Strikeforce Names Rich Chou First Official Matchmaker
PRESS RELEASE — Rich Chou has been hired by STRIKEFORCE to serve as the world championship mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion’s first-ever official matchmaker.
Chou comes to STRIKEFORCE with 10 years of experience in the MMA business. During his tenure in the sport, he has functioned in the same capacity with two other organizations and worn a number of other hats including that of competitor and referee.
“It is an honor to have the opportunity to work for a top organization like STRIKEFORCE,” said Chou, who will be responsible for creating matchups between fighters for STRIKEFORCE’s monthly events that air live on SHOWTIME as well as for the promotion’s live debut on CBS on Saturday, November 7. Before the acquisition of Chou, STRIKEFORCE had relied on a committee, headed by CEO Scott Coker, to create its matchups.
“STRIKEFORCE has done some incredible things over the course of the last few years to emerge as one of the world’s premiere MMA promotions. They have a deep roster of world class talent so it’s going to be very exciting and a lot of fun to be able to put together highly compelling matchups for their events.”
The 30-year-old Chou graduated from Pepperdine University in 2001 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and Business Administration. During his college years, he began training in the fighting discipline of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Shortly after commencement, Chou relocated to Honolulu, Hawaii with the intention of becoming a professional mixed martial artist. He went on to compete in numerous grappling tournaments as well as in one professional MMA fight and referee over 100 MMA bouts in Hawaii.
In 2004, Chou was hired by promoter J.D. Penn, the brother of MMA superstar B.J. Penn, to assist with the growth of J.D’s “Rumble on the Rock” series of MMA events and to spearhead all matchmaking efforts for the promotion. Chou played a similar role with EliteXC between 2007 and 2008.
Chou will relocate from Honolulu, Hawaii to STRIKEFORCE’s headquarters in San Jose, California to assume his new position.
STRIKEFORCE in March 2009 signed a multi-year agreement with SHOWTIME to stage live MMA events on the premium cable television network. Last week, STRIKEFORCE announced that it would make its live, primetime debut on CBS with its “Fedor vs. Rogers” mega-fight that it will co-promote with M-1 Global on Saturday, November 7.
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interesting move, not quite sure to make of it…
The most notable thing about this move is that the former matchmaking committee also included Bob Cook from American Kickboxing Academy, so there was a bit of conflict of interest that this move resolved.
good point, maybe this makes the AKA relationship w/ UFC a little less tense. I actually kept forgetting Cook was part of that committee.
I don’t know how much match making experience he has. Let’s hope he puts together some entertaining fights.
oh he’s got good experience. it’s only interesting that this is done now when strikeforce has been around for so long.
Maybe now that Strikeforce is becoming the Strikeforce Alliance, Scott Coker felt that he needed someone to take over the matchmaking duties, seeing as how Coker is probably spending a whole sh!tload of time “managing” his relationships with DREAM and M-1 Global, which can’t be any sort of day in the park…
I’m glad this clears up the conflict of interest with Bob Cook. Hopefully it will clear up the stupid 183 and 179 lbs fights they’ve been doing this year.
And now Bob Cook can get back to explaining to Swick, Kos, and Fitch that at some point Dana is going to make 2 of them step into the cage against each other…
Meant to comment on this the other day and whatnot, but with Strikeforce expected growth in size of their promotion and amount of shows per year going up in 2010 perhaps this is one of the best things that Coker could have done… Believe that the final word is Coker’s but to have a “true” matchmaker in the house is going to help quite a bit, with the Challengers series, Large shows for Showtime and CBS growing into different markets, this is a good move….. Plus who knew of Joe Silva before he was a UFC matchmaker
Do you think that Chou will have any better luck convincing Alistair Overeem to defend his HW belt than Coker did??
Perhaps.. We shall see….