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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Strikeforce has officially pushed back the second leg of their Heavyweight World Grand Prix from April 9 to June 18, and their April 9 event will now be headlined by a Welterweight Championship bout between Nick Diaz and Paul Daley.
Citing a lack of time to promote the fights and difficulty in securing a venue, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker gave a couple of different statements to a couple of different outlets regarding the change, which brings the quarterfinal bouts in Alistair Overeem vs. Fabricio Werdum and Josh Barnett vs. Brett Rogers to the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.
A prepared statement issued to MMAJunkie.com spun the change as an effort to capitalize on their record ratings for the February 12 tournament kickoff.
"The overwhelming success in New Jersey set the bar high," Coker said. "With a record pre-sale for Strikeforce tickets and a record viewership on Showtime, we've now given ourselves the proper amount of time to promote in one of the country's biggest markets."
However, an interview with Josh Gross at ESPN tempered things back a little more to reality.
"We just ran out of time," he said. "I didn't find a venue that we thought would work for everybody, so we decided to move it. I would like to conclude it by the end of the year... I feel bad for the fighters but as a promoter I'm happy we have more time.
"I think with those heavyweights and the proper amount of time, we're really going to have our best shot of recreating the success we had in New Jersey."
The Heavyweight World Grand Prix now will tentatively feature semifinal fights in mid-September, with December targeted for the finals.
The April 9 card will now feature the Diaz vs. Daley bout, as well as Gilbert Melendez vs. Tatsuya Kawajiri, a possible bout between Gegard Mousasi and Mike Kyle and a possible Shinya Aoki bout as well.
Penick's Analysis: Strikeforce dropped the ball here. They can spin it however they want right now, but they massively dropped the ball in having these quarterfinal bouts moved back an extra two months. Their first mistake was announcing the April 9 date on the February 12 show on Showtime for the second set of quarterfinals without a venue locked up. The second mistake was attempting to run in Japan and going all in without a back up plan. The third mistake was having Josh Barnett in this tournament field, making it more difficult to secure a venue on short notice. That third issue is absolutely a major reason in these fights not happening on April 9. What's continuing to be ridiculous is that they still haven't finalized a venue for the April 9 card and it's less than six weeks from the fights. This entire fiasco began when they put this together and pushed it as a tournament, because they're not likely going to finish it this year, despite their optimism in finishing by December. If they would have just put these fights together without the tournament gimmick involved, this June 18 card would be excellent, and the tournament gimmick wouldn't have overshadowed the two major cards they've got in between the grand prix quarterfinals. And Alistair Overeem is still not defending his title, which continues to not make sense especially with this delay. They'll be extremely lucky if they can put the semifinals on by September, and even luckier to get the finals in before the year is out. But, they've committed to this tournament, and they'll have to live and die by their decisions in the process, and this is just a big, big misstep, and it's immensely disappointing.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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