As you probably already know, Strikeforce owner Scott Coker announced yesterday that Sarah Kaufman will face Takayo Hashi on Feb. 26 to crown a Strikeforce 135lb champion. Then they plan to begin a tournament in April to name a #1 contender for that title. He also said that they still plan to run a 145lb #1 contender tournament. So, is he keeping his promise? Well, kinda sorta. It's a compromise position because Coker really really wants to do tournaments but there are others who aren't thrilled about them. When Coker announced this last summer, the plan was to do a 135lb TITLE tournament. You'll notice the title isn't part of the tournament anymore. Coker used to promote the Vegas K-1 shows so he'd really like to do a Japanese style tournament. So what is a Japanese style tournament? Sometimes there are one day tournaments but the more common tournaments are held over a couple of shows. Let's say there are eight fighters in the tournament. The first round is on one show. The semi finals are on the next show and the final is on the third show. Apparently the plan for this tournament is to run one match at a time. So that means it will take the better part of a year to run a single tournament. And that assumes that there will be a women's match on each show. So what happened? There was a lot of disagreement within Strikeforce to even do a tournament and the original plan was to farm out the title tournament to FCF. So there was concern about logistical issues. Coker told them to get over it. And then there is Showtime. You may recall that the Kaufman/Hayashi fight was supposed to be on the Nov. 20 show. It appears now that Showtime nixed the fight because Kerry Vera vs Kim Couture was already on that show. It appears that they don't want more than one women's fight on any given show. So Coker had to compromise. Well, he could have called them out but that's not his style. Just keep in mind that other than the winner, none of the fighters in the upcoming FCF tournament are eligible for the Strikeforce tournament. We'll see how that goes over. And I'd also like to know where he's going to find enough fighters for a 145lb tournament. Look at the problems that Erin Toughill is having finding an opponent for Jan. 30. Someone is going to show me that there are enough fighters for that particular tournament. Some have already tried unsuccessfully. My problem with running this or any other tournament over a protracted time period is fans have notoriously short memories. And tournaments should be promoted as special events. How is one tournament match on a larger show a special event? If the bulk of one show is devoted to the first round of the tournament, that creates fan excitement. I don't see this method creating that kind of anticipation.
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