some of their fighters into the cage.

"The reality is, if you don't have guys under contracts to fight with you, how the hell are you going to get them to fight?" White asked. "You've got other people offering them more money. When Japanese MMA was strong - you're talking a year ago when there was still some money floating around - and you got Strikeforce making an offer over here for X amount, the guys in Japan will beat them every time. Those guys are never going to come over here and fight.

"That's why you have these big gaps and you can't efficiently run your business. It would be like? when certain guys don't want to fight each other. "

For White, the contrast with how the UFC books their fights and the seeming difficulty Strikeforce has in putting fights together at times showcases what he feels is a non-sensical business model for this sport.

"The thing about having a powerful league like the UFC is, we make fights that people want to see," White said. "The fans bitch about how the business is run sometimes, [but] we're able to put the fights we want to see because of how we run our business.

"Now, imagine if in baseball the Yankees said, 'we don?t want to play the f***ing Red Sox.' You know what I mean, 'we don?t want to play them.' Or Green Bay, these guys both make it and Green Bay's like, 'yeah, we don?t want to play Pittsburgh, we hate Pittsburgh' or 'they're offering me more money to do something somewhere else. We just don't want to do this.' I mean, it makes no sense, right? The way that this thing is done makes sense. The way that they run their business doesn't."

Link to video interview

Penick's Analysis: These are fairly even handed comments from White, and not entirely without merit. It's good to hear him say something complimentary about Strikeforce, as entertaining fights is really what it's all about, and this heavyweight tournament will bring that. But he's not wrong about the issue of getting fights together. There's a reason it has taken so long to get Fedor back into the cage after each fight. There's a reason Alistair Overeem has fought just twice for Strikeforce in the last three years. Hopefully some of that changes, and they can get more of these fights together with less of a gap in between them, but the issue of open contracts and co-promotion complicates things and throws wrenches into plans often enough that it can be a problem. But, if Strikeforce can continue bringing fun and interesting fights, then that will be the most important factor in them continuing to stick around as the #2 MMA organization.

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_8355.shtml

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