ESPN Mixed Martial Arts

COLUMBUS -- Heading into the fight, Strikeforce’s women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate said that wrestling trumps judo nine out of 10 times. She was speaking from experience, and experience also happened to be an x-factor against an opponent with only two minutes, 18 seconds of cage time. Experience was also supposed to trump a green challenger.

Funny how the fight game works.

By the time it was over, Ronda Rousey proved more than ready to bust theories, and if need be, the more experienced fighter’s arm. In what was being hailed as the biggest women’s MMA event since Gina Carano versus Cristiane Santos, Rousey emerged as a star in just her fifth fight, while proving that she could back up the audacity of her prefight talk.

Rousey submitted Tate the same way she did her previous four opponents -- via a first-round armbar. And, though she more than doubled her total time in the cage this time out, it was again the judo that delivered her to the moment. Rousey used a brilliant hip toss to get Tate down, transitioned to mount, and then punched away until she could pry the arm away to set up her signature submission. The crowd at Nationwide Arena cringed as she hyper-extended the limb into an unnatural position, torquing it for the tap. It finally came at the 4:36 mark of the first round.

And even though you’d have trouble finding a list of big viable challenges for Rousey right this second, she became the future of women’s MMA with a clear-cut challenge ahead in Sarah Kaufman, who won an equally memorable back-and-forth war with Alexis Davis. With Santos’ suspension, the retirement of Carano and the state of women’s MMA in flux, this played out as the best-case scenario for Strikeforce.

Or as a case of perseverance, to hear Strikeforce president Scott Coker tell it.

“Strikeforce has been supportive of female mixed martial arts since 2006 when we started,” he said during the postfight news conference. “Gina Carano versus Elaina Maxwell in December of ’06 was the first [female MMA] fight that was licensed in the state of California. We’ve always believed in female martial arts fighting. Before that we were a kickboxing league.

“We had many great fights in the female division and, personally, for myself, I believe these ladies that grew up in a martial arts school, or in a wrestling program, they should always be allowed to compete. And I think tonight justifies those feelings of the past. And we talk about fighting at the highest level, I think tonight we saw it. We had four amazing athletes fighting in the female division at the highest level. And we’re going to continue moving forward. I think a star was born tonight, and it’s onward and forward for the female division.”

Afterward, Rousey dedicated her new 135-pound title to her late father. Yet when asked if she could quash her beef with Tate, which reached a crescendo at the weigh-ins when Rousey headbutted Tate, she chose not to. In regard to the armbar that looked like it did some serious damage, she said, “I don’t feel bad about it,” which sent the crowd into raptures. Part of the reason Rousey got a title shot in the first place was by telling it like it is and causing waves in the media. She wasn’t about to back down after achieving her goal as being a champion at 25 years old.

And it looked like she might end the fight as early with an initial armbar attempt.

“I didn’t feel like I really had it,” she said. “The second [armbar attempt], I knew for sure I could get it, and that’s why I abandoned the dominant position. The first one I just kind of fell into it; it didn’t feel that secure.”

Now the new champion can set her sights on former champion Kaufman, who has contended all along that it’s still her belt. Just as you’d expect, she already thinks she spots a weakness in Rousey’s game.

“I thought overall that Ronda looked good,” Kaufman said. “There’s definitely something’s that she doesn’t like that I do really well. It’s going to present a really interesting fight and a really good fight for the fans and for myself as well.”

Asked to elaborate, she added, “clearly I like to strike ... and based on my face, I also like to get hit. But Ronda hasn’t been challenged by somebody who can strike like I am able to strike.”

It was a good night for women’s MMA, and everybody involved knew it. The women stole the show in Columbus, and a star was born in Ronda Rousey.

Cung Le attempted to beat Wanderlei Silva at UFC 139 with an unlikely game plan -- that of fighting like Cung Le.

It nearly worked. Le tried to kick Silva’s liver through his spine, but in the end he was downed with a barrage of strikes that left his nose in crescent form. The scrap was good enough to be a candidate for "fight of the year" but was unfortunate enough to be only the third-most exciting bout of the night. That was the same evening Michael Chandler won a back-and-forth battle with lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez in Bellator, and Dan Henderson outlasted Mauricio Rua in a five-round grind.

