ZUFFA purchase Strikeforce; Dana White says "business as usual"

EATEN!

people are so concerned with labeling things UFC instead of MMA, I dont care what its being called now, fans know the sport is MMA, All i care about is seeing the best fights possible Diaz vs GSP, Jacare vs A.Silva

Diaz vs Penn is more like it. GSP would give Diaz a trouncing. A. Silva would molest Jacare. Jacare vs Maia would be more like it. Great fights, not too one sided like you suggested

how long before ZUFFA buy Bellator, Senguko and hey maybe even Libya

The contradictor!!!! Dana does it again! GENIUS!



Ladies and Gents, this is really a MONOPOLY in the making!



M-1, Barnett, Daley, Diaz, Henderson, Shamrock and Showtime... Who's your DADDY now bitches? Bwahahaahaha!

@ Rane



And this benefits you how? Instead of being happy that Fedor,Barnett,Diaz,Henderson and others might face some of the UFC fighters,you gloat how smaller organization,that knew how to put great shows with very limited resources,got eaten buy wealthiest company in MMA..If that brings you joy,why dont you just follow stock market or something...

I cant imagine why do you hate those fighters you listed..



Barnett-former UFC champ and all-around badass..not to mention exciting and charismatic both inside and outside of the octagon

Daley-finishes all of his fights by knockout,and mostly loses grinding decisions

Hendo-fought who's who in MMA,in god knows how many weight divisions and promotions,in some of most exciting battles of all time.And gave us some of the best KO's ever!Even his loses were exciting.

Shamrock-one of the most recognized names in MMA,and pioneer of the sport.

Fedor- do i even have to say anything?



And somehow you feel satisfied because maybe now they feel less comfortable than before the takeover?

You found the most,and probably only negative side of this whole situation,and decided to be happy about it.Those guys risk their health and commit their lives to MMA for our entertainment...



You poor soul..

if zuffa is just gonna be the base essentially of sf, what is the point if they cant give us the fights we want

what a stupid tagline

dana choked and bought coker out lol! dana why would u say strike force sucks and its a feeder side show ! lol

fedor v Big NOg!!!! Fedor v Cro Cop!!! Fedor vrs randy !!!!!



REEM VRS CAIN!!!!



so many posibilities!!!!!!!

Oh my god so they did purchase PRIDE :O

I can't believe this!!!!! I never even imagined this would've happened so soon!!!!!

Something tells me they aren't going to Japan anytime soon........

dana s funny ! lol greedy liar!

Now it is Strikefarce for real

do you know what "farce" means?

Do you?

it is a term Dana White used

WOW,nice!!!

Holy cow, this is huge. Despite the denials from Dana I can see them making superfights (at least with Overeem) sooner rather than later. In a sense this is affirmation for Scott Coker and the good work that he's done building an organization that the UFC felt was worth investing in.

this is shit, like how it happened with wec first business as usual and then when contracts and everything are expired they get eaten up and merged, i didnt like the merge with ufc, havent seen a main event with wec fighters and i thought they were gonna put a lot of shows now that they had way more fighters, buts its all the same, less mma in the month :(

dude, its been like what 2 and a half months since theyve merged with WEC??! These main events have prob been in the works for months and if u havent noticed, who is co mian event for prob the biggest ufc event of the year? That will be in record breaking attendance of 55,000? Jose Aldo and Mark Hominick.. Ya two WEC-ers... Give it some time

nothing is changing at the moment apart from both shows will now advertise each others events (or atleast UFC will advertise for strikeforce) and that there will be some small changes to the strikeforce production, but we won't be seeing any super fights or tournaments between the two companys.



It's basicly like this has happend at all (atleast for now)

Yea, Dana and the UFC have bad relation with Showtime, which happens to be a major if not the largest part of what was Strikeforce.



Once binding contracts expire, fighters will be enveloped and Showtime, more than likely will be out of the picture. If Bellator is still around, you would probably see Showtime in a new partnership with them.

The same company that owns Spike TV also owns Showtime

Showtime is owned by CBS Corporation and Spike TV is owned by Viacom through Network Enterprises inc

I didn't know that was the case but the sour relationship Dana has with Showtime is well known.



and also, Josh Gross of ESPN is now reporting on his twitter that once the Showtime contract has been fulfilled the UFC and SF will probably merge.

