STRIKEFORCE NEWS: Strikeforce books June 18 event in Dallas, second report supports delay to Heavyweight Grand Prix

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

A report from Sherdog.com last week suggesting the second set of quarterfinal bouts for the Heavyweight World Grand Prix would be delayed has been supported by a separate report from Mike Chiappetta at MMAFighting.com.

According to Chiappetta's report, no final decision has been made on that front, but signs are pointing to the delay being the likely scenario.

Currently, multiple fights are being rumored for an April 9 event, which is now expected to come to the Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., and with them filling up and running in California, it looks like there won't be room for the Josh Barnett vs. Brett Rogers and Alistair Overeem vs. Fabricio Werdum fights.

At the very least, running the event in California makes it impossible to book Barnett on the card, as he has not settled issues with the California State Athletic Commission, and his next opportunity to do so wouldn't be until their April 18 meeting.

Adding fuel to the delay is a post from ESPN's Josh Gross on Twitter, who revealed that Strikeforce has secured a June 18 date for an event at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, Gross stated that the Texas State Athletic Commission would license Barnett, but he does not have confirmation that the Grand Prix fights would take place on that event.

But regardless of where the second set of quarterfinal bouts take place, the longer they take to happen, the longer it takes to get the semifinal bouts together, and the longer it takes for the tournament to finish.

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Penick's Analysis: It certainly appears that after plans to run in Japan fell through, they didn't have a full contingency plan for these fights, and now that they're looking at California they can't put Barnett on the card. If these two fights move back to June 18 then this tournament has been completely blown up. That's over four months in between the first round fights, meaning for "Bigfoot" Silva and Sergei Kharitonov, they either take other fights outside of the tournament and risk losing in between or they sit out seven, maybe eight months before they get their semifinal fight. It's not a good situation right now, and it's disappointing that they've dropped the ball on this after getting a lot of fans' hopes at a high for the tournament concept.

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