Strikeforce win "The Battle of December 4th" via a crushing Knockout

Dana has some serious issues being the no.1 mma company..i smell strikeforce coming into the big league..couple more events like this is have dana sweating a little i bet..



best event of the year by far.

Dana really underestimated SF, and paid the price

Except that with the way contracts work now fighters can only fight with one promotion and more successful promotions really means talent getting split up. and that means the best arnt always fighting the best.

Who started this? Dana White!! Other organisations have ciontracted fighters, but in the past have allowed fighters to fight without sigining their careers into the hands of greedy nusinessmen. DW changed the game with demanding ownership of fighters. He blocked Couture from fighting Fedor. Strikeforce didn't stop Overeem fighting in K1. we all know who is to blame for the best not being able to fight the best from other organisations.

best event of the year? thats a stretch.

I believe that Anton meant "Strikeforce's best event of the year"

yes he did. you must have 20/20 vision lol. but i was replying to irish, not anton

Oh, ok my bad.... (embarrassed emoticon)

If you look at the ratio of fights UFC puts on to the ratio of Strikeforce, Ide say their doing pretty damn good. Dana's good event to crap ratio sucks

It was the best event of the year. Hands down. Name a better event.

i agree ufc is putting some pretty bad cards lately, last night was just an adition to a couple of months of disapointment with the ufc shows.

Hopefully strikeforce keeps doing this, havent enjoyed a UFC card since 117

Only UFC 116, 117 and 123 have been impressive cards this year.

Deadlyintention93,



According to whom?



/ Odesa

Hi Daniel,

It seems you have inside knowledge???

Specifically, what has Dana underestimated regarding Strikeforce?

Specifically, what price did Dana pay as a result? Who did he pay it to?

How do you know that there is no other reason and this is the truth?



Thanks,

Odesa

How so, let's wait until the ratings come out, most casual fans probably didnt even know Strikeforce had a card that night and one good card does not instantly make them on par with the UFC yes Strikeforce is a legitimate organization but you guys need to get off the bandwagon before it crashes.

no

dana underestimated the strength of SF's card

as a result he inadvertantly gives SF more momentum

its merely an opinion son, dont take it too seriously



Thanks,

Big Cazz

big cazz? lmaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

it was pretty petty on danas part to schedule the event on the same night as strikeforce, but to compare the two like for like is wrong imo...a TUF finale is less stacked than a fight night, and a fight night is usally at least two times less stcked than an actual fight card, and strikeforce had babalu lawler hendo silva and daley all fighting, undoubtedly some of their top draws...fair play to strikeforce for puting on a great show, but if the ufc had really wanted to beat strikeforce (and not just take a share of their views) last night, then they would have...

Agreed. However, I do not see it as "counter-programming." Strikeforce is very sporadic in its shows, whereas the UFC always has their TUF Finales as the reality show comes to a close. I highly doubt that Dana and the UFC planned an entire reality show around Strikeforce's year end event.

That SF event could have gone head to head with any UFC event this year in terms of entertainment value, but of coruse not name recognition.

with all due respect, if the ufc wanted to have an event like that, they couldv just made a load of mismatches and watched the fireworks...i dont mean to hate on strikeforce so much but a succession of brutal kos like we seen last night indicate bad matchmaking to me, but thats just my opinion

I see where your coming from, but I disagree.

1) What made the SF card good was not simply that they were "mismatches". They were competitive fights in which all competitors had reputations as at least mid-level fighters in their respective weight classes (With the exception of Mike Kyle vs Antonio Silva which ended up being the most evenly contested fight).

2) Mis matches are fights that don't make sense, not fights where the skill level of two opponents are widely seperated. That is like saying GSP vs (almost all the top contenders in the UFC WW division) are all mismatches, simply because GSP is far superior. IMO all of those fights made sense on paper, but I won't argue as to why, you can just look at all the guys and see their recent history.

3) Im sure the UFC could try and engineer a card in which all of the matchups would end with brutal KO's, but most fans would see through that BEFORE the event happened, and most of those fights would not make sense on paper.

I agree with the vast majority of the article. I actually only watched the first and last UFC fights because I anticipated the SF show being better. The only thing I disagree with is last nights show being more important that Fedor V Werdum. That show saw Fedor take his first real loss. That is historic.

also, decisions can be exciting too. The Nam Phan V Leonard Garcia fight was even if I disagree with the decision.

:)

Strikeforce owned the UFC last night

scott "chin of glass" smith

Hi Griffin,



When you look at the replay of the succession of shots Scott took and then the final shot, do you not see that the timing, power and accuracy of the last shot was enough to preclude comments like, "glass chin".



