Back in the late aughts, after Zuffa purchased Japan-based Pride Fighting Championships and consolidated a major portion of the roster, it wasn’t uncommon to see t-shirts lamenting the fact.
“Pride Never Die” was what those shirts said, long before the use of hashtags. Because the sport of MMA was barely into its adolescence, six months of retrospect was all it took to feel nostalgic.
Now that the sport has grown up a bit, nostalgia is a real thing. It’s been 13 and a half years strikeforce-broke-records-and-launched-ufcs-last-great-rival-20-years-ago-today-192056862.html">since the last Strikeforce show, and — as it turns out — Strikeforce never dies, either.
On Tuesday morning, the news came down that the band is getting back together. Rich Chou, the longtime matchmaker at Strikeforce and later Bellator, is joining back up with Strikeforce founder Scott Coker in his new MMA venture. Right now, the promotion doesn’t have an official name, but it has $60 million in raised funds from which to hit the ground running in 2027.
It feels like 2008 all over again, only this time the MMA landscape has changed fairly drastically from when Strikeforce busted out of its regional moorings in San Jose to become a national product. The times have changed, and so have the players, even if they are familiar names.
“I would say maybe about a year or so ago, Scott just started mentioning to me like, ‘Hey man, I’m kind of getting the itch, and I started to work on something. I’m going to keep you posted,'” Chou tells Uncrowned of the reunion. “And he would ask me questions about what’s going on in the industry because, although I wasn’t promoting, I was still actively involved in several different areas of the fight game. We just always stayed in touch and just chopped it up.
“And I’ll be honest, at one point I was just thinking, ‘He’s just bored.’ That’s just what rich bored guys do, right? They’re always working on something. You’re working on your golf swing, man. But no, as it turns out — and I think we’re all very happy to see that — he actually was working on something.”
If you were around during the halcyon days of Strikeforce, there’s a good chance that something will be something. Strikeforce was Coker’s baby, going back to when it was a kickboxing promotion in the 1980s. By the year 2010, it had assembled a roster that included the vanguard of women’s MMA, the great Fedor Emelianenko, and a number of fighters who would go on to become UFC Hall of Famers.
In its heyday, Strikeforce was synonymous with Mauro Ranallo and Frank Shamrock, with Ronda Rousey and Nick Diaz and Robbie Lawler, the latter of whom fell asleep at the podium one time during a press conference. It was Showtime and heavyweight grands prix and alternative viewing for Octagon fatigue.
If nothing else, it was the party raging on down the block from the UFC, perhaps ahead of its time in many ways.
“The roster was too good apparently,” Chou says with a laugh. “It was crazy. We joke as we look back, and we were the victims of our own success. We were doing too good of a job and that’s the bittersweet ending of Strikeforce. We were on a roll. And what validated us ended our run because so many of those guys that went on to prove to the world [how good they were].”
It all came to an end in Oklahoma City in early 2013, at a time when the writing had long been on the wall. Zuffa, which purchased Strikeforce in 2011, had been selectively cherry-picking its inventory for a long while. If you were around, you remember that last event had the melancholy feel of a “going out of business” sale. Daniel Cormier fought a guy named Dion Staring, and Tarec Saffiedine, who looked a little like Bobcat Goldthwait, fought Nate Marquardt in the main event.
“I’ve started companies and built rosters from scratch,” Chou says. “We’ve absorbed rosters and … Strikeforce, already an established company, acquired the EliteXC assets, but EliteXC started from scratch. With Bellator, we jumped in, we absorbed [former CEO] Bjorn [Rebney’s] roster and had to work and build around that. So I’ve been in a few different scenarios, which I think is really helpful for me now having that experience.
“But you’re right about it being a different era. This is the, I’ll call it the ‘Big Biz Era,’ in terms of just a ton of VC money flowing in. It’s the presence of major public entities. This is not the MMA that I came into and that I grew up on. This is big biz now.”
Coker’s new promotion will compete with not only the UFC, the standard-bearers of the industry, but with Jake Paul’s MVP MMA, which held its first show in May, as well as the new regime at the PFL. Though there is still much to determine in the coming months, one of the objectives will be centered on reigniting the passion in MMA’s fanbase, which is what Chou says the players in the new venture — which includes former Spike TV executive Kevin Kay as the Chief Content Officer — are bringing to the table.
“It’s a different day and age,” Chou says. “It’s a different situation. What was it that I heard once? History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
“This isn’t Strikeforce. … We’re not here to replicate Strikeforce exactly as it was. We’re not here to replicate Bellator exactly as it was, either, but … it’s going to be big, it’s going to be meaningful. We are going to put on exciting fights and find the top talent globally. The mission remains the same, but I also don’t want to get too caught up in trying to chase previous successes, because it’s a different day and age.”
If there’s an advantage to coming back around for another go, it’s in experience. Chou, now 46 years old, started out as a fighter back in 2002 (he fought once, and has an 0-1 record), before trying his hand in just about every aspect in the fight game, from referee to promoter to the media side of things.
Yet it’s as a matchmaker that he’s made his living.
He started off with the Rumble on the Rock promotion in the mid-2000s, before going to Elite XC, and eventually to join forces with Coker. Together they’ve navigated a constantly evolving scene that has become more corporatized over time.
“It goes back to the idea that we love this sport,” Chou says. “We came to this sport before the passion. Before pitch decks, the boardroom meetings, all these things that again, take us into this era where you had a bunch of VC money come in, you have all this business. And you have a lot of people then therefore getting involved that see this more as market opportunity. They just look at it differently. It’s more of a commercial thing for them and it’s more about EBITDA and margin and spreadsheets.
“Which is all important, don’t get me wrong. We’re starting a business and we’re going to be responsible operators. But I think, at its core, it’s driven by this connection to the sport, this genuine love for the game, respect, and appreciation for fighters.”
As Chou sees it, Coker doesn’t need the money. What he needs is to stay involved with the sport he’s forever synonymous with, especially with so many new fans in the space who don’t necessarily know the history of what stood before.
“I think it’s this love, this genuine love for the game that we’ve always had,” Chou says. “That’s why we’re here. And I think at our core with that driving us, I think is the biggest difference-maker. I think it’s what’s brought us together. It’s been perhaps our superpower. I’d like to think because the landscape of who’s out there, like I said, this is a different era with guys that didn’t grow up in the game, that didn’t grow up training, that didn’t love the sport, don’t know the origins of it.
“It’s a whole different ballgame. And I think because we’re so rooted in it, I think that’s why we’re back. That’s what drives us, this genuine authentic love for this sport, and I do think that’s why we’re going to succeed.”
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