Showtime and Strikeforce have sealed a new deal and it states that the top 8 main events of Strikeforce will be telecasted on Showtime and its sister concern Showtime Extreme. The main card bouts will be telecasted on the prime channel and the preliminary card bouts will be telecasted on Showtime Extreme, as confirmed. Any timeframe for those 8 shows (Except the first) are however yet to be announced. The events are not expected to run under Strikeforce Challengers brand though and financial terms of the deal were not published publicly.
The first event part of this deal will be “Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine” to be held in Las Vegas on 7th of January. In addition, the event is scheduled to take place in one of the free-preview weekends of Showtime and hence more than 60 million households will be able to watch the fights without spending any extra dime.
That’s not all though. Current fighters part of Strikeforce brand such as Luke Rochhold, Miesha Tate, Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and Gilbert Melendez (All of the 4 are champions in the brand in different categories) will continue to fight under Strikeforce and not be drafted (It happened with several Strikeforce fighters such as Dan Henderson, Nick Diaz and Alistair Overeem) into another Zuffa owned promotion UFC.
The official announcement was made by Stephen Espinoza, the executive of Showtime. Dana White, the UFC president later echoed similar sentiment as well. Dana White also stated that he looks forward to build Strikeforce into a bigger brand in 2012.
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