Heavyweight tourney a winner for fans

Americans understand tournaments. They love brackets. Just give them some lines with names above them, then connect those lines to other lines and watch the masses go bonkers.

That's what made college basketball's March Madness a cultural phenomenon. It's what college football sorely lacks.

Tournaments bring closure to debate, provide legitimate answers to legitimate questions.

Scott Coker knows this. That's why the CEO of Strikeforce spent the past few months trying to concoct a heavyweight mixed martial arts tournament. And now, finally, announced this past Tuesday, we have the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix.

Eight fighters, four nights of fights. It begins Feb. 12 at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, with Fedor Emelianenko's quarterfinal against Antonio Silva. Andrei Arlovski fights Sergei Kharitonov on the same card.

"In the process of this tournament happening over the next six or eight months, you're going to see the bad boys fight the bad boys," Coker said.

Coker took a different approach to this tournament, one that might make most sports fans scratch their heads. But Strikeforce has a way of doing that more often than not. Let's consider Strikeforce champion Alistair Overeem the No. 1 seed, fresh off his K-1 Grand Prix and the Dream interim title wins last month in Japan. Figure that Fedor, whose 10-year, 27-fight win streak came to an end last June, to be the No. 2 seed.

Bracket logic suggests those two fighters should meet in the final. Nope. Not in Strikeforce. If both win their quarterfinal bouts, they'll meet in the semifinals. Odd, yes?

But what the potential semifinal pairing does is put MMA fans one round closer to the fight everyone wants. Why give each fighter a second chance to lose or get hurt just so we can have a final-round pairing of No. 1 vs. No. 2?

"It's a milestone for our company," Coker said. "It's a milestone for mixed martial arts. It's historic."

You might also expect Overeem to sit out and let the tournament winner get a shot at his title. Nope. Not in Strikeforce.

The heavyweight title will be up for grabs throughout the tournament. Overeem will defend his title against Fabricio Werdum, the man who beat Fedor, in the quarterfinals some time in April. Josh Barnett will fight Brett Rogers the same night.

JAN. 14 UPDATE: See newly clarified tournament rules.

"Alistair has his hit list, and Werdum was on his hit list, Fedor is on his hit list," Coker said. "This is an opportunity for him to eventually fight both."

And an opportunity for fans to see the fights they've been screaming for the past few months. It takes all that message board rhetoric clogging up your bandwidth and parses it into justifiable discourse.

Fedor has been the biggest fight draw outside of the UFC for a long time. Competing in this tournament is just part of the new multiyear contract negotiated between his MMA promotion M-1 Global and Strikeforce.

A Fedor-Overeem semifinal is undoubtedly the featured attraction of this tournament. Its possibility almost renders the right side of the bracket obsolete.

That Strikeforce was able to even put this card together is impressive, given its less-than-stellar history in the heavyweight division. Overeem won the title in November 2007 but made his first defense in May 2010.

"It wasn't a tournament I had to sell," Coker said. "It was dealing with eight different personalties, eight different camps with eight different wants and eight different needs and eight different managers."