But the immediate reports back seem to be that Strikeforce fighters like Le are faring pretty well in the UFC. These were supposed to be the B models, slogging it out in a nice regional show. They weren’t supposed to be able to compete with the elite of the world. At least that’s what we heard from carnival barkers whenever somebody had the audacity to compare a Strikeforce fighter with a UFC fighter.

Yet, since the Zuffa purchase of Strikeforce and the great integration, it looks like Strikeforce had its share of equals and betters. This weekend Nick Diaz will fight for the interim welterweight belt against Carlos Condit after belting B.J. Penn at UFC 137. Win it, and he gets his long-awaited shot at Georges St. Pierre. Meanwhile, Fabricio Werdum takes on Roy Nelson in a fight with very loose title connections in the heavyweight division. Should Diaz and Werdum win -- and Vegas thinks they should -- it will continue a trend that makes Scott Coker look vindicated for something deep inside that could use some vindication. It also diversifies things for matchmaker Joe Silva.

Last weekend, Lavar Johnson scored a knockout of the night against Joey Beltran in Johnson's UFC debut. Former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Henderson came back and beat Rua and is now patiently waiting in line for the Jon Jones-Rashad Evans winner. Strikeforce titlist and linear champion Alistair Overeem kicked Brock Lesnar into retirement, and next faces Junior dos Santos for the UFC heavyweight strap. Other Strikeforce fighters (not named Gilbert Melendez) are making their way from the hexagon to the Octagon, too. In fact, just about anybody who’s anybody in the clearance of Strikeforce heavyweights will soon be in the UFC: Antonio Silva, Chad Griggs, Daniel Cormier, Josh Barnett, et al.

The floodgates are open.

Granted, some of the Strikeforce fighters coming over are UFC retreads. But in the early returns the worst you can say is that Jake Shields, who jumped ship to the UFC before the acquisition, hasn’t lived up to billing. Most Strikeforce fighters are having a happier time of it than when the UFC/Pride partition came down, and the Pride fighters faltered. Same with the WEC, given the potential of Condit and Ben Henderson. Yet most of the WEC’s talent competed in the bantamweight and featherweight divisions, which didn’t exist in the UFC until the beginning of 2011, so it’s hard to make a full spectrum comparison.

But think about it -- in mid-to-late 2012, as many as three reigning Strikeforce champions could be wearing UFC gold (Diaz, Henderson and Overeem). If Melendez was ever released from exile, he could challenge for the lightweight belt, too.

What does it all mean? Maybe nothing. Or maybe it’s something that we’ve always suspected and debated about. While the best fighters in the world are generally thought to be in the UFC at all times, there are fighters dying for the chance to be brought in for no other reason than to prove them wrong.

And knowing just how short the fight society’s attention span can be, the UFC is only too happy to be wrong when they do.

SAN DIEGO -- Gilbert Melendez likely won’t get the credit he deserves for an impressive, well-rounded performance against Jorge Masvidal.

He should. But from the general masses, he probably won’t.

Melendez (20-2) earned a hard-fought unanimous decision over Masvidal (22-7) at Strikeforce: Melendez versus Masvidal on Saturday, displaying many of the characteristics that have earned him such high regard among the mixed martial arts community along the way.

He landed combinations with regularity against one of the more elusive men in the 155-pound division. His cardio kept up with what was an absolute frenetic pace for 25 minutes. He made adjustments throughout the fight when necessary and rarely lost control. Two of the three judges awarded him every round.

But when you are the face of a promotion that is widely considered second-tier to the UFC, expectations change. Immediately following the five-round fight, criticism of Melendez’s performance surfaced.

Regardless of who the opponent is or how he matches up stylistically, Melendez is expected to dominate. Anything short of that seems to be a disappointment to some.

“They are pretty ignorant if that’s what they think,” Melendez told ESPN.com. “But a lot of people think that.

“You’ve got to be able to beat every kind of style out there. Jorge happens to be one of the tougher matchups for me. He’s another great sprawl and brawler; another great striker. The fact I can beat a guy of that caliber is a big win for me.”

Unfortunately for the California-based fighter, this set of expectations on him likely won’t change in the near future.

