Werdum Takes a Vacation

The open-market contract in MMA has officially crossed over from suspect to a very bad idea: Fabricio Werdum has made “a couple of good contacts” overseas and says he intends to fight for a foreign promotion before returning to Strikeforce in 2011.

Strikeforce would like you to believe there’s a kind of promotional nobility in signing fighters to non-exclusive deals. They would probably argue that it allows them to purchase fighters that would otherwise reject their offers, and serves the fighter’s interests over the promotion’s. And what’s good for the fighter is good for the fans, right? But there’s a reason fight leagues are self-centered: it’s the only way to have even a semi-coherent roster.

Alistair Overeem should be defending his title against some kind of warm body on Dec. 4; instead, he’s fighting in K-1. By the time he’s prepared to return, Werdum will probably be somewhere in Poland fighting on an iceberg for the amusement of a dictator. By the time Werdum is ready, Fedor Emelianenko will be fighting Overeem in an orbiting space station funded by Mark Cuban.