To take this position I guess you must be a pretty seasoned fighter with a chin of granite and the heart of a champion. Please tell me you are not basing your opinions on what you think a fighter should take? What base of knowledge are you using to make this comment about this particular fight?



Thanks for clarifying your point.

Odesa

lol the guy moved right into the punch, it doesnt even need to be a hard punch to get kod like that.

Scott should study Shogun's style of cover up before and after attacking...if you dont adjust your game it will never change...ask Liddel about that.

it's good that the ufc has competition like strikeforce, means we get to watch 2 promotions constantly trying to outdo each other with exciting fights. roll on 2011 :D

Exactly! There is no point in taking sides or favoring any promotion,from a fan perspective. Dana is the only one who talks shit about other organizations..he is trying to force rivalry between the fans. There is no such thing as UFC or Strikeforce fan,just MMA fan. :/

There are plenty of UFC fans and not mma fans. Some fans entire knowledge of mma resides just from UFC. they have no knowledge or respect for anything non UFC in mma. You are right though, no mma fan is a fan of just one organisation, they love them all.

I watched the UFC event then ended up watching the S-Force card after.. My verdict, Strikeforce wins

It's still to early to tell after just one good event. If you remember strike force Nashville all the fights that night went to decision. I still hope strike force becomes a good competitor to the ufc like pride.

im a huge UFC fan but now that i think about it, there actually has been a growing trend for fights ending in deceisions in the UFC recently, possibly for 7 to 8 months now i think, im not really sure why this is happening of late but it might have something to do with Dana Whites recent attitude of cleaning house. He has cut far too many fighters from the promotion this past year for various reasons and aside from the fact that this has been hurting some of the UFC's weight devisions eg. the HW devision it has also possibly frightened many fighters as they may be too afraid to go for the knock out or take any chances during bouts, for fear of losing and being cut because Dana has now become rootless , so they deceide to play it safe and essentially just win rounds which leads to many more fights ending in deceisions, this is just my own personal theory not fact.

you are so correct. the fighters are afraid to go for it cause they don't know what the boss is going to think. winning is what they fight for, but i think the ufc puts too much emphasis on it. when you fight tough guys all the time like kieth jardine did, you may lose a couple if not all of them. but if you show up to fight and still come up short, you should still be able to fight. scott smith doesn't always win, but he' s had two wars with robby lawler and cung le, and has had entertaing fights against nick diaz, benji radach, and he went down swinging last night. i will always be excited to watch that guy more than some wrestler that lays on the other guy for 3 to 5 rounds. its not the fighters making it boring, its the organization

What a biased article... that has nothing to do with journalism (don't know if the author has any intentions towards that direction though) or objective observation.



Saying that entertainment is the most important aspect of MMA promotion puts it more or less on the same level as the WWE.



Was the Strikeforce event spectacular? Surely. Was is worth much considering MMA as a serious sport? Definitely not. I mean, what do you expect when you you put up fights between guys with a huge difference in skill? I could have told you who would win all of those fights (except for Radach vs Saint Preux... because I have never heard of then, Kyle also made the fight a lot closer than expected).



The TUF finale wasn't great, it was just the usual finale quality (except for the first one which was legendary).



Fights ending in decisions usually is a sign of the two fighters not having a huge gap in their abilities, it rarely happens that fighters just lay and pray to get the decision for no reason. If MMA wants to be taken serious as a sport, victories should not be based on spectacular finishes, a win should be a win, though one can of course make statements on what a fighter still lacks and compare his abilities to possible competition.

Just one flaw in your WWE theory....WWE is fake and doesnt have KO's....at least not real ones. College wrestling might be your favorite sport by the looks of it.

I have to go with Strikeforce in this one..If this continue to happen more often, Dana will probably learn how to treat and respect his fighters

What a craptastic article this is..



UFC still has more talent than Strikeforce. Where the action may not have been all Knockouts, you can sure bet if you matched them up versus the talent in the UFC, Strikeforce would get smashed.



You can talk as much **** as you want about Dana, but hands down it's about the quality of fighters and anyone that wants to try and compare the two, aren't even on the same planet. UFC has guys light-years ahead Strikeforce in talent and that's all that matters.

I'm not so sure that UFC wins clearly versus Strikeforce. they have more dpth by a long way, and in GSP, Aldo and Edgar they have 3 of the best MMA fighters on the planet. But Strikeforce HW's would probably eat UFC HW's alive.

Please.. They would have a tough time getting past Frank Mir..