Unlike other Strikeforce champions such as teammate Nick Diaz, Alistair Overeem and Dan Henderson, Melendez is not bound for the UFC, despite the fact both promotions are owned by the same company.

That much became clear earlier this week when it was announced Strikeforce had renewed its deal with Showtime for 2012 and would not be absorbed into the UFC as many had speculated.

That means that, for now, the widely consensus No. 2 lightweight in the world will not meet the UFC champion any time soon. In his excitement after the decision over Masvidal was read, Melendez seemed to forget this and called for the UFC titleholder to meet him in Strikeforce.

By the time he reached the postfight news conference, he was ready to admit that likely isn’t an option.

“Maybe I was a little pumped after the fight,” Melendez said. “I’m happy to be a part of Strikeforce and Showtime. I’ve got to have faith they will do what’s great for me. [UFC president] Dana [White] told me they will do what’s great for my career.”

One inconvenient fact that must be pointed out is that no one currently on the Strikeforce lightweight roster is deserving of a shot against Melendez.

Caros Fodor (7-1) and K.J. Noons (11-4) were each impressive in wins of their own Saturday, but neither have the credentials to warrant a title shot. The majority of the 27-year-old Fodor’s wins have come against unproven talent on smaller shows. Noons is just 1-2 in his last three fights.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker failed to name names at the postfight conference, but shrugged off concern on whether or not the promotion would find a suitable challenge for Melendez in his next fight.

“There are plenty of fighters out there,” Coker said. “We’re going to keep building our league. Gilbert is one of the cornerstones of Strikeforce, so I’m happy he’s with us and going to stay with us. We’re going to continue getting him great fights.”

An audience of more than 16,000 was on-hand for UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar’s most recent title defense at the Toyota Center in Houston earlier this year.

Although official attendance numbers were not immediately available on Saturday’s event, it was hard not to notice the empty seats that made up the entire upper concourse of the Valley View Casino Center in Melendez's home state.

The question of whether or not Melendez truly is the best lightweight in the world, as he believes he is, can’t be answered while he’s still in Strikeforce. But he has a case for that title -- one that should be helped, not hurt, by this latest performance.

“[The 155-pound weight class] is looking for someone to claim the throne,” Melendez said. “I’m trying to do that.”

Dana White alluded to the new Strikeforce/Showtime deal in the past couple of weeks with a sense of giddiness. He talked about it like it would knock our socks off just as soon as he was finally able to reveal the nature of the thing. This sort of teasing made for fun gossip.

Well, yesterday, along with Strikeforce’s Scott Coker and Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza, he finally dished what’s been burbling behind the scenes between a Ken Herschman-less Showtime and the UFC and Strikeforce and all the contents therein.

What was it? Let’s just say it was the right kind of stuff to make our socks remain snug on our feet.

The gist was this: Strikeforce lives. Nobody’s absorbing anything. There will be six to eight Strikeforce events airing on Showtime in 2012, to go along with the fat bank of 32 UFC events that, if slapped on a two-page spread, would look like a United Airlines destination map. This kicks off Jan. 7 with a middleweight title tilt between Luke Rockhold and Keith Jardine. As for the belt vacancies in other weight classes? You’ll have to stay tuned.

Strikeforce not only lives, but it will operate as a non-feeder league. Viable on its own. A second port for the industry’s best. The women’s division will remain intact (in fact, will be glorified). Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, Cristiane Santos, Gina Carano (presumably) -- these are the network stars. And the rest of Strikeforce will stay pursuant of the top global talent, so long as you cut a reasonably lean figure.

That’s because the heavyweight division will be disbanded after Josh Barnett and Daniel Cormier sign off on the heavyweight grand prix, and of all the participants to that tournament, none of them will assuredly graduate to the UFC (though some surely will). Rather, the Barnett/Cormier winner will have one more fight in the heavyweight division, a cryptic prelude to something up somebody’s sleeve. Otherwise, there was no satisfactory answer as to why the heavyweight division will be phased out. Yet the hunch is that the UFC will deepen its heavyweight division by integrating its strongest pieces. Let’s face it, even if the Strikeforce/UFC heavies are consolidated, it’s a division that still lacks depth. But it’ll be a lot deeper than it is now.

