When was strikeforce founded

We just immediately butted heads and I got caught in the middle of it. It was supposed to be that we were all brothers. It ended up being the opposite. When it went to court we all had to shut up and let someone else decide. This, of course, is a complete crock. Strikeforce, obviously, was not going to be a huge fan of their biggest star abandoning his contractual obligations to jump-start their competition.

The litigation would net awkward co-promotions that would actually network Strikeforce with Showtime. Shamrock would remain with Strikeforce until the very end, but this remains an undeniably selfish play.

People say when one door is closed, a window is opened. EliteXC's door was slammed shut—hard. It was a surprising, yet unsurprising, turn of events that unceremoniously ended the run of a potentially legitimate opponent for the UFC.

As you know from the last slide, EliteXC and Strikeforce had a tight relationship even if they didn't like it at the time. As you almost certainly remember, EliteXC's death was a complicated affair that shed a great deal of light onto a company already mired by controversy read about it here. This is where Strikeforce became a truly formidable promotion and started garnering nationwide attention. Whenever the UFC absorbed a promotion, it has tended to yield excellent fights shortly thereafter.

Jake Shields. Showtime was putting on many interesting fights held by its new promotion, and the biggest winners were the fans. This stretch in was, perhaps, the best streak for Strikeforce from a matchmaking perspective in the promotion's history. CBS, the network station who owns Showtime, also took notice and would begin talking with the promotion to put together some events to show. The question then became who would become the star to build such a big card around One of the most memorable moments in Strikeforce history was when word first broke that Fedor Emelianenko would be joining Strikeforce rather than the UFC.

Sure, Strikeforce was elated at the time. Showtime and CBS most certainly were too. Fedor disappointed fans by staying a safe distance from fights with Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar. Even in his new organization, he avoided fighting the top fighters and was matched against Brett Rogers in his promotional debut rather than champion Alistair Overeem.

Still, it's hard to not tune into an event that has Emelianenko atop the card, and Strikeforce knew this, booking his promotional debut to take place at its network TV premiere.

Fedor would punch Rogers' clean head off to top off a solid night of fights. This would be his one and only win with Strikeforce. Soon enough Strikeforce had signed internationally recognized fighters and lived as one of the few viable alternatives to the UFC.

There's no question that history will be kind to Coker and his team when it comes to their ability to identify, showcase and develop fighters, all the while agreeing to more flexible partnerships that gave talent the option to compete in other venues. California cleared the path toward MMA regulation, yet it took six years for the Golden State to actually oversee an event.

Frank Shamrock returned to the cage for the first time in three years and in the headliner knocked out Cesar Gracie. His effort, along with fighters who became Strikeforce and UFC mainstays, made a memorable night for Strikeforce, and more broadly the sport in the U. Just as it appeared Strikeforce was set to be a true competitor to the UFC, Zuffa swooped in and rattled the landscape. The move, announced in March , was monumental for several reasons. Though Zuffa said it planned for Strikeforce to operate independently, that never happened.

Much of the promotion's staff was ousted in favor of Zuffa employees. Strikeforce fighters began matriculating to the Octagon. Hope of Zuffa's promotional prowess augmenting what Strikeforce already had in place was dashed.

Insiders took to calling Strikeforce a "zombie promotion," and as with the other organizations Zuffa purchased during its rise to the top of MMA, Strikeforce was eventually assigned to the dustbin of history. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Mixed Martial Arts Blog. Ten moments in Strikeforce history.

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Page mocks Rousey's knockout loss in music video. And that was the birth of Strikeforce. It started with kickboxing. But, most of my fight promotion career in that era, promoting in San Jose, we would promote at the arena at San Jose State College, which holds 6, people. And that's where the majority of Cung Le's fights took place. Even Javier Mendez fought at the Event Center there. We even did a mixed martial arts match back then, in We were told that California was going to allow for mixed martial arts, so we went to the commissioner at the time and said, "Hey, can we do a mixed martial arts fight?

I think it was, we just couldn't have punching to the face. It was kind of like Pancrase rules. The fight was Brian Johnston versus [John] Renfroe. After that, we wanted to do more. But, we wanted to do full MMA, so we had to wait for the state to pass it. After I moved to San Jose I started calling everyone up, looking for a place to train. And that's how I met Javier. And then I met a bunch of the other martial arts guys in the area. One of the guys I met was Ernie Reyes. And it was through Reyes that I met Scott, who was always testing for his black belts and progressing in his martial arts.

He was very serious about his martial arts and has a bunch of black belts to show for it. When California said they are going to do mixed martial arts, I said to myself "OK, I want to be the first person to do it here. So, I went to the commission and said, "Listen, if you are going to do this you need to do it with me, because we have been in business together so long. Our first show would have been Frank and [Kazushi] Sakuraba in So, I said to Frank "Why don't we just do that fight here because it's going to be legal in the state?

The December issue of Black Belt Magazine discussed the possibility of the two meeting in February in an event organized by "Strike Force. Kimo Leopoldo and Cung Le vs. I was freelancing, writing some stuff for Black Belt Magazine. I was a fan of boxing and kickboxing, and I saw K-1, and was interested in trying to work in kickboxing, so I reached out to Scott through email. Back then it was a small group of people doing this, so it was easy to reach people.

So we connected, and my intent was to tell the stories of the K-1 fighters. To write their bios and backgrounds and get people interested in the fighters. They'd been trying to get it started. So, we stayed after to talk to Mr. And the fight card was unbelievable. Are they here about regulating the sport in Nevada? I really have that feeling that it would have quietly died. Maybe it would have survived, but you got to remember at the time it was very taboo in America.

It was kicked off all the pay-per-view distribution networks, and Senator McCain was not a fan. It was the right people buying it with the right commitment behind them. They were committed enough to go millions of dollars in debt, trying to figure it out and make MMA work until finally the Ultimate Fighter hit.

That was a big commitment. Master Ishii and I became very close and he was very interested in mixed martial arts and wanted to promote it. He believed Scott was the guy and I was the star and he was supposed to give us a bunch of money and let us do our thing. We had the California advantage. With Scott's reputation promoting here and with the movement towards legalization, we thought we were at the right place at the right time.

We felt California was where the opportunity was. So, California and Los Angeles were the hotbeds of it, even if it wasn't legal. The culture of fighting throughout the state made it the perfect market to make it work. At the time, K-1 had big plans. Sony thought K-1 was the next big thing and wanted to invest into it and buy into the company and help promote it around the world. But the business culture is different in Japan.

Things don't happen quickly. And there's always a question of where the money is coming from. You know, "is the money clean? I think they were waiting on legalization for us. So, we were ready to go and could have done a show on an Indian Reservation, but we wanted it to be legal to make it work. That was important, that it was legal. We worked on it for a couple of years, but it didn't happen. They retained me for a year or more to make sure I was ready and so they paid me to hang out and I did a few promotional things, but eventually I pulled the plug on the whole thing because I got tired of waiting.

I wanted to do stuff. But, it was the first time Scott and I partnered up on something. And it was where we really developed a relationship and a friendship. So, I retired - again. I distanced myself from the sport. I took a whole course on business management and brand development. Sort of re-educating myself to being a businessman.

And then Cesar just popped out of nowhere, and I didn't even know who he was. Never had heard of him. And he had got on the Internet and started challenging me. Knowing I was in retirement. And I went, wait a minute, he's a Gracie. We had a few words with him, and I saw the heat that was developing.