The Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg card has undergone a tremendous amount of turnover in the last month. Dave Meltzer of Yahoo! Sports articulates quite well how the card, originally scheduled to feature four title fights, has now been left with two, in addition to a host of other alterations.
The card itself just hasn’t had a lot of luck, either. Not only have all the changes impaired Strikeforce’s ability to market and promote the card, but the Fedor signing has more or less completely overshadowed the entire event. Instead of being able to promote four title match-ups, a barrier breaking female fight, and the biggest card in Strikeforce history, the promotion actually pushed back its event press conference in favour of a Fedor presser.
However, if there is any silver lining to all of this turmoil it’s that Strikeforce has passed the depth litmus test and been able to differentiate itself from some of its latest competition.
Amongst the many reasons that Affliction failed was that the organization lacked the roster depth to recover from last minute changes to their fight cards (EliteXC was the same for that matter):
It’s not even the fact that neither organization could find last minute replacements, it’s that they built fight cards around single bouts. The Affliction and EliteXC brands were exposed to far too much risk, and considering what we now know about Affliction’s revenue streams from PPVs and CBS picking up both the expenses and revenues for EliteXC on CBS events, the potential reward for either organization was too low for that kind of risk.
The resiliency shown by Strikeforce is encouraging not only for the organization itself, but also the sport as a whole. MMAPayout has briefly explored the Law of Fellowship in previous days, but it never hurts to repeat that competition can promote innovation, eliminate complaceny, and spur overall indusrtry demand – i.e, increase the size of the enitre pie – through a value-added offering of choice to consumers.
A strong Strikeforce is very much good for the sport, and they’ve answered a very important question with this Carano-Cyborg card – there’s your silver lining.
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