As for lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez? He remains an island. A totally stoked, rich, tourist-unfriendly island just off the coast of the archipelago islands known as the Coveted Elite. Who will he face? Jorge Masvidal this weekend, then some opponents who, we are assured, will keep him happy for something like forever. The details on Melendez grow vague from there so, as is the common refrain from Dana White, “we’ll have to see what happens.”

The light heavyweight division -- arguably the strongest in Strikeforce with the most thievable pieces -- will rev along as is. That means Gegard Mousasi, Rafael Cavalcante, Muhammed Lawal and Ovince St. Preux are still the bedrock. Lorenz Larkin will be knocking. This is the lushest patch in the Strikeforce garden.

And all the rest is still being determined. The bottom line is there will be 40 weekends in 2012 with Zuffa cards. This is good news for MMA volumists, those who can’t get enough. This is horrific news for Sean Shelby, who as a matchmaker in both organizations will spend the heft of 2012 staring out an airplane window wondering about home.

But in the end, the news was that Strikeforce will go on, and Showtime will harbor it.

As for all the speculative matchmaking between Strikeforce’s hemmed-in best and those in the UFC? Not going to happen, which couldn’t help but make these new revelations a little bittersweet.

Somewhere between the process of reinvention, the many eulogies being read over his relevancy, and being cut from the UFC, Keith Jardine must have rubbed a talisman. Not only does he get a short notice fight against heavily favored Gegard Mousasi in Strikeforce (lucky timing) and end up in a fortunate draw (lucky point deduction), but now he’s getting a title shot against Luke Rockhold for the middleweight strap (lucky circumstances) in his middleweight debut.

So much for the pretending to know what’s going on in the Strikeforce war room.

As MMAFighting.com first reported, the “Dean of Mean” will fight Rockhold for the 185-pound strap on Jan. 7 instead of his Greg Jackson teammate, Tim Kennedy, who had to refuse the bout due to an undisclosed injury. Injuries happen, but this is a confusing choice. Somewhere, former champion Ronaldo Souza is looking up the Portuguese to English translation of “meritocracy.” He and Rockhold engaged in a back-and-forth war back in September that had rematch written all over it. Only hitch in the idea was Kennedy, who had dutifully bided his time for a title shot while walking through Melvin Manhoef and Robbie Lawler to get it.

Yet with Kennedy hurt, Strikeforce dialed Jardine. Maybe they didn’t have long distance on their phone. Not to take anything away from Jardine’s star power and his recent swing of wins (and draws) -- he’s 2-1-1 since being cut from the UFC -- but somebody’s getting jobbed. Maybe Paul Daley would have been up for the task? Not having to cut to 170 pounds might have sounded like sweet music to him, especially with the holidays and all that figgy pudding.

Let’s hope it’s more complicated than we know. Maybe Souza was offered but couldn’t accept the fight for his own set of reasons (such as five week’s notice), though he recently tweeted something that tests such a theory (“Still waiting on Strikeforce to decide when I fight again, they always keep me on the side waiting for too long”).

So how did Jardine, who lost five in a row between the spring of 2009 through the fall of 2010, hurdle “Jacare” for the shot?

Could be anything.

Could be that there’s no depth in the middleweight ranks and Jardine at least is a name, reinvented as a middleweight. Could be that the idea is to bring Rockhold along slowly. Could be that Kennedy suggested to Scott Coker that Jardine stand in for him. Could be that Strikeforce had an unyielding date locked down at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino that only Jardine was open for on that notice. If that’s the case, it would seem like poor planning, even if the future of Strikeforce is unfurling in a corner of Zuffa’s offices at warp speeds.

It could be that Souza didn’t want to play back five rounds of hell with Rockhold, or vice-versa, or that somebody threw a dart at the wall and hit Jardine’s grazing beard. Who knows.

But it looks funny. It’s a fight that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to the usual title defense/challenger model in MMA. In boxing, maybe. But not in MMA. Either way, Jardine is lucky enough to be at the point -- and the point -- of contention. And, realistically, a win in January makes a strange-looking situation in early December look ... less strange.

CINCINNATI -- It’s the deepest card in Strikeforce’s history, and yet it’s one of the stranger atmospheres you’ll find leading up to an event. For starters, the Nick Diaz/Carlos Condit/Georges St. Pierre drama is playing out at the same time, as is the announcement that Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem have agreed to a colossal heavyweight battle in a week that colossal heavyweight battles were supposed to belong to Strikeforce. These things don’t help.

