Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers
November 7th, 2009
Sears Centre – Hoffman Estates, IL



Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers
Strikeforce Middleweight Championship: Jake Shields vs. Jason Miller
Gegard Mousasi vs. Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou
Antônio Silva vs. Fabrício Werdum
Marloes Coenen vs. Roxanne Modafferi
Jeff Curran vs. Dustin Neace
John Kolosci vs. Shamar Bailey
Mark Miller vs. Deray Davis
Christian Uflacker vs. Jonatas Novaes
Nate Moore vs. Louis Taylor

UK peeps: It's on Bravo tomorrow evening. 9-11pm

I think we can refrain from the spoiler tags since this is a thread to talk about the show.

Man, I hate to say it because I was really looking forward to this show, but that was somewhat of a disaster for Strikeforce. No, I'm not talking about the main event. I'm talking about the Shields/Mayhem match that might have sucked the life out of the entire viewing audience. Wow. Even worse were the announcers trying to make it sound exciting. It didn't help that they started off with the Silva/Werdum fight going the distance and Mousasi actually losing a round to Sokodjou.

As for the main event, you can't really say anything about Fedor without being chewed out on MMA boards, so I'll congratulate him on his win. It was definitely the highlight of a lackluster show for Strikeforce.

All I can say about the Fedor fight is that it took me from zero interest in Fedor/Overeem to moderate interest in Fedor/Overeem. Not that Strikeforce could ever get their heavyweight champion to actually fight for them or anything.

I disagree, maybe the hardcore MMA fans would think it was a boring or lackluster show, but as a casual MMA viewer I thought it was fun. Even Shields/Mayhem I enjoyed just for watching Mayhem slip out of Shield's grapples (he couldn't do anything with them, but it was still entertaining) and for Shields being saved by the bell from being choked out. I've seen far worse cards. I talked to my brother afterwards and he thought it was a good show also. Far from a disaster... the last show in CBS was a disaster. Even worse case scenerio I can see maybe it being average. Mousasi losing a round wasn't a big deal, no moreso then Fedor losing a round, even the great ones don't win literally every single round and he won it pretty convincingly.

Overeem would wilt quickly from those punches in bunches that Rogers took.

That's why my interest is only raised to moderate. I'm moderately interested to see what Overeem could do BEFORE getting hit and wilting.

Would it be fair to say that Fedor's knockout punch looked like a little bit of a desperation move?

.........what?

Much like El Dandy, you can never doubt Fedor.

It certainly wasn't the most technical but Roger's hands were down when Fedor threw it. I was going crazy when Sokodjou was simply dominating Mousasi in the Judo department, reversing all the trips he was trying to set up. Too bad he has terrible jiu jitsu. I really think Mousasi's gonna get caught one day. For a boxer, he's oddly flat footed. I'd like to see how Jake Shields holds up against Jacare.

I dunno about that. Looking at the slomo tended to point out that Fedor had Rogers timing down. Fedor shifts his weight ever so subtly to the left and feints a split second before throwing that overhand right.

Rogers went for his haymaker but hesitated during his lead in and got beat to the top of the hill.

With the bombs that Rogers was throwing, I'd assume that a better show of desperation would be if Fedor had tried to take Rogers down again.

Not really. By that logic, he threw a desperation punch at Arlovski, a desperation choke on Fujita, a desperation kimura on Randleman, a desperation ten minutes of death on Herring... ;)

Yes I stayed up like a trooper. I found it tense as fuck.

Fedor is still one of the few fighters that can get me excited about a fight (whether it's Hong Man Choi or Rogers). For a second you're wondering if he still has it or will his almost perfect record still be intact after the bout, but then he does it again. Great fight and all around exciting show.

I fail to see how it was a disaster for Strikeforce because Silva/Werdum went the distance and Mousasi lost a round. I can't even see how anyone would care about either of those things being that Silva/Werdum was an entertaining fight since Silva dominated the first round and Werdum came back to win. The Mousasi fight was a lot of fun too regardless of Sokodjou winning a round. I don't see how it matters when the finished product was entertaining.