Then would still have to deal with JDS, CV, RN, BL..



You comment might have made sense a few years ago, but now it's just dumb and ignorant.



You also forgot to mention all the other lightweight to light heavy weight fighters that are lightyears ahead of Strikeforce..



I don't get sucked up into the whole, "US vs THEM" BS.. But give me a f***ing break, this article and your responses are silly in comparison to when it comes to comparing talent.



You can ask anyone in the business and they will tell you the real competition is in the UFC..

As a fan who watches MMA in every major organization world wide (UFC, SF, Dream, Sengoku ect.) I would say that yes of course the UFC has the majority of the best fighters on the world, but if every organization outside the UFC came together (well it wouldn't make sense since sengoku is owned by zuffa) they could definitely come close to matching the UFC's roster in terms of talent and quality.



I'd say UFC probably only has around 50% of the worlds best fighters in all of the divisions starting at LW and going down. They definitely have the best WW, MW, and LHW without a doubt, although there are still alot of guys out there that could hang with UFC fighters in those divisions. As for HW's I would put my money on SF HW's for sure. I don't want to get to far into why the SF HW division is superior, but I would just say to people that disagree to try and look into the balance of the top SF HW's in terms of experiance, potential, and skillset, because the UFC HW division does not have many thoroughly experianced, accomplished, and proven fighters....but they defniitely seem to have skill and potential.

And I'm a big Mir fan, but honestly he has beaten NOBODY. Only time will tell what HW divison is better because most of these guys havn't fought each other yet, they have only fought midlevel guys on their way up.

FEDOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol that was fun

ok,, honestly, who didnt see hendo knocking out babalu?? and who expected lindland to even get out of the first round?, the only people he was ever good against was like what?? phil baroni,, cuz he was always just trying to beattt the living shit out of everyone, the onyl thing that was really a surprise was scott smith getting dropped like a truck off a cliff. Everything else retaining to ppl getting knocked out or tko'd was pretty much obvious to any mma fan that has followed mma for a while. Strikeforce is being smart by making matchups like this,, but its pretty obvious for whos gonna win and in the UFC, there seems to be a certain level of talent that everyone is at, so it doesnt happen as often cuz its so high level. Not taking anything away from strikeforce,, i was hooting and hollering every knockout last night but its a totally different game.

yeah. its better than the ufc. ufc has tons of matchups that we'll never see cause there being tight with there money. they took all of prides fighters and put them to rest. i been waiting for rampage shogun 2 forever and its maybe still a year away. if you put a good puncher in front of gomi, you'll have fight of the year just like his fight with nick diaz. the ufc is still doing the famous striker vs grqppler. that shits old.

damn doctaphil. thats the 2nd time in the past two days youve said some real shit.

Whats this talk about mismatches? There was only one mismatch and it was Kyle vs Big foot.

I still laugh when everyone said Strikeforce would go bankrupt a year ago and I disagreed. I like Strikeforce more all the time.

i had plans to watch the ufc first then strikeforce later in the evening. i got so bored with the ufc that i switched to strikeforce and was instantly entertained. the punches were harder, the crowd was louder, and the matchups were way more exciting. i mean who was this guy bonnar was fighting? and is bonnar really worthy of a co main event. i was more excited to see hershal walker who i know would have given a better show than those two. the ufc is still doing the same bullshit matchups that nobody cares about. and even though strikeforce isn't as organized as the ufc, there matchmaking is lightyears ahead of the ufc. strikeforce fighters fight to finish with devastation. the ufc fighters are fighting just to keep their jobs. give the credit to dana. thanks for another shitty show. thank scott coker for strikeforce.

strikeforce kicked dana's ass

yea, and get ready for more mud slinging from Dana Wipe.

Ya, I have no doubt Dana white is going to pull some BS out of his ass like "SF are a bunch of busch league assholes who don't care for the safety of the fighers by making lopsided matchups blah blah" and try and make SF look like bad guys who are hurting the sport

I believe that it all comes down to the fact that Strikeforce's fighters (and possibly others) fight with the motivation to make a name or build a legacy, where UFC fighter's fight to please Dana and keep their job.



The first ones are athletes and the second ones are employees.

Thats a good angle to view, and has some credibility.

Man I said that b4 and sort of share the same sentiment with you there but i thought i cuuld be looking to far into the situation. It is reasonable to think that tho, alot of these UFC guys seem to fight liek they are scared to lose because of job security.

