Scott Coker says co-promotion thrown in jeopardy by Bjorn Rebney’s antics
Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker heated up the media war being waged by Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney, telling Bloodyelbow.com’s Jonathan Snowden that Rebney’s antics were seriously jeopardizing prospects of co-promotion
between the two mixed martial arts promotions.
"You know what? I'll be honest with you: it's a concern. The business style that they operate under and our business style is completely different," Coker said. "When you see somebody, I don't want to say
attack, but position himself in the media the way he's trying to - we're definitely going to take notice of that. And it's going to influence our decisions about who we work with and who we don't."
Strikeforce and Bellator are the second and third largest MMA promotions in the U.S, respectively, and fans have been calling for them to pit their champions against each other for quite some time. Originally
fans speculated about Strikeforce’s lightweight (155lb) champion Gilbert Melendez fighting Bellator’s Eddie Alvarez, but since then the prospect of a mega-event pitting the lightweight, welterweight (170lb), middleweight (185lb), and heavyweight (205-265lb)
champions of each organisation has loomed large over the MMA world.
Rebney last week accused Coker of avoiding such an event, presumably for fear his fighters would lose to the smaller promotions, and claimed he’d been sending Coker a dozen text messages a day to talk about
it. Coker denied this, at which point Rebney sent out a release to the media containing screenshots of four messages he’d sent Coker. A Strikeforce representative said that Rebney had been sending them to a number Coker didn’t use anymore.
Rebney’s actions caused discussion in the MMA world, with some praising him for putting pressure on Coker, while many commentators panned him for acting unprofessionally.
Coker was firmly in the latter category.
"I just question whether he is really trying to make a fight happen or just trying to keep his company in the headlines," Coker. "If he's really trying to make a deal, I don't support the way he's handling
it. That's for sure."
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