In fact, those two storylines have sort of exhausted the hype quotient for the week. The mood matches the rain and drizzle in Cincinnati.

But the main reason for the strangeness is that Strikeforce, as a brand, is sort of teetering on the brink of disappearing. Everybody knows this, and it’s become elephant in the room. No microphones made their way around the small media contingency at the prefight newser today, and none were needed. Scott Coker asked more questions of the fighters in attendance than the press. If he didn’t have to, he would have just as happily skipped opening things to the floor where dreaded topics might be brought up. In the end, they weren’t, because most of the media is to the point where they know he has no answers (and if he does, he isn’t likely to share them).

Regardless of everything surrounding the card, the fights themselves remain compelling. The three primary bouts have the same situational feel -- American wrestlers against guys who are good-to-excellent in other areas (read: non-wrestlers). It’s easy to pick out the biases. People who see wrestling as an always playable trump card are picking Josh Barnett over Sergei Kharitonov, Daniel Cormier to upset Antonio Silva, and Muhammed Lawal over Roger Gracie. The sight of wrestlers neutralizing talented jiu-jitsu players and great kickboxers has become all too common over the years. It’s easy to imagine Barnett taking Kharitonov down, just as he did Brett Rogers, and keeping things there. And keeping things there. And possibly pounding him out while he’s keeping him there.

Listening to Barnett, you know he’s weary of the Russian’s hands, and he promises the fight won’t go the distance. “I know he’s going to bring a never say die attitude, and we’re going in there with our shields and coming out either on them or on our own two feet,” he said. “So, it’ll be a good tussle. But being the type of fighters we are, I think we’re going to finish one another within that three-round limit. I don’t think there’s going to be any extra rounds, no decisions here.”

As Barnett also mentioned, it could be a main event-worthy scrap. But the fight that could steal the show is between middleweight champion Ronaldo Souza and Luke Rockhold. This is wizard jiu-jitsu player against the card’s sleeper.

“I think I’ve got the best jiu-jitsu credentials that Jacare’s ever fought,” Rockhold told ESPN.com. “My jiu-jitsu’s no slouch. I thought that jiu-jitsu was going to be my career for a long time. I thought I was going to be the best guy in the world, but I realized real quick that if you want to be the best at something, you can’t be the best at everything. And when I switched over [to MMA], I decided to be the best MMA fighter I could be, not the best jiu-jitsu guy.”

Besides that, you’ve got former light heavyweight champion Rafael Cavalcante on the undercard, as well as Evangelista Santos and Mike Kyle. Pat Healy is fighting Maximo Blanco on the fifth main card fight. It’s the deepest Strikeforce card ever, and for whatever reason, its timing couldn’t be worse.

Keeping it real

To further voice the general air of preoccupation, just turn to Muhammed Lawal.

“I don’t even know what to say; I’m just ready to fight on Saturday,” he said. “I was hoping for more people out here, more media and more questions, but I guess you guys don’t care about Strikeforce. Me and Roger are going to put on a good fight; it’s going to be a good card, and I think people are going to miss out on it, because everybody is worried about other issues instead of the fights this weekend. I’m just being real.”

Keeping it even realer

Want to be real? How about Cormier on his expectations against Silva?

“I’m excited for the fight,” he said. “Josh [Barnett] said that [he] and Sergei [Kharitonov] are going to finish each other. Just to put it out there, I’m fine to win a decision. Is that OK?”

Of course it is, but if Cormier wins a decision, we can almost guess at the type of fight it will be -- and that sort of forward-thinking doesn’t make it sound as fun.

Kharitonov, the Russian wrestler stifler

Kharitonov made his game plan clear for Barnett.

“I’m going to try and have a stand-up fight," Kharitonov told ESPN.com. "I’m going to try and put on a good defense against getting taken down, and that’s my main strategy,” he said. “I’m ready for anything. If it’s on the ground, or if it’s a stand-up fight, wherever it is, I’m ready.” (Subtext? I’d really, really like to knock him out on the feet).