It seems to be true that the fighters in Strikeforce have less pressure, simply because Strikeforce cannot afford to lose fighters, the divisions are already pretty shallow as it is, it almost looks like you just have to knock someone out once and you are already in the title picture. I don't really get why no pressure to perform would be a good thing. Concerning athletes and employees, one could also make an analogy of circus animals (SF) and professional athletes (UFC).



As for the SF heavyweight division being better than the UFC's: I am really wondering what this view is based on. To me it looks like the UFC has at least one better version of every Strikeforce heavyweight. Overeem definitely looks promising, but we haven't really seen him fight anyone, he could turn out to be gasing out after 5 minutes or to be helpless on the ground if he's on bottom... who knows? Fedor is of course also a special fighter, but his skill level is a big question at the moment since he barely fights and only faces second rate competition. The loss to Werdum was just a mental thing IMO, Fedor would beat him for sure if they fought again and Fedor played it halfway safe. Other than these two, who does Strikeforce have? Rogers and Silva are far from being worldclass for sure. Barnett is a question mark for me at the moment.



I don't know if others have similar thoughts, but I get the impression that Strikeforce does not like Wrestlers, so they are leaving out a huge aspect of MMA. Other than King Mo, I cannot think of another wrestler in SF from the top of my head (I don't consider Lindland and Lashley proper MMAists).

Just about every comment I've seen has been saying how amazing strikeforce is because of one event. I love strikeforce don't get me wrong, but having one good event and everyone shouting out about how it destroyed UFC, to me this shows how far ahead UFC still is.

A lot of the responses are simply because of Dana's personal attack on everyone on the internet and their opinions. Crap like that plopping out Dana's mouth makes the SF event that much sweeter. Give SF time, they will surprise you.

Every SF event I have watched has delivered, so i don't know what you are talking about when you say "because of one event". Look through the past SF events, they have all provided great fights and are entertaining. Literally every single one of them in the past 1-2 years that i can remember has been good.

There you go exaggerating again. Not all of them have been good. There have been numerous fights that were no were near on par as level of even playing field, and then still was a 3 round drag out snooze fest.



I stand with the odd man out where I personally enjoy some of the slower, more well thought out matches, than ones tat are explosive because you get to see them work and really highlights their strengths and weaknesses.



However there have been boring fights in every promotion, that's just how it is.



But go ahead and weak this too since apparently the woman of this site really like to weak especially if you make a point they don't like to hear, no matter how valid..

SF is going to have a good 2011 year, if they make all HW fighters actually fight! If Fedor, Overeem, Barnett, Silva, Werdum and maybe Arlovski and Rogers, fight 2 times among each other, it should be very good. But Coker has to make those fights.

u cant compare the ultimate fighter finale vs one of sf's bigger shows

btw most of the fights were mismatches

You guys are comparing a TUF finale with a Strikeforce main event, obviouslly theire both very different. I like the fights in SF but personally were not talking about the same level of talent. Lets break down the fights:



BENJI “RAZOR” RADACH VS OVINCE ST PREUX - this one sucked, Radach gameplan was cowering and covering up... Ovince isnt a very talented fighter and still he won pretty easlly. None of this fighters would have a place in the UFC.



ANTONIO “BIGFOOT” SILVA VS MIKE “MAK” KYLE - this one was a ridiculous matchup really, we have a big Heavyweight with 280 pounds against a small Light Heavyweight with 210 pounds. Bonnar or Griffin are 225 LHW and they wouldnt fight at Heavyweight. Big Foot got dropped rather easlly which for me questioned his skill a lot...



PAUL “SEMTEX” DALEY VS SCOTT “HANDS OF STEEL” SMITH - A great and entertaining fight but neither fighter would have a chance to fight for the tittle in the UFC. Daley has great stand up but little grappling (as was shown in the Shark Fights) and Smith is a entertaining fighter but not a top contender, not even close.



“RUTHLESS” ROBBIE LAWLER VS MATT “THE LAW” LINDLAND - A great Flash KO because 40 year old Lindland tried to exchange with a great striker and brawler. Clearly Lindland was insane on doing that, he could won this by decision if he used his wrestling. Its more fun the way it went for us fans but clearly he made things easy for Robbie who as always showed great hands.



DAN “HENDO” HENDERSON VS RENATO “BABALU” SOBRAL - Two veterans of the sport collided for a very entertaining fight. It was a great headliner for the fans but again, were talking about two fighters that wouldnt have a great chance in the UFC LHW division, I could name 5 or more fighters that would eat them up and spit them out.



To conclude, I would like to say it was a great card, very entertaining, but the level of talent cant be by in any way compared with the UFC. If you think im wrong, tell me one of this fighters in the card that would pose a threat for a UFC champion...