Strikeforce are hilarious. They've got the fighters and the potential to be a serious competitor to the UFC but continue to shoot themselves in the foot by trying to add hype to a fighter by putting them in fights they expect them to win, and then giving them the large majority of the marketing in the build-up to the fight. Look at the way they buried Jake Shields in the pre-fight marketing for the Henderson fight. They wanted Henderson to win that fight. They knew Shields only had 1 fight left on his deal, and they needed him to lose that fight to add hype to their new big money signing in Henderson.
Then they did it again with Fedor-Werdum. That fight was clearly seen as a warm-up fight for Fedor, with a devastating win over Werdum adding hype to a future Overeem-Fedor fight. Guess what, it back-fired on them again. Then here, Mo received the large majority of the hype, and I firmly believe SF were stacking their chips on a Mo win, to hype the fact they've got one of the top LHW's in the world. Again, it didn't happen, and now they've been left with a vacated title, a pretty significant drop in Fedor and Henderson's stock and a 205lb champion that's largely unknown, been barely hyped and that has lost to Mike Kyle in the last year or so. Then there's Bobby Lashley, another guy they were pinning their hopes on as a golden boy. He refuses to fight a big name, so they stick him in with another guy they consider to be a grub to boost Lashley's record, but it backfires on them again, when it turns out Griggs could actually fight. It's hilarious how these things continue to backfire on them.
I hope Strikeforce are here to stay, they're putting on some decent fights that we wouldn't have the chance to see elsewhere. However, they're still run by the morons at Showtime, it appears to me and many others that they're hitching their bets on certain fighters winning fights and the production values are still sub-standard, though improving. If they're going to be long-term competitors for the UFC they need to make smarter decisions, fairly hype both fighters in the build-up for cards and therefore not set themselves up to look like morons. They've got the raw potential to be a big time company in MMA, but there are some definite issues they need to sort out, and they need to sort them out quickly or they'll be on the scrapheap with Elite XC and Affliction.