And then there was one...

Now that the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, has offically purchased its stiffest competition, what does that mean to us as MMA fans? Dana White hinted at very little. He continued to say it would be "business as usual" meaning that Strikeforce and the UFC would continue to run as individual entities. Strikeforce has contracts with dozens of fighters, and a pretty big contract with Showtime to air their fights. The plan is Zuffa will honor all those contracts, but once they are up, anything is fair game. Dana White did take time to note he would not be keeping Paul Daley (who sucker punched Josh Koscheck in his last fight with the UFC) or heavyweight contender Josh Barnett (who is a former UFC Heavyweight Champion, but someone who has also continually failed steroid testing) when their respective contracts were up. He also hinted that M1 Global, Fedor Emilianenko's management company, would likely not be real happy dealing with Dana White in the future as they have had a tumultuous past to say the least.

Where does that leave us when Showtime no longer has Strikeforce under contract? Its hard to imagine that Zuffa would want to give Strikeforce equal (or similar) billing to their flagship company, The UFC. For years Dana White has diminished the talent on Strikeforce, while celebrating the UFC talent as the best in the world. In terms of the depth of talent, its hard to argue with Dana. The UFC has more good to great fighters than any other organization in the world. That said, Strikeforce still has some of the best fighters at the top of their divisions that the UFC would likely love to utilize for some dream matchups. Dan Henderson, Jacare Souza, Nick Diaz, Gegard Mousassi, King Mo, etc. are all as good as their peers in the UFC, and would add some intrigue to their own divisions.

What has me personally excited is the potential to add a whole group of top Heavyweights to the UFC. Take the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix fighters for example, its not likely that Dana White keeps Andrei Arlovski around after another bad KO loss, but he could add Sergei Kharitonov, Fabricio Werdum, or Antonio Silva to that mix. And a dream scenario for White and the UFC would be for Alistair Overeem to continue his recent dominance and win the Strikeforce tournament around the same time Cain Velasquez meets the winner of Dos Santos and Lesnar to create a unification heavyweight title match between Overeem and the current UFC champ.

And then we have Fedor Emilianenko. Dana White hates M1 Global, M1 Global despises Dana White, so who knows where this goes... money and some pretty interesting matchups are still out there for both sides. I don't think Fedor can compete at an elite level with the much larger opponents like Silva, Lesnar, Carwin, Overeem, etc, and would still love to see him drop down to light heavyweight to face Hendo, and then continue in the light heavyweight division where I think he can compete with the very best in either Strikeforce or the UFC. But more than that, we all know how bad Randy Couture wanted to face Fedor, so Fedor could go and take interesting fights with guys like Couture, Noguiera, Cro Cop, etc. making a lot of dreams come true while making a lot of money for himself and the UFC.

Strikeforce stars like Herschel Walker and Gina Carano may be out after their contracts expire, but the future of MMA is actually brighter than it was a few days ago. I don't want to see Zuffa run Strikeforce like a minor league system for the UFC, and would actually prefer to continue to run them separately, with potential super shows where the best of each brand face off for a tournament style belt once a year. Regardless, at the end of the day we should expect to see more fights, and some dream matchups as this thing shakes out, and that’s the best possible outcome for all of us.