Mickey Mouse MMA

If the unreliable Strikeforce organization can be counted on for one thing, it’s to screw things up.  Take, for instance, it’s highly anticipated World Grand Prix Heavyweight Tournament.  What should have been a crown jewel for the organization has become disastrous.  The whole tournament was flawed from the beginning, with one side of the draw stacked with all the talent (Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, Alistair Overeem), which would have meant that the biggest fight in Strikeforce’s history – Overeem vs Fedor – would have taken place as a semifinal match in the tournament (however, Antonio Silva made sure to make that a moot point).  Why they thought staging Fedor vs Overeem as a semifinal, non-title match was a good idea is beyond me.  That’s just the Strikeforce way.  Additionally it was announced that Overeem’s Strikeforce Heavyweight belt would be on the line every round of the tournament.  Then it was announced, of course, that it wouldn’t be.  Once again, the Strikeforce way.

As if all this, plus Fedor losing, wasn’t enough of a black eye for Strikeforce, now they have, not surprisingly, postponed the next quarterfinal fights in the tournament.  The fights that were supposed to take place in April will now take place in June.  Which means the earliest we’ll get the semifinals will be September, with the finals perhaps taking place by the end of the year.  Which also means that the first set of quarterfinal winners, Silva and Sergei Kharitonov, will have to wait seven months before stepping into the cage again (at least in the tournament).  It also means that Werdum, with all the momentum after his stunning defeat of Fedor last summer, will go a year before fighting again.  Way to ride the momentum, Strikeforce.  And the heavyweight champ, Overeem, will have been absent from a Strikeforce cage for 13 months.  Plus it looks like the organization’s heavyweight title – which is a MMA organization’s most prized possession and marketing tool – will go two years before being defended (Overeem defended it in May, 2010 – with the tournament taking up all of this year, it’s doubtful the title will be fought for again until next spring).

But all this is par for the course with Strikeforce, who tries to position itself as a major league MMA organization on par with the UFC, when, in actuality, they are minor league in every sense of the word.  You could call them a Mickey Mouse mixed martial arts organization, but that might be too insulting to Mickey.