Strikeforce disrespects its female division again by not putting tournament final on last

Let's take a trip down memory lane for a second.

The date: Aug. 28, 2005. The site: Saitama Super Arena. The event: PRIDE Final Conflict 2005. I remember it to this day. The show featured the semifinals and final of arguably the biggest and most stacked tournament in mixed martial arts history, the 2005 PRIDE Middleweight Grand Prix, not to mention the most anticipated fight in the sport's history, the heavyweight championship clash between Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko CroCop.

PRIDE did many things right. And even though the promotion had the most long-awaited fight in history on the same card, PRIDE did what all good promotions should do, if nothing else than for the safety of the fighters: They put the tournament final on last.

Friday, Strikeforce dusted off the one night tournament for its 135-pound women's division, matching Miesha Tate against Maiju Kujala and Hitomi Akano against Carina Damm. Tournaments generally are very exciting business, so going in, I was looking forward to this. Not only are they exciting from the prospective of the fans, they also are incredibly simple to execute once you have all the pieces in place.

Well, as has become much too common these days, the bout order released by Strikeforce left me scratching my head and wondering how the promotion yet again managed to mangle such a simple concept.

You see, instead of placing the tournament final in the main event slot, as has been done in nearly every big MMA tournament where fighters have had to fight more than once in the same night, Strikeforce decided, "No, let's bring back our fighters on the least amount of rest possible so the Earth shaking and shattering fight that certainly will have world ranking implications between Joe Riggs and Louis Taylor can go on last." 

It's completely mind-boggling that a national promotion like Strikeforce can continue to make even the easiest decisions look like they are Watson and Crick trying to figure out the structure of DNA or NASA trying to figure out how to put a man on the moon. This is not difficult.

Again, if PRIDE puts only the biggest fight in history on second-to-last in favor of the tournament finale, it's probably safe to say a fight between Joe Riggs and Louis Taylor probably could go on second-to-last as well.

This is nothing more than vintage Strikeforce and Showtime.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but it's obvious Strikeforce has no respect for its female fighters. On a night where the female division was supposed to get great exposure, it once again played second fiddle to an essentially meaningless men's fight. To me, this is even worse than what happened at the last Challengers show with Sarah Kaufman's title defense not getting the main event spot. Not only did Strikeforce damage the credibility of its own tournament, but they put the safety of Tate and Akano at risk by having them fight on such a short turnaround. Sure, the rounds weren't as long and there weren't as many of them, but asking Tate to come back after 47 minutes and Akano after 32 is absurd and quite frankly irresponsible.

Everyone who's ever watched a live show from Japan knows those always are marathon sessions. At that PRIDE show, Ricardo Arona fought at 15-minute decision in his semifinal fight against Wanderlei Silva. It was a tooth-and-nails fight. I can't say for certain how long he had between fights, but I sure do know it was a whole lot longer than 32 minutes. There was more than 40 minutes of fighting time alone between Arona's two bouts that night, not to mention the infamously long PRIDE entrances, even more infamous intermission, the heavyweight title presentation and various national anthems that were played that night. Arona fought in the second fight of a long show and still wasn't the same in his final bout with Mauricio Rua.

Now, neither Tate or Akano exerted as much as Arona did that night in Japan, but in the interest of having the best fight possible, one would think Strikeforce would want to give the fighters as much time as possible to rest and recover in order to make for the most compelling television possible.

Guess again.

Instead, that oh-so-important fight between Riggs and Taylor just had to go on last. What's worse is chances are nobody will even remember what happened in that fight come tomorrow.

For the second straight Challengers show in a row, Strikeforce buried its 135-pound women's division. And for the second straight event, the women stole the show in the co-main event as the apparently much more important "featured bouts" failed to captivate a single person.

At this point, it's par for the course for Strikeforce.

SBN coverage of Strikeforce Challengers 10: Riggs vs. Taylor