The Mousasi fight reinforces my opinion that it was a stupid fight to have though as a non title fight. Strikeforce's LHW division isn't exactly overflowing with talent and they just wasted away a potential challenger in Sokodjou by making it non title. The Shields/Mayhem fight didn't suck the life out of the audience at all. Every time Mayhem was able to escape from Shields or get a reversal or do anything, the crowd went completely nuts. And basically everyone there thought the fight was over when he had Shields in the choke at the end of the round. Everyone booed Shields at the end just because Mayhem was the crowd favorite. Overall it was a fun show. The prelims were really lackluster except for Coenen/Modaferri, but the main card was entertaining in my opinion.

I thought it was a decent show. And the show looked sold out and it looked good on TV. Announcing still needs some work.

Ratings are out and it was kind of a thud rather than explosion for Strikeforce's debut. It won the age demo of 18-49 at the 10-11pm slot. TV insiders referred to the ratings as "mediocre."

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/11/08/tv-ra...me-on-cbs/32941

Not surprising considering the promotion for the show was horrible and built around Fedor who no one besides hardcore MMA fans care about.

I think "disaster" might have been too strong a word to use. Momentum challenged perhaps? I point out something like Silva/Werdum because it starts off with a badass first round. One that gets people pumped. But then things slow down dramatically and that will drain any audience. People can talk up Shields/Mayhem and it did feature some great grappling. The problem was Shields complete lack of ever attempting to finish or move from his safe position. By round 2, I said to my friend, "Be prepared for 5 rounds of this."

The fact that the UFC can draw almost double that on cable by promoting Kimbo vs. Nelson is staggering.

Well for one thing it says a lot about UFC's promoting and marketing vehicle which Strikeforce/CBS/Showtime simply can't match.

The promotion for this event was still shit. They started promoting it only a few weeks before. And they were marketing it around Fedor who casual fans simply don't care about and aren't interested in seeing. The WHO IS FEDOR campaign was a pitiful failure. Leading up to the event, the only person talking about the fight was Brett Rogers while Strikeforce and CBS were doing jack shit. The 360 special came way too late.

Just saying, compare this to a super fight like Penn/GSP from the UFC and its night and day different. And this show was on free TV. I really hope Strikeforce don't pat themselves on the back or call this rating a victory.

Perhaps I'm just not used to seeing Fedor put that much of himself into a punch like that. He would have been extremely off-balance if he had missed, allowing Rogers to take over. Still, it's a moot point since the punch did connect and Brett Rogers got knocked out.

With all that said, I had flashbacks to the movie Angus when Rogers hit that first jab on Fedor. "You broke his nose, Grim!"

Miller-v-Davis ended up being cancelled due to TV timing. It's gotta suck to be those guys.

Every punch Fedor throws, he throws with the intention of a KO. That's his entire boxing philosophy. He doesn't believe in the jab.

Right on.. though.. if CBS cared, they could promote the hell out of Strikeforce. They're CBS. But I guess they don't care.

They put commercials on during college football and the NFL for the last few weeks. Is it their fault that you can't really generate interest in two unknown guys with lame 30 second commercials featuring Frank Shamrock telling us how great Fedor is?

The novelty of seeing two dudes fight on free TV is largely gone. A commercial saying some russian dude is the best heavyweight in the world doesn't really mean anything to anyone especially when it isn't the UFC saying it.

If CBS wants another show and they can't pay Gina Carano enough money to make it worth her risking a facial injury, they must find someone with some name value to fight Fedor. If they're going to be relegated to the Showtime promotion then Fedor vs Werdum is fine and they'll do fine numbers on Showtime. Whether they can make enough money doing a promotion that way and using Fedor is something I don't know.

Yeah, the lesson learned is name trumps talent. They were absolutely foolish to say to Gina, "Okay, go make your movie in 2010" and not at least try to get her on this card. She won't be back until summer 2010 at the earliest. Like him or not, they were also foolish not to pursue Tito Ortiz with more force. Him on CBS would have been big ratings. I have no idea who they can throw on a card to get ratings over 4.5 million unless they decide to trot out Hershell Walker for freakshow value.

You can't pursue people when you don't have the money to do it.

