After all the talk of who the UFC was going to use to counter Strikeforce’s CBS card, it looks like the answer was no one.

According to MMA Fighting, the San Jose based company will get to run it’s card completely unopposed.

Strikeforce has the spotlight to itself.

The long-rumored UFC event expected to counter the promotion’s April 17 CBS offering will not take place, MMA Fighting has confirmed.

Earlier this month, the UFC explored the option, going so far as to inform likely broadcast partner Spike TV that the show was a go, but the company has apparently reversed course, and a Spike source said the network has been told by the UFC that the show is no longer happening.

At the time, rumors of potential matchups pitting Mike Swick against Matt Serra and Wanderlei Silva vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama were quickly extinguished for various reasons, making finding a headlining act a challenge.

So, what does the mean for Strikeforce? Well, for one, they won’t have to worry about half their audience tuning into Spike TV instead. The other is that they now have no one to blame but themselves if this card bombs in the ratings. They were the ones that couldn’t get Fedor on the card because of his bloodsucking management team. They were the ones who decided having three title fights was more important than have five good ones. They were the ones that decided that Bobby Lashley should be on the undercard.

Personally, I think we are at a pivotal moment in the history of Strikeforce. If they prove they can draw without Fedor, suddenly all the bargaining power is in their hands. If not, then they are going to be faced with a situation where they have to cave to The Last Emperor’s every demand.

Nonethless, every single one of you should watch Gilbert Melendez defend the pride of our country against the Shinya Aoki and his stupid magic pants on April 17th. I’m a firm believer that it could be fight of the year.

According to MMA Junkie, Bobby Lashley will take place in his sixth pro fight during the undercard of the CBS broadcast of Strikeforce’s next card.

No opponent has been determined, though an announcement could come within the next week.

With three title fights already booked for the CBS-televised card, Lashley (5-0) may be part of the night’s un-aired preliminary card.

… A fourth fight could be shown via delay on the CBS broadcast, time permitting. Sources said the Lashley fight is expected be that featured bout.

Lashley on the undercard? Are we serious here? This guy is supposed to be one of the top draws in the company, and we are sticking him on an undercard?

The reason is because Strikeforce is selling this card as having three title fights. Well, that means that you have to set aside a half hour or more for each of those fights. With at least 90 minutes of a 120 minute broadcast taken up, there is no guarantee that another fight will even be possible. Can they run over? Not unless they want to piss off every single CBS affiliate in the country.

They should have saved Lashley for the next card and put him on CBS the next time around.

There are a bunch of people who are rooting for Bobby Lashley to fail. After Brock Lesnar came over from the WWE, people were worried that others would follow. Since Lashley was the next to attempt it, he has drawn a ton of heat from the hardcore MMA fans.

However, what they don’t realize is that Lashley does have some real talent. A strong wrestling background in his back pocket, he is training with American Top Team to improve the other areas of his game. While he hasn’t been tested yet, he is 5-0, and sure to start facing tougher competition in Strikeforce.

It does have the look of a WWE t-shirt, doesn’t it? I do really like the look of the lightning graphics.

MMA Warehouse has this one for 35.99.

For more TapouT shirts, check out The 3rd String Store.

So, it turns out that there is a reason to not hate Strikeforce if you are Jay Hieron. They are paying you quite well to not fight on the main card. However, don’t forget that he is losing sponsorship money because his fights aren’t being seen by the world.

One other note: I’m pretty sure that Walker didn’t make $600 for the fight. Maybe that money was after he donated his salary to charity. However, I seriously doubt Herschel’s entire deal looks like that. Expect him to make something around Nick Diaz’s $100,000 next fight.

Last but not least: They paid Wes Sims 25,000 for that? He should hand half that money back after that performance.

