Ground and Pound - Fightnews

You can learn a lot from the 1988 film, "Cocktail."

In it, a young man of virtue named Brian Flanagan is taken under the arm of his boss and best friend - Douglas Coughlin. Coughlin is a self-professed logical negativist who claims to have flourished in the last part of the 20th Century and propounded a set of laws the world generally ignores, to its detriment.

"Coughlin's Law - Bury the dead. They stink up the place."

Say there's a free-preview weekend on Showtime to air an MMA event and that event lands only 344,000 viewers. It would seem a little suspect to call it a success, would it not?

Far be it for me to tell Dana White and the powers that be at Forza LLC how to spend their money. And I almost certainly wouldn't meddle in the affairs of how they make their money. But it occurred to me, as it should have occurred to most, that last weekend's series of Strikeforce related events has the entire promotion in an odd "no man's land" that isn't productive to the fighters or television viewers anymore.

On Jan. 6, the California State Athletic Commission handed out a suspension to Strikeforce women's featherweight champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos due to failing a drug test. The news not only put the career arc for the 145-pound starlet in question, it opened up criticism and questioning directed at her entire resume of success - and rightfully so.

The storm of chaos, surrounding potentially the most destructive female mixed martial artist ever, had people in certain avenues of MMA wondering whether the women's 145-pound weight class could and should survive. Would women's MMA be able to make it? How crushing of a blow was this to the overall product? All questions that will be answered in time without the help and star power of Santos.

Perhaps it's not fair to suggest that women's MMA would be in a better place if it were under the UFC umbrella but one can easily speculate that the future of the sport is no longer helped by it's biggest star and potentially not by the promotion she still competes in. Strikeforce alone cannot stave off the lingering skepticism fans might have towards the sport. They certainly can't help something grow if they only show eight women's bouts a year, don't build up and hype the fighters and the best female athlete has to deal with whispers of being called a "cheat."

Strikeforce is no longer the answer to the question. And I'm not even really sure what the question is anymore. All of this nonsense took place before the actual event.

There's only so many things you can really, truly say about the Strikeforce event that featured middleweight champion Luke Rockhold against middleweight newcomer Keith Jardine. I find I'm nearly at a loss for words when I recall the night's festivities but before I dive into that, let's take a little math lesson.

If I told you that most Strikeforce events were in roughly 18 million homes and that last Saturday's event raked in 344,000 viewers, you might assume it did fairly decent. You might be off. Way off.

The 344,000 put it at eighth on a list of nine Strikeforce events since 2011 with regards to viewership. Conversely, the most recent event, "Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal," averaged 460,000 viewers in December. Not a huge difference, right?

But here's the caveat - "Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine" was available in 60 million homes as part of the free-preview weekend that Showtime was putting on. That means that over three times as many eyes had a chance to watch the event and it still finished under 350,000 viewers. If that's not the coup de grace meant for Strikeforce, I'm not really sure what anyone was waiting for.

Those numbers wouldn't mean as much to me if the product was special and people had missed out on a groundbreaking event that transcends previous notions of what Strikeforce is all about. But the card itself was relatively awful.

For starters, the main event was a disgusting pairing between one of the sports brightest stars in champion Luke Rockhold and Keith Jardine, a man fallen on hard times looking to make a name for himself and experience a rebirth at middleweight. And that's fine. I'm all for feel good stories but not when the subject of said story is coming off of a draw and then thrown into a title fight at a weight class he had never competed in. Call me crazy. That makes zero sense.

If the division is that weak, why aren't the fighters being moved to the UFC? Oh, that's right - because the UFC plans to use Strikeforce in a way that no one currently understands and information about said usage isn't readily available to those that care.

But I digress, Keith Jardine is an amazing fighter that was once near the upper crest of the 205-pound division in the UFC. He had beaten Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin. His herky-jerky motions and awkward fighting style were much talked about weapons that acted more like a pellet gun than a howitzer in the cage. As much of a following as Jardine had built and as much as he might truly believe he had earned that title shot - he hadn't. And numbers don't really lie. Plenty of viewers didn't care to see the fiasco anyways.

It was the first Strikeforce event of 2012 and it felt less like a Zuffa-run show than it ever has. It felt like Bob Arum was doing the match-making for the event. Did he hire the horrible officiating too? Because for something that was supposed to mark the 2012 debut and continuation of a product, this event felt more like a lame duck showcase than ever before and I'm having a hard time dealing with that.

There was a point, right at the end of the King Mo fight with Lorenz Larkin, where I looked at my father, grinned, threw my arms in the air and walked away. As I was doing so, I uttered the words - "What's the point, anymore? I don't get it. I just don't get it. This is dumb."

To put that outburst in perspective - I had just witnessed Lawal punch Larkin in the head 15 consecutive times before referee Kim Winslow (who is tragically horrible at her job) stepped in to save Larkin from additional punishment. As if the 15 shots in a row weren't damaging enough. These sort of things make me cringe. In a sport so concerned with fighter safety, Winslow's late stoppage was inexcusible. You can't rationally justify letting a man take that kind of unanswered punishment. You just can't.

If that wasn't bad enough, Lawal was forced to sit through an interview which speculated he might be in line for the vacant Strikeforce light heavyweight title. The title that no one currently has because the biggest star in the division jumped ship to the UFC. Yes, King Mo is thrilled about competing for a belt that no one wants. He might even tell you as much on camera. But don't think for a second that he wouldn't enjoy the bright lights and honest competition that awaits him in the UFC. That would be naive.

So I ask it again - "What's the point, anymore?"

Because I sincerely don't understand how Strikeforce continuing to operate under it's current premise is beneficial to the MMA landscape, to it's fighters and to fans that pay for Showtime.

The WEC was a successfully entertaining promotion that pitted the best against the best and it didn't survive the purchase of Zuffa - even though it had all the talent, the best fights and the hardcore fans behind it. How can Strikeforce continue to breath precious air when it should have the plug pulled on it as soon as possible?

Luke Rockhold and Gilbert Melendez will continue to face less-than-stellar opposition. The heavyweight division will be dismembered. Vacant titles will be filled. The women's talent will have to either rise to the top or vanish - and that's assuming they get the promotional hype and television time to show off their skills for an employer that doesn't hold them or their ilk in the highest regard.

Brian Flanagan, fictional and all, once taught me a valuable lesson.

"Everything ends badly, otherwise it would never end."

I think it's time to bury the dead. Someone is going to have to let me know when this whole Strikeforce charade comes to an end. Because chances are that I won't be watching.