Would love to see the strikeforce tourny champ go up against Cain V. . . maybe Alistair vs. Cain,now thats a super fight!

i swear he said business as usual a thousand times in this interview

Wow!



I can't believe it will be "business as usual" in a year or two. There will have to be efficiencies of scale achieved.



Wow!

Nice move by the UFC. But I think eventually in the future they will also merge with Strikeforce.

so....essentialy then Zuffa more or less owns MMA? I can't fully decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. in many ways it could be giving the fans what they want e.g. superfights (I think? I'm still trying to decipher whether or not this will actually change anything) and eliminate the questions and arguments that arose because of 2 separate MMA orgs.



On the other hand variety is always good and it is a bit depressing to think that (considering JMMA is on its last leg) Zuffa is enveloping MMA as we know it. And I'm assuming that this will go the same way as Pride and the WEC. Eventually they'll merge the 2 and keep the contracts they want or cut the ones they don't. So I guess it's good for the fans but unfortunate for some fighters.

I agree man. It is cool that we could get to see some really amazing fights but there will definitely be a dark side. It will be awesome to see all the fighters Dana badmouthed destroy some of his top guys though.

APRIL FOOLS???

i HOPE they merge with strifeforce as soon as possible

me to, as some of these guys are getting old and past there prime. fedor has already started to say he will retire, so he probably won't be fighting when they merge, overeem is seems possible but he has had alot of fights and it doesn't sound as if the two companys will be merging together anytime soon so he might be gone, hendo and dana don't get on and he has said that diaz needs to be professional and that daley will never fight in the ufc again. so alot of there top guys either won't be as good as they once were or might not even be fighting any more and others don't get on with dana.

Shit, I just realised this means they're gonna pull all the Strikeforce fights off the internet like they did with Pride >.< fuccckkkkkkkkk

Maybe Strikeforce will become UFC's experimental league with tournaments and the stuff UFC never does.

good bye bellator

make no mistake there will be a merge.r dana probably cannot even legally say it now if he did it could diminish interest in the strikeforce brand and hurt their partners showtime and m-1 leaving zuffa open to a lawsuit. so as dana said it will be buisness as usual until zuffa can satisfy showtime and m-1 by making new deals with them or until those contracts expire

yeah I give it 2 years before they merge. He says in the interview he thinks that Strikeforce's contract with showtime is finished in about 2 years so I'll say they'll make it happen as soon as that expires. THEN we will get to see the superfights. For now I'll say it'll just look a lot like the WEC did, a seperate promotion with a Zuffa undertone to it. That said, I'd actually enjoy seeing Joe Rogan commentate on a Fedor or Nick Diaz fight!

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ EPIC }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}



Diaz, Melendez, Overeem, Hendo ect. off to UFC when their contracts expire!!!!

Hes says he never says never then 2 min later he states Paul Daley will NEVER fight in the ufc

small bit of a shock, didnt see that coming

I wonder if this is a good thing or not. I guess only time will tell.

another thing....



It's good to know a stand up dude like Scott Cocker will now be part of the Zuffa machine!

wow

As soon as fighters contracts are up with Strikeforce I wouldnt be suprised if Dana snapped them up for UFC. Dana might be trying to officially make strikeforce the little leagues of mma .... a lower division which feeds its top talent straight into the UFC. And likewise, UFC's dwindleing talent is demoted down to Strikeforce. One thngs for sure, it will be very intertesting to see how this all pans out.

I definitely agree with you. It's going to be more like the NBA and the NBDL

It'll be like AHL to NHL, MLB to AAA ect.

Sooo basically when all SF top fighters contracts expire they'll sign over as UFC fighters....on the ufc roster!!!!!Finally!!!

So does this mean the Strikeforce guys are in the UFC? Or is this going to be like the WEC where they wait 2 years then join them together.

MERGER IMMINENT. APRIL 9TH LAST STRIKEFORCE EVENT. TOURNAMENT CANCELED.

Holy cow!

this changes nothing unless Dana White grows some balls and puts together super fights. You now own Strikeforce why wouldnt you put Fedor vs some top UFC heavyweights and make HUGE $$$?!

