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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The joint releases of Golden Glory fighters Marloes Coenen, Valentijn Overeem and Jon Olav Einemo on Wednesday prompted a wide range of reactions and responses from the MMA community. With a lot of silence from the sides over any real and legitimate reasons for the cuts, it has led to outrage from some, blind acceptance from others and a whole lot of confusion.
Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker commented on the releases in an interview with Mauro Ranallo's The Fight Show podcast, and he spun it as a move made for the betterment of the fighters released.
"Well, you know, Mauro, that whole thing about Alistair [Overeem], I think it's been documented," Coker said (transcribed by MMANation.com). "I think it's been regurgitated over and over so I don't know if we have to get into that. But with Valentijn and Marloes, you know, right now, there's only so many TV spots, as you know, until the middle of next year. And, uh, they're, um, you know, in this business, you've gotta keep winning. So, to me, it was a situation where Valentijn had that loss, I believe in June, so that was already in the works anyway. It just seems sudden to everybody because it just all happened this week.
"But that was already on its way for Valentijn. The slots are going to be for the fighters that are victorious right now. We have a lot of athletes under contract and we have to get everybody fights and there's only so many slots. There's only so many TV dates, we only have two more TV dates on the big show before the end of the year. September is already full, December is getting full and then January is hopefully are finals and that's going to have a full card already. So in fairness to the athletes, why just let them hang around? It's a much fairer situation."
Penick's Analysis: Coker is in absolute spin mode in this interview, and while Valentijn's release made sense, it's the release of Coenen that has rightfully brought the most uproar. They may not have a fight for her right away, but she just lost the title, and one loss after the wins she had over Sarah Kaufman and Liz Carmouche shouldn't have meant her release for the reasons Coker is giving. There are a lot of unknowns in this situation still, with reports coming out on a number of issues behind the scenes but nothing really definitive to clarify the situation.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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