Main Bouts:
- Nick Diaz $100,000 (no win bonus) def. Marius Zaromskis $30,000
- Cris “Cyborg” Santos $35,000 ($15,000 win bonus and $5,000 championship bonus) def. Marloes Coenen $2,000
- Herschel Walker $600 (no win bonus) def. Greg Nagy $5,000
- Robbie Lawler $100,000 (no win bonus) def. Melvin Manhoef $5,000
- Bobby Lashley $50,000 (no win bonus) def. Wes Sims $25,000

Preliminary Bouts:
- Jay Hieron $65,000 ($35,000 win bonus) def. Joe Riggs $30,000
- Pablo Alfonso $3,000 ($1,500 win bonus) def. Marcos DaMotta $2,500
- Hadar Hassan $2,000 ($1,000 win bonus) def. Ryan Keenan $2,000
- John Kelly $2,000 ($1,000 win bonus) def. Sabah Homasi $1,000
- Michael Byrnes $2,000 ($1,000 win bonus) def. David Zitnik $1,500
- David Gomez $2,000 ($1,000 win bonus) def. Craig Oxley $1,500
- Joe Ray $1,500 ($500 win bonus) def. John Clarke $1,000

STRIKEFORCE: MIAMI DISCLOSED FIGHTER PAYROLL: $469,600

Thanks to MMA Weekly For the Salaries.

Everyone is excited about Bobby Lashley. We saw what Brock Lesnar was able to do with some size and excellent wrestling ability. That’s why everyone is pumped to see Lashley take the next step and show us that he could a champ.

Did his win over Wes Sims really do that? Nope. Not at all.

Let’s break down what happened. As the video starts, Lashley grabs a sloppy double leg that could only take down a man who has no center of gravity and a complete lack of conditioning. Sims than adjusts into the stupid position where he holds the back of his legs, allowing Lashley to pepper him with little Brock Lesnar-esque shots to the head. Once he breaks the hold, Sims tries for an armbar, but is too busy be punched in the face to latch it in.

They end up back in guard, where Sims actually closes his guard. Then, he goes back to the high guard, grabbing the back of his legs and gets punched in the face repeatedly again. Lashley posts up, and drops bombs for about a minute until the fight was stopped. However, he does get Sims’ back, and is not able to finish.

So, how do you grade this performance? He defeated a guy who is a punchline in MMA circles by stopping him in the first round. He never passed guard, he never was able to truly dominate. Does this mean that he is ready for a step up in competition? Probably, but we are talking a Mike Whitehead step up, not a Fedor, Brett Rogers step up.

Strikeforce is an MMA organization run by Scott Coker and other competent MMA executives. Strikefarce is an MMA organization run by Showtime. It lacks direction and a general understanding of all things MMA.

On Saturday night Strikefarce showed up.

Saturday nights card was a mess. The decision to keep Riggs/Hieron off the card was to be supplemented by the availability to stream the fight live on EASports.com, unfortunately EA dropped the ball in a big way. The stream was awful, often taking minutes to buffer. It the fight did end up loading at all it was at least several minutes behind the live action and of course you were subjected to an endless amount of EA ads and had to sign up for an EA Newsletter to even have the opportunity to not watch the fight. Its 2010 streaming video is nothing new, this isn’t something that should have been an issue. That set the tone for the night. The wait between fights was almost unbearable, it took almost 20 minutes for the first fight to begin, the prelims ran long, and at the end of the night even though time remained Showtime opted not to show the Heiron/Riggs fight.

This of course wasn’t even Strikefarces biggest problem. For the most part the actual card was a joke. Sims/Lashey was an old school WWE squash match. Why the good people at Showtime 86′d other opponents in favor of Sims is beyond me. The logic of “Sims is a name fighter” is silly.  People are tuning in for Lashley and not Sims. Its not just the fans that suffer from these decisions, its the fighters as well.  The Sherdog radio show had a great line that sums it up “in terms of cage time Lashley would have been better off going to ATT for 3 hours.  He would have learned more.”  Lashley is no more green then he was three days ago, when you couple that was the ridiculous expectations people have for him its a recipe for disaster.

Later in the evening we saw Herschel Walkers debut.  While I don’t want to take anything away from the man let’s not rush to anoint him. He’s 47 and beat a guy that can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.  The caliber of this fight was even less then you’d see at local MMA events across the country.  The appeal of Walker is obvious, there’s no other way Strikeforce gets on the ESPN ticker, but continuing to put him on the main card is a slap in the face to the MMA community. You show Walker but, you don’t show top welterweight Jay Hieron.  This is going to urk more then a few people.

Somewhere along the way Strikeforce came across a fork in the road and went down a bad path.

