Issue 080
October 2011
After almost three decades promoting martial arts, Strikeforce boss Scott Coker isn’t about to slow down any time soon
When Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker first began promoting martial arts competitions there was no way he could have known that he would someday become an executive for the biggest mixed martial arts organization in the world. In fairness, when he booked the San Jose Civic Auditorium for that 1985 kickboxing event, MMA wasn’t even a sport yet.
“In 1985, one of my students said, ‘Hey, do you want to try this kickboxing program?’” Coker recalls to Fighters Only. “Coors Superfights had a program where they were sponsoring local events. I had no idea what it was or what it meant or how much work it would be, and I just said, ‘Sure, let’s try it.’ I was like 21 years old. We had 2,200 people there. I think I made like $8,000, and I said, ‘This is great. I’m rich.’”
Born in Korea, where he lived until he was nine, Coker began exploring traditional martial arts from a young age. “Over there, everybody does martial arts,” Coker says. “When you’re a kid, you do martial arts like a P.E. class as part of the regular curriculum. You can play soccer, do martial arts or play a few other sports like baseball. That’s how I got started.”
When Coker’s family moved to the US in the mid 1970s – first to San Francisco, then to San Jose two years later – the executive-to-be kept pursuing his budding passion. “When I moved to San Jose in 1976, I walked into the local martial arts school, which was Ernie Reyes’ school,” Coker says. “Even to this day, I still workout with him two days a week. I’m still continuing my education. Luckily, he’s evolved with the times.
“Back then, the taekwondo guys didn’t like the karate guys, and the karate guys didn’t like the kung fu guys. There was a lot of dissension in martial arts in the ’70s and ’80s in California and everywhere in North America, I think. But my instructor continued to learn and grow and added to a good eskrima and Muay Thai background. He was very progressive and ahead of his time. That, I’m very thankful for.”
Coker progressed with him. After building a successful partnership with the Professional Kickboxing Association, hosting fights with the sport’s biggest names for nearly 20-years, Coker elected to make the transition to promoting MMA events. Despite little backing for his initial effort, the March 2006 debut was a smashing success.
“In 2004, the California State Athletic Commission called me and said they were going to make MMA legal in the state. I said, ‘Well, I have the longest-running license here. I want to be involved.’ At the time we had been licensed for 19-straight years. I told them if MMA was going to be legal I wanted to be the first one to promote it and I wanted to be active. After that the legalization went back and forth.
“Finally in January 2006 the CSAC said, ‘OK, we’re going to go, and this is real. Do you still want to do the first show?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ Two-and-a-half months later we had the first fight with Frank Shamrock vs Cesar Gracie and Cung Le’s MMA debut. Josh Thomson fought on that card. It was a complete sell-out, to the rafters. We sold 18,265 tickets. It was grand-slam home run. That was our entry into the MMA business. Think about this: we had no TV, no sponsorships, nothing. It was just a live-gate business at that time.”
Strikeforce grew quickly and soon partnered with ProElite to co-promote top-level events. When that promotion began to struggle financially, Coker and his backers at Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment (SVSE) boosted Strikeforce by buying ProElite assets.
“The growth plan was going to be a much-longer, slower plan,” Coker says. “We did those events with ProElite and we developed a relationship with Showtime. They felt comfortable with us. When ProElite got shaky in September and October 2008 my guys approved the asset purchase, so we went and bought them, which gave us the fighters and the TV contracts. Honestly, it was like three months later when we started promoting fights on Showtime. So we went from a regional promotion doing pretty good-sized fights to, in 2009, jumping to a national promotion doing fights on Showtime and not having to co-promote with EliteXC. It went on from there.”
Strikeforce continued to blossom, but the ownership group at SVSE, which also owns the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, began to shift their focus onto the acquisition of a National Basketball Association franchise. In need of venture capital, the group elected to exit the MMA business and sell Strikeforce to Zuffa LLC – the parent company of the UFC.
To some, the transaction meant the end of an era. But to Coker, no longer the sole leader of a martial arts promotion for the first time in 26 years, it only meant the beginning of another chapter of his life as a martial artist.
“I look at it much differently than most people think,” Coker says. “Being involved in martial arts promotion and helping to grow martial arts, really that’s been my whole motivation. Martial arts is something I grew up on, I believe in and I’ve dedicated my whole life to, whether I was teaching or promoting. MMA is an evolution of martial arts. It’s something that’s not going to go backward.
“If you visit a traditional martial arts school today, you’ll see they do curriculum in MMA. My instructor, who was a very traditional taekwondo student when I first met him, you walk into his school today and he’s got a cage in the middle of his dojo. The martial arts have involved and I think MMA is always going be a part of martial arts from here moving forward. To me, this is my contribution back to martial arts. The past five years have been an amazing journey and I’m going to continue to dedicate my time and my life to help growing martial arts.”
