A few notes:
- Quarterfinal and Semifinal bouts will be three, five minute rounds.
- The Strikeforce heavyweight title will not be on the line, but the tournament will be for a Grand Prix title.
- Scott Coker claims that making all tournament bouts five, five minute rounds wasn't in the cards due to having to have multiple athletic commissions on the same page, and it couldn't get done. ESPN's Josh Gross says that the New Jersey athletic commission claims that they were never approached about five round tournament bouts. Sounds like Coker tried to dodge hard questions regarding tournament rounds and tossed the blame on commissions. I suppose asking them to license Josh Barnett, who has popped for steroids three occasions in his career, is hard enough to attempt.
- If a tournament bout is scored a draw, a fourth judge will turn in his score card to determine a winner.
Despite my gripe about Coker dodging the blame for three round fights instead of five, I'm still pumped for this tournament, although Strikeforce may find themselves in an odd position should Alistair Overeem be defeated handily, and keep his Strikeforce heavyweight title until he faces the winner of the grand prix.