When Strikeforce started I didn’t believe they’d make it two years. Then I attended Fedors open workout in New York City. It blew my mind. Here was an event with a foreign fighter who lacked American exposure, in a state where MMA is illegal, that wasn’t well advertised.  I thought maybe a hundred or so people would show.  I couldn’t have been more wrong. The line wrapped around a city block and then some.  For all the chaos the could have resulted the event was well handled.  Not only did I get to see the worlds best heavyweight workout but I got an autograph as well.  The most incredible part was how accessible everyone was . While I was staring longingly at Fedor, Anthony was talking to a guy in a suit who from afar I didn’t recognize. When I got closer I realized it was Scott Coker.  Here was the CEO of Strikeforce just chillin with the fans. He even answered every single question we had, no red tape, no B.S. his answers were sincere and straightforward.

Here was a confident, knowledgeable MMA business man who had a plan. He knew what it would take to build Strikefroce into a contender.  How did we go from that to Strikefarce?

Showtime.

This is why Dana White hasn’t been able to get a network deal done. This is why in any deal he will demand total control.  Showtime is killing Strikeforce. You can’t have outsiders attempting to book an MMA event.  That’s how you end up paying Wes Sims 30k and having Mike Whitehead open a card. The Showtime execs are trying to market a product but are falling flat on their face because they don’t understand their audience. They see Sims and see a funny former UFC fighter and assume that makes him relevant.  Just like they saw Mike Whitehead, former Ultimate Fighter contestant, and Kevin Randleman, former UFC Champion, and assumed people would want to see that fight. I can only imagine that if Mac Danzig gets cut from the UFC, Strikeforce will sign him, he is a former TUF winner after all.

The other major problem Strikeforce has is getting fighters they have signed in fights and in the public eye.  Did you know that KJ Noons and Vitor Ribeirio were both signed by Strikeforce? You probably didn’t, and if the internet didn’t exist no one would.  Noons signed in December and Riberio in September.  You read that right September and he’s just as in the dark as you and I are.

“I’m very upset. Very sad,” Ribeiro told MMA Fighting. “I spent a great time in my camp in Brazil. Everything so well and I feel ready to go, but everything stepped back again.”  According to Ribeiro, who inked a deal with Strikeforce in September after completing a five-fight stint with K-1 and DREAM in Japan, he has been bumped from several cards in the last three months.  “I’m looking for fights,” Ribeiro said. “I don’t really care if it’s going to be live on CBS, Showtime, no TV. I’m a fighter. I fought so many times in shows without TV. Right now I’m looking for fights.”

Another thing Strikeforce was suppose to have working in it’s favor was the fighter exchange with Dream.  However, that’s become a deal that sounds a lot better on paper . Now Nick Diaz is rumoured to be fighting in Japan against Mach Sakurai who really isn’t a worthy challenger. All this comes at the expense of Jay Heiron (notice a theme) who has been jerked around repeatedly by Strikeforce. Following his victory over Joe Riggs, Heiron is a free agent and is exploring all his options and you can’t really blame him for it.

What were left with is an organization that lacks direction. Everything is planned for the here and now and not the future. A perfect example is the creation of the 170 pound division. Who exactly is going to fight in it? You have Nick Diaz (who has trouble getting licensed in some states) Jake Shields (Diaz’s teammate who won’t fight him) Heiron (a free agent) and who else?  Top prospect Tryon Woodley hasn’t fought any top level competition yet.  He isn’t ready for a title fight but will most likely be rushed into a top fight.  The same problem exists in almost every weight class.  This is why were seeing King ‘Mo fighting Gegard Moussasi so soon.  There’s no one else for him to fight.

What Strikeforce should have done is emphasized the women’s division and try to corner the market on a 125 pound men’s division . At least those two things are unique and they would be able to legitimately build a stable of top fighters. But of course I bet the big wigs at Showtime Sports don’t think the little guys can draw (though you need to see Penn and Faber to poke holes in that logic.)

Strikeforce and Bellator are taking the opposite approaches to building an MMA organization.  Strikeforce is signing a few top fighters and making some freak show match-ups.  Bellator is singing every single you talented fighter under the sun. Only time will tell who is doing things the right way.