A sneaky tactic that Strikeforce is considering with their upcoming tournaments

f you thought the debate over “the champion’s clause” was a big issue in negotiations between Fedor and Strikeforce, wait until Strikeforce negotiates with top-level talent for upcoming ‘tournaments’ they want to promote.

During a Sherdog radio interview on Monday, Strikeforce boss Scott Coker was asked why the promotion went ahead with a Middleweight title fight between Tim Kennedy & Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza as opposed to a tournament. Mr. Coker said that ‘his team’ decided that it would be better to have a title fight first as opposed to having a tournament while leaving the MIddleweight belt vacant. He noted that the promotion plans an 8-man Middleweight tournament, with the opening round in October and then a one-night tournament in December. The winner of the 8/21 Houston fight will face the December tournament winner in a title fight at the end of January.

However, the big takeaway from the Sherdog interview is that Scott talked about the idea of ‘tournament titles.’ It was brought up in a larger context as to whether or not it was a good idea for Strikeforce to have titles and if they were important. Mr. Coker said that titles were important.

In a very clever way, Strikeforce using ‘tournament titles’ will allow them to double-down on the ‘champion’s clause’ and, in essence, guarantee that tournament winners and promotional champions will have to face each other. It’s like taking the old PRIDE format where you had GP titles and the winner would face the champion, but in this scenario you apply the champion’s clause and legally try to force the fight to happen.

But wait, there’s more.

Full Article: http://www.fightopinion.com/2010/07/21/strikeforce-tournaments/#more-7771

i'm guessing the Bellator tourney winners have the same clause.

I mean the point of the tourney is to have the winner fight the champion. Sneaky? No. Logical is more like it.

Wow, Strikeforce sure are sneeky and underhanded! Even if this is pretty much lock step with MMA promotion world wide, since they're not UFC, sneeky bastards!

Not really sneaky as long as the fighters know what they are getting into. That's why i can't really get on the UFC for making contracts completely fuck-proof to them yet have thousands of ways to fuck the fighter. If UFC arent putting those terms in tiny, blurry, unreadable text then you can't bitch about it.

The longer SF is afloat, the more you'll see their fighters get hog tied like they are in the UFC..it will get harder and harder to leave them on a winning note once all the EliteXC and M-1 refugees are cleared. While losing Jake Shields is not really a blow considering Jake Shields could not draw a stick figure it can't become a trend to lose your top fighters while they are on a winning streak.