Add The New York Post on Google The newest in-the-works MMA organization has not yet announced its name, but its CEO offered a cheeky placeholder when nudged.
“Just call it Scott Coker Presents; how about that?” a smiling Coker told The Post hours after Thursday’s reveal that the former head of Strikeforce and Bellator was returning to fight promotion.
And don’t call the new venture Strike MMA; Coker confirmed the domain name attached to PR contacts that indicated such a name “definitely will not” be the moniker and refers merely to the parent company.
Though a name remains “weeks away” from being finalized and revealed to the world, Coker divulged much more about his new baby than had been contained in the initial announcement.
What was termed as a targeted “global debut in early 2027” is actually even closer than it might sound for the tournament-centric league.
“We’re looking at a January date,” Coker says. “And when I say January, it’s not going to be just one event. It’s going to be bang-bang-bang, bang-bang-bang. … It’s going to be a gauntlet of events that we produce in the first half of the year.
If that sounds like a lot for the type of eight-fighter grand prix Coker had staged dating back to the 2011-12 Strikeforce World Heavyweight Grand Prix through the final Bellator tournament completed before its November 2023 sale to rival PFL, that’s because eight is not enough for his new organization.
“It’ll be way north of eight,” Coker said, though he stopped short of confirming exactly how many athletes would be in the first year’s tournament that he promises will “give [fighters] a platform to make a big pot of gold at the end of the day.”
Whatever the size, Coker says a champion will be crowned over the course of 12 months, with 12 events planned for the first year and an eye toward 18 and 22 in Years 2 and 3, respectively.
Plans include events to be held both within the United States — in his native San Francisco Bay Area and later New York and Los Angeles — as well as internationally in both Europe and Asia.
The centerpiece tournament will be focused on a single weight class throughout 2027, with the first division to get the treatment not yet revealed.
Likewise, it remains unknown more than half-a-year out which fighters would be competing among what looks to be a sizable talent pool.
Coker, though, let it be known what type of talent he intends to attract, pulling a page out of his original MMA playbook from the organization he started and operated until the UFC purchased it 15 years ago.
“We’re going to identify the next set of stars, but also, we’re going to buy free agents from the top down, just like we built Strikeforce,” Coker says.
Coker noted how the careers of Daniel Cormier and Ronda Rousey got off the ground in earnest with that promotion before going on to legendary tenures in the UFC, but that they were young fighters competing at the same time as all-timer Fedor Emelianenko while the Russian was still amid his incredible 9 ½-year unbeaten run.
“We’re going to have the tournament format, and the tournament format leads to new-star development,” Coker explains. “And that’s something I think we’re really good at: fighter procurement. I think we’ve done it better than anybody else, but we will bring in free agents to sprinkle from the top down, and that’s going to be a very robust roster, let’s say, in a year or two.”
The “we” to which Coker refers is his team that includes many who’ve worked with him in the past, such as the new venture’s co-founder Peter Levin who had been an advisor and investor with Strikeforce.
Coker, a lifelong martial artist and former Hollywood stuntman who has cultivated long-term relationships with many of his past fighters, teased future revelations of who else is coming aboard with the new promotion, referring to them as “the next ‘Avengers’ team.”
“The one thing that I can promise you is that I’m putting together a team that I love and that we all get along. We’re all going to be in alignment when we announce this team,” said Coker, who originally promoted Strikeforce as a kickboxing organization as far back as the 1980s before transitioning it to MMA 20 years ago.
“Most people, if you said six months, worldwide global league, it’d be impossible. I think a lot of people would have a hard time. But you know what? Over the last four decades, all that experience in Strikeforce, all that experience in Strikeforce MMA, all that experience has led me to this point in my life where I can execute this. So I felt very, very good about it.”
A media rights deal is a must in the MMA market, and Coker’s team of investors — most notable to the less business-savvy is skateboard legend Tony Hawk — includes several men with experience on the television side.
The fight organization announced it had procured $60 million in funding, but Coker says he and his team capped their funding and “could have easily raised another $40 million” if not for one key reason: retention of control.
“We capped it at [$60 million]. We said, ‘That’s it,’ because then there’d be a dilution issue between me and my partners,” Coker explains. “I didn’t want the investors to have more control than we did. We want to have control of the company. So we turned away tens of millions of dollars of investment. So we are well-funded, and we are capitalized properly with a great group of investors, great strategic advisors.”