Because we just seen Fedor not do so well in his last 2 fights. the UFC is making money, damaging Fedor's legacy ne more by putting him against a top HW who will most likely beat the slowly diminishing Fedor and make people say "see he never was good enough for the UFC" isn't a good idea. let Fedor fight Hendo he's not some oversized monster and it will be a really good fight. great for both of them. and they arn't merging yet so I think they're going to keep the promotions separate other then picking up some fighters to the UFC. they both have shows set for June 11'th I'm sure Strikeforce's won't stay there

OH MY ****ING GOD!

JACARE VS SILVA, GSP VS DIAZ, SO MANY MATCHUPS.

Jacare and Anderson are both Black House fighters. I don't think they will agree to fight. If they do I think Silva will win via KO (if he engages) but if it goes to the ground we could see an upset.

Apparently Paul Daley posted this quote on his Facebook account about the buyout. I don't use Facebook ( it's CIA operation) to verify.





"Paul Daley

Business as usual, what if i dont wanna fight for DANA WHITE/ZUFFA?......Dana white bans me for life from the UFC, Then buys STRIKEFORCE, and thinks im still gonna be EASY and fight on one of the most anticipated fights of the year (vs Diaz...)? Which will no doubt make ZUFFA/Dana White money.



Daley vs Diaz still on?.....Someone better holla at my manager real quick.

Quote:

Not sure what im gonna do right now, honestly...fight for the Strikeforce and be Strikeforce champ, put money in ZUFFA/Dana Whites pockets? Or fight here in the UK for BAMMA, who appreciate my brand, and have my loyal fans, family and media support me. For real."

Face Book is not a CIA operation, it is monitored by them. It is a bit of an academic distinction but FB is privately owned. Either way, if you are putting too much info on it you are making your own dossier. The same goes for all social networking sites but if you use them intelligently you shouldn't worry. They will only know as much as you are dumb enough to tell them. That said I won't be sad to see Daley go away. I never thought much of him.

I'm actually kind of hoping Showtime Cancels the deal with Strikeforce, it might force the UFC into merging.

WHHAAAAAATTT

took the words right outta my mouth

Josh Gross of ESPN reported on his twitter account that;



"The UFC/Strikeforce split is all about contracts. Once they're fulfilled with Showtime, I'm told a WEC type merger is planned."

MMA to become the next WWE

F*ck yes!!! Diaz vs GSP!! Overeem vs Cain!!! Melendez vs Edgar!! Hendo back in the UFC 205 picture!! holy sh!t this is great

jumping the gun a bit there. this will take years to fully materialise but yes it does look like eventually the SF and UFC talent will be fully integrated and we in turn will get to see some awesome matchups.

Does anybody think that this "quick deal" happened to come about within days of Hendo getting the title there? I dont think the UFC as a whole felt extremely threatened or anything but I don't think it was entirely coincidental either. If people who left the UFC went over to Strikeforce and became champions while still having tough fights, that does take away a little bit from the monopoly that the UFC is. All in all, this definitely could make things real interesting later this year. I thikn there WILL be intermingling between the 2 eventually...

I think it was based on the momentum that SF was gaining and the UFC perhaps felt it was their only direct threat, along with the likelihood that Dana and the Fertittas are aware of the undeniable talent under the SF banner.

Ya but you can't just buy anything you want, it has to be for sale first. I'm not very sure if this is good for MMA, good for matchups yes but the money involved seems to be getting out of hand.

What about fighters that do not wish to fight for UFC? Once their contracts run out where will they go? How are they going to make money? Could this be the rise of M-1 Global? They have a contract in place with showtime, i think first card is in late March. Zuffa won't be able to buy M-1 and if M-1 can break into the US market they will continue to grow and develop a nice following.

So long as they don't sell the company. I'm getting tired of these companies that could make it big if they stayed in the game for a decade, rather selling for a large sum of money. But honor is more important to me than money. To bad the world doesn't agree

so SF= the "new" WC

Wow this takes me back to March 26 2001 when WWE Purchased WCW, but why hasn't wwe hasn't purchased TNA, UFC has purchased several Rival Promotions it seems like they got more paper than WWE,

what are you talking about? WWE has baught out far more promotions than the UFC has, It's not even close, Vince pretty much baught every wrestling company in america out in the early 80's. and it would be a stupid idea for him to buy TNA, as then he would have no competion, which in wrestling is a big must have.

Well even though this really has nothing to do with the topic at hand a company has to agree to selling before anything can be done. TNA is a very small money maker right now and even so, they arn't gonna sell for more money.