While I know it's my fault for not recording longer for a live event, you would think Strikeforce would have thought it to be a good idea to put their biggest stars match on before DVRs would cut off for the normal programming length.

Sports. It happens.

According to Meltzer, the ratings weren't actually bad contrary to what this obscure report says. Lower than the first Kimbo CBS fight but higher than the cards afterwards, you'd have to think CBS is happy.

Kimbo may have more name recognition than every fighter in MMA so being comparable to the those would be a success.

The ratings will stay in that realm without name value, no amount of promoting will convince the casual fan to make sure to watch fights between people they haven't heard of. Shamrock/Fedor would do better then Rogers/Fedor did, the hardcore fans will watch regardless (if nothing else to complain about the show) but casual fans need a hook of some sort to get them to watch. I don't know what more they could have done besides having commercials during NFL and college games, most people in the country didn't know who any of the fighters on that card are, there are only so many ways you can say "come watch two great fighters you have never heard of."

Also, the overnights don't include the over-run, which is where the main event was.

Here's what they failed to do. They failed to really market or brand Strikeforce and Fedor. All they really did was WHO IS FEDOR. Nothing with guys like Jake Shields or Mayhem who could be super marketable.

This was for all intents and purposes Strikeforce's biggest show to date. They did not treat it as such.

Preliminary Numbers in for CBS 'Saturday Night Fights'


by Greg Savage (greg@sherdog.com)


The first ratings for the heavyweight showdown between Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers, which aired on network television stalwart CBS, are in.

The show did a 2.3 rating and averaged 3.79 million viewers during the scheduled 9-11 p.m. time slot, but network representatives were not able to provide any number for the post 11 p.m. overrun -- the time when Emelianenko and Rogers took to the cage. A CBS spokesperson said those numbers would be available Tuesday.

This was CBS’s first foray back into the MMA market since the October 2008 debacle that ended the now-defunct Elite XC’s run on the network. In comparison, the three previous MMA shows that aired on CBS averaged between 2.6 and 4.8 million viewers, largely on the strength of Internet sensation Kimbo Slice and women’s star Gina Carano.

Information provided by CBS to Sherdog.com indicated the ratings for “Saturday Night Fights” were up significantly from regularly scheduled programming in the 9-11 p.m. time slot. Numbers were up consistently cross the demographic spectrum, with a 267 percent increase in men aged 18-34 gaining the biggest margin.

CBS’s broadcast of Srikeforce/M-1 Global “Fedor vs. Rogers” beat rivals ABC and NBC in coveted advertising demographics, taking first place in adults 18-49, adults 18-34, men 25-54, men 18-49, men 18-34 and tying for first in adults 25-54. The show beat out college football to be the top-rated program across the male demographics


SOURCE
http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/prelimina...ht-fights-20805

On the downside of this show, two undercard fighters got royally screwed.

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2009/11/8/11212...o-mark-miller-v

During the undercard portion of Saturday's Strikeforce show the Mark Miller v. Deray Davis fight was skipped over from it's scheduled slot to make sure the women's bout would have adequate time to get in before the start of the CBS broadcast. The ladies only took a few minutes to get their fight taken care of and there were thirty minutes left before the show went live. Still, the Miller/Davis fight didn't happen. We were told in the media section that the fight was going to be moved to after the main event. I'm not sure who provided that update but it was passed around from media member to media member.

After the post-Fedor madness cleared from the cage we were told to get upstairs for the press conference and it was clear that the Miller/Davis fight wasn't taking place. I tried to ask the few executives I saw walking around for the story and no one seemed to know.

Mark Miller vs Deray Davis was canceled by fight organizers due to lack of time. A real un-cool decision. Both fighters prepared for this evening and were told with no advance noticed what-so-ever. At the moment they would be walking out on the floor for their match, Miller and Davis were informed that they were canceled! Fighters stood stand-by in shock trying to understand how this became their evening's destiny.

People pretending they actually care about that is the best. That will almost assuredly get moved to a Challengers card, I'm betting, and they'll get to fight.

I don't think anybody is saying they are really broken up about it or couldn't sleep, just that it sucks for those guys and it's unfortunate for them that it happened.

