Showtime, Strikeforce have a broadcast deal
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Showtime has plans to produce and televise 16 live Strikeforce mixed martial arts events a year, starting with the April 11 card at San Jose’s HP Pavilion that will feature former fighters of the financially strapped Elite XC.
Popular female fighter Gina Carano, former street fighter Kimbo Slice, Jake Shields, Robbie Lawler, K.J. Noons, Scott Smith and Cris Cyborg, who’ll likely fight Carano in the near future, are among the 40-plus Elite XC refugees who will join San Jose-based Strikeforce and boost its stable of fighters to 115, co-founder and CEO Scott Coker said Thursday.
Coker said Lawler, kickboxing champion Cung Le and MMA veteran Frank Shamrock (against an undetermined opponent) will be on the April 11 card.
He declined to discuss terms of the Elite XC contract purchase, but said Shields has two fights left on his contract and said Carano is tied to Strikeforce for ‘a bit longer.’
Regarding Kimbo, whose final fight (a loss to Seth Petruzelli) in what turned out to be Elite XC’s last fight, generated controversy about the behind-the-scenes instruction MMA fighters receive, Coker said, ‘We’ll reach out and see when he wants to fight. It might be in May, June or later in the summer.’
-- Lance Pugmire
Photo (top): Kimbo Slice. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times
Photo (inset): Gina Carano. Credit: Robert Laberge / Getty Images
