Strikeforce sets new ratings record with Showtime, peaks at 1.1 Million viewers
Posted on February 16, 2011, 01:47 AM by Joey SantosusLast Saturday's Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Silva event was the promotion's highest rated to date on Showtime, with an average of 741,000 viewers. At its peak, which occurred during the card's headlining match-up between Fedor Emelianenko and Antonio Silva, 1.1 million tuned in for the fight.
The numbers surpass Strikeforce's previous records with Showtime, formerly held by their Carano vs. Cyborg event, which took place in August 2009. That show was headlined by Gina Carano vs. Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and averaged 576,000 viewers, with a peak of 856,000.
Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Silva was held at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey and featured two of the promotion's Heavyweight Grand Prix quarterfinal match-ups. The first of which saw Sergei Kharitonov knock out Andrei Arlovski in the co-main event attraction, before Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva bested Fedor Emelianenko in the final bout of the night.
The second round of quarterfinal bouts are set to take place April 9th and will feature Heavyweight Champion Alistair Overeem going head to head with Fabricio Werdum, while Josh Barnett makes his promotional debut against Brett Rogers. Though Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker is yet to confirm the event's location, Japan is rumored as the the front-runner.
Comments
Good for SF they are moving forward, I am really interested to see the salaries of these fighters for that nite.
yes strike force is going too get bigger and better! ceo and pres. coker knows what hee is doing!
they better live it up while it last cause after the tournament and after fedor leaves and overeem finally signs with the UFC strikeforce is pretty much DONE!
Yeah, because clearly no one is interested in watching guys like Overeem or Nick Diaz or Gilbert Melendez or Hendo or Mousasi or Jacare or Josh Thompson or Feijaou, etc, etc fight. OH, and NOBODY wants to see Gina Carano either, right? Yeah, the fate of a promotion that has expanded exponentially over the last two years is most certainly hanging on one fighter. I will note that Mr. Edward Witten!
I doubt Overeem will move to the UFC. He's got 3 belts to defend in 3 separate promotions and I'm sure he's making more than enough money from all those fights. Why go to the UFC, which has an arguably weaker HW division and where he'll only get to fight on average twice a year?
He really doesn't need the ufc. It would be fun to see some fights with him against some of the top guys. Money wise, He made about $400,000 for the k1 fights. you throw in dream and sf plus endorsements, he's doing ok for himself. I like SF. I think they should do well. They seem a lot steadier than the other organizations that went down. It helps when you've been doing for a while I guess Than saying, "let's get into the fight biz".
Yeah technically Strikeforce has been around since the 80's.
There's a lot of doors open to Overeem right now, between the guys lining up to fight him in Strikeforce, K-1 exploits and a Dream title he'll likely have to defend at some point.
K 1 or Dream have not paid Overeem for his last 2 events FYI
:(
Shut up Dana. No one wants to see your pathetic emotocons.
I'm happy for Strikeforce.
StrikeForce moving up in the world soon they will be able to do a PPV that i won't pay for.
Just out of curiosity, do you pay for UFC?
excactly what i was thinking. soon theyll try to go ppv and i will not buy them. sure they have 'some' good fighters but the way they run the events are just horrible. if every fight ends quickly, which they often do because of the uncompetetive matchups, they dont show any undercard fights and the whole card ends up being an hour n a half long. i would never pay 50 or even 30 dollars for a card thats less than 2 hours long.
Yea I'm glad they had more viewers. I like having lots of promotions to watch.
very good point bro !
I'm very happy for Strikeforce. I've always been disappointed with the lack of consistency from SF and the fact that their cards don't lead up or build up ta another but this tournament solves the problem for them. I just hope we get to see more tournaments in the future.
I've heard they might be doing a lightweight one, with the possibility of some JMMA fighters competing :D
Excellent news for SF!
Strikeforce has only been around for two years, yet fans get on them as if they should equal UFC in depth immediately. Such good ratings indicate that Strikeforce is going in the right direction--and as long as they can keep the momentum, 3 to 5 years down the road--they will be giving DW nightmares.
Competition is good, not only in MMA, but between MMA organizations. It is good for the fans, and good for the fighters. It is even good for the MMA promotions, since it makes them try harder to be the best org--but I doubt DW sees it that way.
Totally agree with this. We seemed to have forgotten that strikeforce is still a very young organization compared to the UFC (and yet they still manage to keep a handsome roster - fedor,reem,hendo,diaz,etc.)
One thing I noticed though the tandem of joe rogan and mike goldberg (add bruce buffer) seems more entertaining than the strikeforce group. i think that counts for some points to, just my two cents.