{"id":712517,"date":"2026-06-03T12:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T12:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/712517\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T12:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T12:09:06","slug":"scott-coker-vows-to-end-mmas-funk-were-gonna-stir-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/712517\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Coker vows to end MMA\u2019s funk: \u2018We\u2019re gonna stir it up\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Coker is back, and he\u2019s bringing the ol\u2019 Strikeforce gang with him<\/a> for a new MMA promotion that will debut at the start of 2027.<\/p>\n

Those who have been around for a while will remember Coker as the man who brought MMA to California with Strikeforce\u2019s huge Frank Shamrock vs. Cesar Gracie fight. Over the years Strikeforce held a bunch of big events and developed stars like Ronda Rousey, Daniel Cormier, Nick Diaz, Luke Rockhold, Cung Le and Cris Cyborg. Strikeforce was a legit No. 2 to UFC back in 2011 when the UFC bought it out<\/a> from under Coker, making an offer to the promotion\u2019s co-owners that they couldn\u2019t refuse.<\/a><\/p>\n

Coker would return to help run Bellator, but was never really the man in charge and clearly chaffed under the control of Viacom owners, who never allowed the promotion to grow outside of the constraints of their corporate roadmap.<\/p>\n

Now Coker is back<\/a> with many of his original Strikeforce team and plans to run twelve events per year with a roster of over a hundred fighters. And while he\u2019s realistic about the MMA landscape and UFC\u2019s place as the Goliath in the sport, he also believes he can carve out a niche and shake things up a little.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there\u2019s a little bit of a funk in the MMA space right now,\u201d Coker said on the Ariel Helwani Show. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know what it is. But I just feel it\u2019s it\u2019s got a funk to it right now. So, you know, let\u2019s go stir it up. The thing with MVP, their show, they\u2019re stirring it up. It gets people excited. It gets people to root for somebody. And then we\u2019re we\u2019re gonna do the same. People are gonna root for us too, and we\u2019re gonna go stir it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to me, I think the sport needs a little bit of shaking the cage. And that\u2019s something that we\u2019re really good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the UFC\u2019s current product,<\/a> Coker suggested it had gotten bland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, to me, it looks consistent,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of weird because if you say, \u2018Name four champions from UFC in the weight classes,\u2019 I don\u2019t think I could do it right now. And I think a lot of my friends can\u2019t do it right now. So it\u2019s just something, I don\u2019t know what it is. Maybe it\u2019s too much. It\u2019s on every week, in front of your face too much. Over-saturation. Maybe it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s method to the UFC\u2019s madness, though. That over-saturation has helped keep other MMA promotions from gaining a toehold on the treacherous mountain to MMA profitability. But Coker already knows how to run an MMA company in the black.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a learning curve in this business, and if you don\u2019t know it, you\u2019re gonna be paying crazy money out because you don\u2019t know it,\u201d Coker said. \u201cAnd you know what? I\u2019ve been in the business almost four decades, or over four decades now. I know this business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coker said he turned down over $40 million in funding because he simply doesn\u2019t need that much money to get this new venture going.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said no, I don\u2019t want it,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I don\u2019t want to be diluted to where I don\u2019t control the company. This isn\u2019t going to be my company the way I want to run it \u2026 I don\u2019t want to be in a situation where I\u2019m going to be losing control of this company because I don\u2019t ever want that to happen. So we turned them away. We turned away $40 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see what Coker can do in today\u2019s MMA space with the UFC taking up so much oxygen and so many of the top fighters. But based on his track record where he was the man in charge, we can see him doing exactly what he\u2019s said he\u2019d do: shake things up a little, and maybe add some fun to a sport that\u2019s gotten a little stale and funky as TKO focuses more on taking over boxing than making MMA as big as it could be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Coker is back, and he\u2019s bringing the ol\u2019 Strikeforce gang with him for a new MMA promotion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85],"class_list":["post-712517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}