But you totally called pretenders out dude, way to go

True, but I think they'd have been much better off signing Ortiz rather than going after Fedor. I can only imagine that the price they paid would have been comparable.

Sure they got the best HW in the world, but ratings wise it doesn't translate into much of a success since his popularity here isn't that high. If they continue to do CBS and Showtime shows with Fedor as the main attraction then I think they can build him into a draw but it will take good marketing. That's something they wouldn't have had to worry about with Tito since he'd have been a solid draw right off the bat.

Tito Ortiz wouldn't have drawn much of a rating at this point in his career. He's going to draw a pitiful buyrate for the UFC, and do you think this show would have gotten anywhere NEAR the press buzz it did with him on top?

It wouldn't have been a big deal, fewer people would've wanted to report on it. It would've just been a show. If you think Fedor's aura didn't help ANY, that's delusional. The press was all over it, the feeling in the building was electric, and it got plenty of attention. With Tito Ortiz, none of that would've happened. It would've been a show.

Bottom line, you're not going to do a big rating period if you're not the UFC. And using a UFC re-tread to try to draw the rating would've been the wrong way to go: it has to be something the UFC doesn't have, in order to differentiate yourself. You don't want a total washout of another organization as your lead draw.

You say that but his fights in the UFC always were a draw. Even against Machida who at the time nobody really had any desire to watch fight, that show did half a million buys in a year where that was above average. If Strikeforce signed him and put him in a title fight on CBS, their numbers would have been bigger than the show they just had. I told some people to look for me on TV and they had to be reminded of what show it was and what channel. So "just a show" is exactly what they just had. I can't argue about his upcoming buyrate against Forrest. It's a rematch of a fight that happened a while back and people aren't really excited to watch Forrest Griffin right now with his recent embarrassment. And referring to Ortiz as a "washout" is really over the top. He had a draw with the last LHW champion and a victory over the champ before him. Also nearly finished Machida which only Shogun has done better. Other than his early losses to Mezger and Shamrock, he's only lost to the best LHW's of all time and Machida who could very well turn out to be in that category as well. Give the guy some credit.

Still pretending Ortiz is an elite fighter. My goodness.

Definitely not an elite fighter but a top 10 Light Heavyweight. The problem with Tito is that his self promotion is so over the top to a point where nobody will believe anything that says he's a decent fighter. It's not like he sucks or anything.

And yes, Ortiz is a bigger draw than Fedor.

And you choose to build your company around a guy who is no longer an elite fighter.

And has lost against all the top fighters in the competing promotion.

Yes.

This will make you look major league.

Name recognition and being a proven draw are lot more valuable than talent. There is a reason why Kimbo is the biggest star in MMA.

KIMBO SLICE WAS ALSO SOMETHING UNIQUE THAT THE UFC DID NOT HAVE.

Brains. Use them.

Also, what happens when a lack of skill inevitably shows its face and the guy loses? You're fucked six ways to Sunday.

Seriously, if you guys think Tito Ortiz would have drawn more media attention to that Strikeforce show than Fedor, you're crazy.

What? 7 of the most viewed MMA matches on North American television are not UFC.

And look at who no. 2 is? Tito Ortiz! Even if that was three years ago, Tito is still a viable as hell draw to mainstream fans. And him headlining a show on CBS would have done a lot better than Fedor did. You know, like crack 5 million. Saying Ortiz wouldn't generate any ratings (or buyrates for that matter) is just plain silly. That is like saying Kimbo wouldn't garner ratings.

Against Ken Shamrock.

In a fight that was promoted not only by a full season of TUF, but a PPV fight.

For free.

Also, how many network TV cards has the UFC promoted? If UFC were on CBS, it would automatically do triple or maybe even quadruple what a Strikeforce show would do. You know that as well as I do.

TITO ORTIZ: TOP FIGHTER. MEGA STAR. DRAWING 400,000k BUYS AGAINST NON-NAME OPPONENTS. LEGEND.

The point is moot because he didn't sign with Strikeforce (and never was going to, by his own admission), but the media attention of an Ortiz vs. jobber fight would have been miniscule.