He rattles off people who don't much care for him. At some point you gotta ask, "is it them, or is it me?"



Dana, it's you.



Your a douchnozzle.

WOAH! i just woke up to this news

Crazy

Actually thought for a second "am i still asleep and dreaming this?"

I think it's going to be business as usual........

BUT IT WOULD BE EPIC IF THERE WAS AN UFC VS STRIKEFORCE TOURMANENT

sad thing for the sport...:-(



it will be like it was with Pride and WEC...



Pride back then was maybe bigger than the UFC and they destroyed it to bring all fighters in the octagon..

WEC was the shit last year and they destroyed it and took all fighters...

now strikeforce put one show after another that were the shit.. and they will destroy them too... :-(

this just goes to proof that Strikeforce was never a minor league... they have great fighters, great shows and thats why Zuffa Bought them... Dana eat your words please...

I completely agree with you, but dana is so full of himself that he will never eat his words... dana is just a bully, no other words to describe him, look how he threated dan henderson when he left ufc, dan was talking still so nice about ufc while dana was badmouthing him all the time

If I could have one wish it would be that Zuffa made strikeforce into what Pride once was having shows mostly in Japan but also all over the world. Hell they can just rename strikeforce Pride for all I care I just want the pride days back! Oh a man can dream a man can dream...

your profile says you were born in the 90's? how much of Pride could you remember? I know alot of the Pride Era I was to young for n I was born the year b4 you. stop jockriding all the MMA fans you see on here talk about how good pride was.

Dude, there are these nifty devices that record the past called DVDs and the interweb where you can watch things that happened years or even decades before you were born. Dude, I shit you not, I have watched movies from the 1920's! Did I just blow your mind?

wow man really? I didn't know that wow thats probably how I've seen all the Pride stuff I've seen. But seeing things now is not like seeing them when they're going on.

As a fan happy and if I was a fighter I would be pissed.

also, very shocking news today

Cain vs Overeem : GSP vs Diaz : Melendez vs Edgar/Maynard : Souza vs Silva MAKE IT HAPPEN NOW DANA!

Anyone else think this is similar to what the WWE did after purchasing WCW?

They split the 2 rosters (creating Smackdown & Raw) so one org wouldnt be so flooded.

this is a bone chilling thought but a valid one all the same. lorenzo said in his last interview that their business model is largely based of WWE's.

Will Frank Shamrock still have a job?

Goddamn I hope not, I hope not. I do wish they will keep Pat though.

Will Frank Shamrock still have a job?

Scott bastard why did you do this, yuo had such a good company going on

I said this would happen months ago, is anyone really surprised? The next thing that will happen is the UFC will absorb StrikeForce and MOST of its fighters into the UFC, just like they did with the WEC.

I gotta say, if this happened in a couple of years and there was some forewarning I wouldn't be overly shocked but this came out of no where. I did not see this coming. There are going to be some great match ups as a result but I am not sure that it is a good thing overall. It is definitely bitter sweet.

This is the worst MMA related news i have heard since the fall of pride. Zuffa was losing ground rapidly to Strikeforce so they just buy them up, sigh. The sport of MMA have taken a huge hit with this and Strikeforce feel like a meaningless organization now.

finally someone who feel exacly the way i do. we've seen this before. the ufc has a new saying. if you can't beat em, buy em.

BloodyElbow.com is reporting that ESPN is FURIOUS that Dana didn't allow them to break the buyout story.



"Perception is reality. To a mainstream audience, major sports are covered by ESPN and in their local paper. They don't make big announcements on genre websites. And moves like this can damage their chances with an outlet like ESPN going forward. Sources say that officials with ESPN were furious that they weren't given this story. It would have been featured on SportsCenter, White front and center in a professional interview. Instead, we got the standard guerrilla style low budget MMA Fighting interview. Now some ESPN insiders are questioning the value of covering the UFC at all on their programming."



If this does turn out to be true, then F*CK ESPN! Like White has said many times, the UFC doesn't need the so called "mainstream media or channels"!



They are at best , Johny Come Latelies and for the most part relegate the UFC and MMA in general to 30 second blurbs and move on to the corporate advertising backed "PRO" sports!



Guys like Helwani have always been on the front lines and know, live and breathe the sport.



F*CK ESPN!

I couldn't possibly agree more.