From Russia with fists

More Cormier, this time about him and King Mo knowing what time it is when it comes to wrestling and fighting.

“We fought thousands and thousands of times,” he said. “In wrestling competitions, and not only wrestling but fighting Russians over there [in Russia]. We’d get into actual fistfights when we’d go wrestle Russians. You can find mine on YouTube, and Mo is fighting the guy right before on YouTube; we’ve had a thousand fights.”

Wonder if he’s had any experience fighting behemoth Brazilians?

Initially, Daniel Cormier wasn’t deemed attractive enough to receive one of the eight invitations to Strikeforce’s Heavyweight GP. The consensus was that he was too green and had too many blemishes in his standup game to warrant a ticket to the big dance.

Cormier, undefeated in the cage at 8-0, is a highly skilled wrestler who was adept at taking an opponent to the ground and control him. But his striking was lacking, both offensively and defensively. Too often, Cormier appeared indecisive on his feet. He threw punches from wide, awkward angles, his head wasn’t always moving and footwork could oftentimes be an afterthought.

A flaw in just one of those standup techniques can prove disastrous against a top-tier Strikeforce heavyweight. Unfortunately for Cormier, he was struggling with all of those aspects. So, he began devoting extra attention to his standup game at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif. The move immediately paid off when Cormier stepped in the cage June 18 against veteran Jeff Monson.

Cormier consistently moved his head, he never stopped moving his feet and there was the jab that regularly hit its mark. The former United States Olympic wrestler even showcased a crisp overhand right that found Monson’s chin on a few occasions.

It was an impressive performance by Cormier, who earned a unanimous decision win. More importantly, Cormier proved that he was no longer a one-trick pony.

Cormier is now ready for Strikeforce’s elite. And he won’t have to wait long to prove he can compete against top heavyweights. In July, Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem was removed from the Grand Prix tournament due to a scheduling conflict; he’d later be released outright from the promotion.

Cormier was offered the chance to replace Overeem. He immediately accepted and is set to face Antonio Silva on Saturday night (Showtime, 10 ET) in Cincinnati.

“He was the first person under consideration [to replace Overeem],” Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker said. “He had a great performance against a seasoned veteran like Monson.

“And in that fight, his standup, he looked like a kickboxer actually and hardly wrestled at all. He showed he had the standup ability to take it to the next level.”

Cormier will sacrifice a ton of experience to Silva, but the standup improvement he has shown in this camp has his AKA teammates confident their guy will be successful Saturday night and throughout the tournament.

“Daniel has an amazing wrestling background,” UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez told ESPN.com. “But he’s also one of those guys who picked up this sport very quickly. He is definitely going to go out there and impress a lot of people.

“He’s had a great training camp. There’s no doubt in my mind that he is going to win the tournament.”

“

He's had a great training camp. There's no doubt in my mind that he is going to win the tournament.

” -- Cain Velasquez, on Daniel Cormier's growth as a fighter, and future success in the Strikeforce GP

While Cormier is comfortable standing these days, if things aren’t going the way he’d like against Silva, expect him to turn quickly to his bread-and-butter skill: wrestling.

There is nothing like wrestling to turn a fight in Cormier’s favor. And he intends to give Silva (16-2) a steady dose of it. Still, he has no plans of completely abandoning the newly acquired skills he’s come to believe in recently. His jab, head movement, footwork and overhand right will play a significant role in this fight.

“I’m going to be quicker than he is, more athletic, more agile,” Cormier said. “He’s bigger, stronger, more experienced; he’s got the standup advantage.

“He’s got the jiu-jitsu advantage. That’s fine. But the most dominant skill in MMA lately has been wrestling. And there is no bigger gap between skill sets in my wrestling over his wrestling. That will keep me in the fight if that’s the path I take.”

Cormier vows to pressure Silva throughout the fight, that’s where his improved jab and footwork will come in handy. It allows him to transition from standup to takedown much easier.

Silva will face a new-look Cormier.

“I’m going to push the pace on him,” Cormier said. “I’m going to get in his face, and I’m going to take him places he hasn’t been so far.

“I’ve got to make him uncomfortable. And because of the way I fight, I have the ability to do all those things.”

