The New Pro Elite Hasn't Signed A Television Deal With Showtime/CBS... But They Should

As someone who actually enjoyed Elite XC before it epically failed and practically killed itself, trust me on this one: it feels pretty weird to be talking about Pro Elite again. Elite XC was a real “guilty pleasure” of mine: even though I knew they were run by money-grubbing boxing promoters that didn’t care about the sport and did the worst possible job of ensuring the continued health of their organization, I watched every single Elite XC show that the promotion ever ran, and I found myself enjoying a lot of them. You can imagine, then, how weird it felt when rumors pointed towards the newly-resurrected Pro Elite signing a TV deal with their old partners, CBS and Showtime. Apparently, though, it really was just a rumor.

At least, that’s what T. Jay Thompson, the head of fight operations for Pro Elite, had to say. You can get all the information here, and here’s quick summary: Thompson basically said “we’re talking to everybody but nothing is official yet”, and he added that any false reports and rumors could potentially hurt Pro Elite’s positioning with cable networks they are trying to working with.

If things were strange before, be prepared: they’re about to get a whole lot stranger. Here we go: I actually feel that Pro Elite should get back on television, and should furthermore get back with CBS and Showtime.

Why do I think that? It boils down to two main reasons: one, the new Pro Elite is not the old Pro Elite. Two, Strikeforce is not long for this earth. Allow me to explain.

Point number one: the Pro Elite we knew is dead and buried, and it’s never coming back. The new Pro Elite owners took a gamble on purchasing the Pro Elite name, but with the people they’ve been hiring so far, they seem to have actual brains inside of their heads. Pro Elite has made a lot of smart signings lately, in terms of both fighters for their first show and behind-the-scenes management. Thompson has many, many years under his belt as a fight promoter. Also, Pro Elite recently signed Rich Chou, the former matchmaker for Strikeforce. Pro Elite has also grabbed up some notable free agents like Kendall Grove, Reagan Penn, and even Andrei Arlovski, who remains very popular despite his losing streak. In short: the incredibly wasteful spending and the brain-dead booking/organization of the old Pro Elite seems to not have carried over into the new Pro Elite, and that’s a very good thing.

Point number two: the current major organization on Showtime, Strikeforce, will likely be dead once their contract with Showtime expires. With a string of very damaging decisions masquerading under “business as usual”, it now appears that the Zuffa top brass have no intentions of keeping Strikeforce alive. With every high-level fighter that’s released or signed away to the UFC, it becomes clearer and clearer that Zuffa plans to do with Strikeforce what they’ve done with all the promotions they’ve conquered: namely, fold it into the UFC.

So what’s left? What are our alternatives? There’s certainly Bellator, which continues to put out awesome, critically-underrated shows on MTV2 and, if you believe the rumors, will soon be switching to Spike TV. But that’s it… that’s all we have. Unless Pro Elite manages to succeed, of course. For that reason and the reasons listed above, I think Pro Elite may actually be able to stick around this time and furthermore, I hope that they do.