UFC Losses for 'Mayhem' Miller and Cung Le Highlight Need for Strikeforce

When news broke earlier this year of Cung Le and Jason "Mayhem" Miller's migration to the UFC, much was made of Strikeforce's shrinking roster. With an already anemic talent pool, Strikeforce, the going wisdom stated, desperately needed charismatic, entertaining fighters like Miller and Le. Now, with each of those high-profile imports suffering a loss--the most recent being also the most dispiriting, as Miller was handily dismantled by Michael Bisping in the main event of the TUF 14 Finale--it seems that Le and Miller, and the fans who enjoy watching their pugilistic exploits, may just as dearly need Strikeforce.

We could shout-type at each other until we're blue in the fingertips about whether or not Miller belongs in the UFC (based on what I saw last Saturday night, unfortunately, I don't think that he does), but the fact is that UFC President Dana White himself is openly considering a pink slip for "Mayhem." Since a loss to Wanderlei Silva at UFC 139, similar talk has surrounded Cung Le. Without convincing results, it seems that winning personalities and dynamic styles aren't enough to hold a spot in the "Super Bowl of MMA." Hence the need for Strikeforce. As I wrote this past April:

Ideally, Strikeforce would remain as a proving ground for tomorrow's great contenders, and a stage for the slowing veterans who still know how to put on a show--surely Renato Sobral is too good for us to be catching his latest fight on some fan-shot Youtube video, and surely someone like Luke Rockhold is too exciting an up-and-comer to not see with our own eyes. That MMA needs another visible promotion becomes yet more apparent when you consider the nascent female divisions, and the increasing migration of fighters from the Japanese circuit looking to lay down roots and fists in the more profitable North American market.

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I don't want to see the UFC replace Strikeforce because, really, it can't. Not comprehensively. There are simply too many mixed martial artists, there are too many fights I want to see. When it comes to the UFC and Strikeforce, the world's too big for just the one of them.

One imagines, on some level, that the top brass realize this, too, as renegotiations between Showtime and UFC/Strikeforce parent company Zuffa are reportedly going quite well, and it looks like Strikeforce will, rather than being dissolved, continue to be broadcast.

Strikeforce is a deeply troubled organization, with scattershot matchmaking and an under-promoted stable of fighters. Yet, considering the disappointing debuts of Miller and Le in the UFC's middleweight division (not to mention the underwhelming UFC career of former Strikeforce kingpin Jake Shields) the promotion may yet be a boon to fans enamored of exciting if not elite sluggers and submission artists.