There seems to be a master plan with Strikeforce that everybody outside of the fans, the media, Dana White, the UFC, Scott Coker and celestial governing bodies above are not totally in on. Otherwise a plan to do something with Nick Diaz’s vacated welterweight belt -- which was deserted back in June as he left in pursuit of Georges St. Pierre's gold -- would have been in place going into this past Saturday.

Instead we are told from Coker that this is something that he and a faceless group of confreres need to circle back around to, even after his remaining top welterweights just fought on one card. Why wasn’t he circling around to it beforehand to help generate buzz on guys like Tarec Saffiedine and Tyron Woodley, who could use the boost? The stakes could have been made to help build momentum going forward. Instead, both fighters spoke afterward of a potential rematch in hopeful tones, and everybody else was left to speculate. This made for some awkward postfight interviews.

Which brings things around to the heavyweight GP, which got off to a big start in February but is now fizzling just as it should be getting hot. Erstwhile champion Alistair Overeem was removed from the brackets, and now the tournament -- which resumes on Sept. 10 in Cincinnati -- has a shrinking, almost bereft feel to it.

That’s really not ideal. When Overeem was ousted by Zuffa for insubordination (presumably) and other acts, Coker should have gone into emergency repair mode. The first thing they should have done was declare that Daniel Cormier was stepping in (which they did), and that the winner of the tournament would become the new heavyweight champion (which they didn’t).

Granted, September is still a month away and news of Overeem’s dismissal came in on Friday, so Strikeforce could still make this the case and promote the event as such. As it stands right now, nobody is sure and that’s where we are left to idle. That’s two belts in Strikeforce that are in limbo, and that makes you wonder if -- and how soon -- others will follow. In a game that’s centered on ability to shape hype and sell it, this seems like a strange way to do business.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. – With last night’s news of Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem’s release, you have to wonder about the timing. Inside MMA broke the news just 24 hours before one of the promotion’s most intriguing match-ups in Fedor Emelianenko and Dan Henderson, which is -- depending on if you are a conspiracy theorist or not -- either mere coincidence or motivated coincidence.

The reason for Overeem’s sudden boot? Zuffa officials aren’t saying, but one assumes insubordination, defiance and attitude. These are not the hallmarks of a Zuffa champion -- titles are not necessarily meant to be entitlements.

It’s a lot to get used to in a hurry. Overeem was considered one of the favorites to win the Strikeforce heavyweight GP just a couple of weeks ago before things started going south. He was removed from the grand prix with a sort of injury/bad timing parlay, which he said would prevent him from competing in the semifinals on Sept. 10. This bummed just about everybody out. Then he started talking about boxing Vitali Klitschko, which had a madcap flavor to it, just before signing on for a Glory World Series event in October days later. The sum of these parts added up to something like a slap in Zuffa’s face.

If there’s one constant in Overeem’s career it’s that he likes to do it his way, and he likes to stray. Bottom line is, Zuffa didn’t like the direction he was straying, and now he’s gone.

And what they played, was a masquerade

Did you catch the strangely inappropriate comment that Scott Coker made to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani when asked why Marloes Coenen wasn’t at the prefight news conference? “I'm not sure -- I hear that she was running late, a makeup issue or a wardrobe malfunction or something like that,” he said. “Nothing serious.” This was uncharacteristic for Coker. One for taking a stab at being funny (refreshing), and two because the last thing you want to do when part of your company’s goal is to legitimize women’s MMA is to stereotype the subjects. To his defense, there’s a lot on his mind this weekend, and not all of it pleasant.

End of an era

Scott Smith openly acknowledges this could be it for him in Strikeforce after losing two in a row, so he’d better bring it. In other words, Smith is going in there with the mindset of Smith. He gets a lot of heat for keeping the head stationary while flinging overhands in hopes that the exchange works out. We call his fights “wars.” More practiced eyes might call it roulette. Either way, this is likely Smith’s last play at relevancy before he becomes the comeback kid not in a fight, but in his career.

What did she just say?

During their stare down at the weigh-ins yesterday, Dutch fighter Marloes Coenen said something to Miesha Tate.

What was it?

“I have no idea,” said Tate afterwards. “I couldn’t figure it out, but she seemed to be shaking. Whatever it was it didn’t seem friendly. But that’s great; I love it. I’m evidently in her head.”

