UFC-Strikeforce battle lines drawn

Promotional war was declared on Thursday between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Strikeforce.

The industry-leading UFC has long been aggressive toward competing mixed martial arts companies, but had held off on the San Jose-based Strikeforce, which developed its name as a strong, successful regional promotion over the past several years. But the gloves came off after Strikeforce teamed with M-1 to make a deal with the world's consensus-best heavyweight, Fedor Emelianenko, on Sunday, just days after UFC failed to land the Russian star.

Dueling press conferences on Thursday left no doubt that the battle is on.

"They should have stayed the way they were," said UFC president Dana White. "We'll see what happens. If they want to fight me, we're going to fight. You know how that goes. We know how it ends."

"My response to that is, of course he's going to say that," said Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker. "He's a promoter. We've been in business a long time, and I think we know how to operate a business. With Showtime and M-1, I think we're going to have great shows."

Much of Strikeforce's press conference featured comments by M-1 president Vadim Finkelchtein and Emelianenko, who were defensive about the generally negative reaction the majority of MMA fans had with their decision. The response isn't so much about him signing with Strikeforce as much as that he didn't sign with UFC, a move that's created an unfair perception that Emelianenko is avoiding a match with UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.

Strikeforce also tried to combat the perception that Emelianenko is having his strings pulled by management looking to line its own pockets, but not looking out for his best interests.

"I have full control of all the contracts, and my career as well," said Emelianenko through an interpreter. "I get all the financial reports and all important issues are discussed with me. What I don't like, Vadim tries to stand up for."

"The UFC did not give us any chance to develop," Finkelchtein said. "The UFC wanted him [Emelianenko] only to be a fighter in UFC. They didn't offer us anything else. Dana White said Fedor and M-1 rejected a huge amount of money and agreed to fight for cheap money. But nothing special was offered to Fedor and M-1 by the UFC. When we made the deal with Strikeforce and when we united with Strikeforce, we brought with it the opportunity to broadcast all his fights on the first channel in Russia, the leading channel in South Korea and Sky TV in Japan, and many other countries. The UFC won't give us these opportunities."

Terms of the contract offer were not announced, from either side, with both camps providing a ton of rhetoric and no concrete information.

"From my viewpoint, the UFC does not have the proper attitude toward fighters," Emelianenko said. "They do not consider fighters to be normal people, human beings. My feeling is the attitude of UFC toward fighters is not the correct one. And I don't like their policy, which appears to be a really bold one. They offered one thing, and then on the Internet, the number published was something different. The offer we got from them was really miserable."

"We offered him a great deal," said White, who called the promotion "Strikefarce" in a press conference in Philadelphia on Thursday, categorizing the promotion as a tiny regional group with nobody in it.

"I guarantee you, the deal he got from Strikeforce isn't even in the same [expletive] universe. I'm talking, not even close. The deal he got at Strikeforce probably isn't even the deal he had at Affliction."

"I think if the numbers that are published on the Internet were real numbers, we would have signed the contract with UFC," Emelianenko said.

Coker said he expected to soon announce a date and venue for Emelianenko's first match, which will be held in the fall. He said that he, Showtime and M-1 have to talk and agree on a first opponent. He also targeted entering the pay-per-view arena in six to nine months, which would be either the second or third fight on Emelianenko's contract. The UFC, which has been up to this point the only promotion that has been able to make a go of it on a national basis, has derived the majority of its income from pay-per-view.

"They have no money," White said. "These guys have no money and they have no distribution. Four [expletive] people watch Showtime. Their last fight they put on, do you know how many people watched that fight [a June 4 show from St. Louis]? Two hundred and forty-five thousand people watched that fight [the show did a 1.04 rating and 275,000 viewers]. People looked for the results, but did they watch it? You don't run a business that way."

The keys to the deal, other than what was guaranteed financially, were M-1 as co-promoters of events Emelianenko is on. It's a concession UFC wouldn't consider. M-1 also garnered the long-term rights to use his footage and the ability to market television airings of the shows overseas as M-1 events.

The unanswered question is how this deal will be different for Strikeforce than for PRIDE, Affliction and Bodog Fight. All three used Emelianenko for pay-per-view events in the U.S., with the latter two going out of business when they couldn't turn a profit. PRIDE, which went out of business for unrelated reasons, also did poorly on U.S. PPV, doing only 33,000 buys for a show headlined by Emelianenko vs. Mark Coleman.

The Emelianenko paradox is that he might be the greatest MMA fighter in history, and his people want him to get the special consideration of being able to garner a 50 percent stake in all his shows. But he's never proven to have the drawing power to be a difference maker on a business level.

"We've always been committed to obtaining the best fighters and building our roster, with the signing of Gegard Mousasi and Jacare [Rolando Souza]," Coker said. "Signing Fedor is a great opportunity. How often does a free agent at that level come along? We made a business decision and it was important for Showtime. We decided let's create this partnership and go for it. If I thought this was going to be a situation where we'll be losing money and going out of business, there's no way we could have done it. … We'll be fine, and it'll be treat for the fans to watch it for free on Showtime."

"Who is he going to fight?," White asked. "Nobody. He's not going to fight anybody."

"I wonder who does Dana White consider to be the best fighters," Finkelchtein said. "A fighter with a record of 4-1[Lesnar], a fighter who was the product of the great PR machine of UFC. [Brett] Rogers is a very good opponent. He's a much better opponent for Fedor [than Lesnar] and very interesting to fans as he has ten fights and not one loss."

The past week has featured plenty of nonsense from both sides, such as comparing Rogers, a prospect who has been in the ring with only one name opponent in his career, to Lesnar, who is less than two years in, but has beaten a far higher quality of opponents, winning essentially the toughest heavyweight tournament in the world in the past five years to become UFC's clear-cut top heavyweight.

"If you think about Brock Lesnar," said Finkelchtein, "nobody knew him a year ago."

Even before the Emelianenko signing, UFC was doing counterprogramming Strikeforce. For the Showtime's Aug. 15 event on Showtime, coming from Strikeforce's home arena, the HP Pavilion in San Jose, UFC scheduled five hours of head-to-head programming, replaying its 100 Best Fights series, on Spike TV.