“Strikeforce was my baby. Scott [Coker] and I were sitting, like this, at a coffee shop. He was like, ‘Bro, I wanna do MMA.’ It was literally like that. And I go, ‘Wow, are you kidding me? Do you know hard it is? Do you know how much money it costs and the risk there is?’ And he and I were like bros, and we shook hands and said, ‘Let’s do it!’ I put everything into that company. I mean, literally every day of my life, I woke up, and I breathed Strikeforce. It was the first chance I saw, besides the monopoly of the UFC, to give MMA a shot — to give martial artists, who don’t know what MMA is about, a nice picture of it. Scott was a martial artist as a promoter, and he got it. He let me do my thing. I’m an entertainer. I’m a risk taker. When we sold, it was harder than you [Bas Rutten] breaking my face in our first fight. It was like everything ended that day. It was really tough.”

Former UFC champion and current Strikeforce personality, Frank Shamrock, told Inside MMA’s Bas Rutten that he felt like his baby died when ZUFFA bought Strikeforce.