25:1 -- Odds-off favorite

Flashing back to the beginning of 2011, when the Strikeforce GP was getting set to kick off with eight of the most dangerous big guys going, Daniel Cormier wishes he’d stopped by a Vegas sportsbook to play his own odds.

“Before, I guess in January, if you bet $100 [on Cormier] you could win $2,500,” he said. “But I was kind of outside of the tournament as an alternate, so it didn’t really matter. God -- I wish I would have [thrown] some money down back then. I could have made some cash on this thing.”

It’s getting harder and harder to watch Scott Coker try to do his job.

Ever since Zuffa took over his company a little more than four months ago, the Strikeforce head honcho has been in an impossible situation. Formerly American MMA’s second largest employer, Coker is now the employee of men who were once his biggest rivals, doing his best to hold onto a leadership role everyone assumes is largely ceremonial at an organization we all agree isn’t long for this world.

He’s far too classy to ever complain about it, but this end game must be excruciating for him. If you didn’t feel bad for Coker this week, watching him give safe, upbeat answers to the media’s questions about Saturday night’s “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson” event while his body language told us he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, you might want to double-check that you can still experience normal human emotions.

Coker continues to say all the right things, but sit through his uncomfortable 12-minute video interview with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani from Thursday and you come away with a taste of how unstable things must feel for the long-time fight promoter right now. It takes approximately seven seconds during this Q&A session to realize -- when Helwani’s introduction tacitly reminds us Zuffa recently reinstated Coker as Strikeforce’s CEO after briefly demoting him to “Executive Vice President” -- that we barely even know what to call the guy anymore.

From there, it gets even more painful, with Coker squirming and sweating and nervously chuckling while telling us that he has no idea why women’s welterweight champion Marloes Coenen no-showed the prefight press conference, that he won’t answer questions about what will happen to the vacant men's 170-pound title, that he can’t get into the specifics of Fedor Emelianenko’s contract with his company and that he “doesn’t have all the details still, honestly” about the medical condition of Gina Carano.

I mean, really? Coker has never been particularly forthcoming with the media, but the lasting impression of this interview isn’t that he’s trying to play politics, it’s that he honestly doesn’t know most of the answers. Like Zuffa’s just not telling him anymore.

As depressing as that is, you have to give Coker credit for handling this difficult situation as well as he has. The man has long been one of MMA’s more dignified executives -- which is part of what makes this so tough to watch -- and after these past few months playing the consummate solider it’ll be a shame if Zuffa doesn’t retain him to some different administrative position if/when it does finally pull the plug on Strikeforce.

For now, company brass are sticking to their own talking points that they have no definite plans to do away with the smaller organization. That means we have no choice but to watch Coker twist in the wind a bit longer, steadfastly playing his awkward part, following the script toward an uncertain end and making it clear every step of the way that he’s not making any long term plans.

“To me,” Coker tells Helwani at one point during their talk. “It’s all about enjoying Saturday night.”

That’s probably a healthy way to look at it.

Since stopping Paul Daley on April 9 in an entertaining Strikeforce welterweight title defense, Nick Diaz has sounded more interested in boxing than fighting MMA.

His trainer, Cesar Gracie, has even mentioned first Fernando Vargas and most recently Jeff Lacy as possible.

Diaz has complained publicly about his pay. He’s also given his opinion that there’s a lack of quality opponents for him in Strikeforce and he’s expressed uncertainty whether he has a future in MMA.

Coker pointed to Tyron Woodley as a worthy challenger. A two-time All-American wrestler at the University of Missouri, he is 6-0 in Strikeforce.

“Tyron Woodley has been bugging me all weekend,” Coker said. “Nick doesn’t feel like he has anybody left to fight, but ‘T-Wood’ is a guy that’s getting better and better. I think Nick fighting ‘T-Wood’ is probably his best wrestling test to date. I don’t think Nick’s fought a wrestler that has better skills in wrestling than Tyron. That’s a fight we’re definitely looking at.”

Gilbert Melendez opened himself up to a whole new market when he defeated Tatsuya Kawajiri on April 9, and now calls are growing for a titanic collision with the UFC's Jim Miller.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker can see the mega-fights happening, but he has warned fans to stay patient. More »