Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix: At This Point, Does It Matter?

Quote :: When Strikeforce announced that they were going to stage an ambitious heavyweight tournament, MMA fans had high hopes that the Grand Prix would live up to the significant amount of hype that was being put behind the project.Those
hopes were tempered with a healthy dose of pessimism by a fair number
of fans and pundits who voiced concerns that perhaps the tournament was a
bit too ambitious of an undertaking for a promotion such as
Strikeforce. As the September semifinal bouts near and with no
“big-name” fighters left to anchor or hype the tournament, the question
that begs to be answered is, does the Strikeforce World Heavyweight
Grand Prix even matter at this point?When the eight fighters were announced for the initial bouts—Fedor Emelianenko,
Alistair Overeem, Antonio Silva, Fabricio Werdum, Andrei Arlovski,
Brett Rogers, Josh Barnett and Sergei Kharitonov—the tournament looked
promising.The matchmaking of Strikeforce was almost immediately
called into question when the bigger names—Fedor, Silva, Overeem and
Werdum—were all on one side of the tournament bracket.Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker spoke to MMAFighting after the brackets had been announced and explained the reasoning behind the set up.

"Very rarely in a tournament does it ever work out where the
last two guys are the guys everyone wants to see fight," Coker said.

"So
I said to my guys, 'What about this scenario: let them fight in the
semifinals, and let them get it on, and whoever wins moves
forward.'...Let's say Fedor does get past 'Bigfoot' and then Alistair
wins that fight, then we're guaranteed to see a big fight."Things
didn’t work out exactly as Coker had planned as far as seeing a big
fight in the semifinals. When the first round played out, the tournament
was left with Overeem versus Silva and Kharitonov versus Barnett as
semifinal bouts.The Silva versus Overeem bout held some promise
as Silva had a huge amount of momentum behind him after they way he handled Fedor in his previous bout.That fight between Overeem and Silva looked promising on paper, but that’s as far as it ever got, as it was recently announced that Overeem was withdrawing from the event due to an injured toe and would be replaced by tournament alternate Daniel Cormier.So that leaves the tournament with one big name, Silva, who wasn’t really that big of a name until he defeated Fedor.
That fact leaves the remaining two rounds of the Grand Prix looking a
great deal less exciting than the first round.The first quarterfinal card, highlighted by the Silva versus Fedor fight, drew a little over 11,000 fans to the Izod Center in New Jersey. The second quarterfinal card, with a main event of Overeem versus Werdum did significantly worse business, drawing 7,639 fans to the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.
With the loss of Overeem, what can Strikeforce expect when they head to the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio on September 10 for the semifinal scraps?

Bleacher Report

Some of the shine is definitely gone with Overeem out, but the tourney is still relavent. All they have to do now is announce that the winner fights him for the belt. Boom, now it's a #1 contender tournament...crisis averted.

Agreed, and aside from that, GPs always make it easier to rank who should be where. I mean after this GP Fedor and Silva were massively "adjusted" on every Top Ten I've seen. Also, Grand Prix are a great way to build a name for up and coming fighters, Bellator has proven that time and time again.

Exactly. If Daniel Cormier beats Bigfoot and Barnett you bet your ass people will be demanding he gets a title shot, no matter how green he is.

» Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix Final Booked For May 19th, Barnett vs Cormier.
» Strikeforce Heavy Weight Grand Prix Complete!
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