Now that the dust has settled in the wake of this past Saturday's Strikeforce event in San Jose, California it is hard to rule the event anything but a huge success for the company.

Those that were skeptical of two women headlining a show from members of the media to critical fans of the sport and even fighters on the actual card were all silenced when the numbers came in on Tuesday afternoon with an amazing 856,000 viewers tuning into the main event on Showtime (the highest rated MMA fight in Showtime history).

The fight was an exciting 4:59 of action where the two personalities were so ‘over' to the San Jose audience that the slightest bit of offense was guaranteed to generate a massive response. The audience was clamoring for a Carano victory and despite the fight stopped in the fashion it was, I didn't feel this fight at all diminished the talents nor drawing ability of Carano moving forward (despite that backwards thinking writers that have added the ‘Kimbo' tag to Carano). The reality of the situation is that a rematch between these two will be even bigger than the first fight and should be saved by Strikeforce for a bigger platform for either network television or pay per view in the U.S (the show did air on PPV in Canada, however numbers are not available).

Strikeforce is in a very unique spot right now as three of their four biggest active stars right now (Cristiane ‘Cyborg' Santos, Fedor Emelianenko and Gegard Mousasi) are foreign talent that do not possess the standard ‘charisma' that generally connects with a North American audience. These are three talents whose skills are their biggest asset and all have a unique ability to connect in their own right through this avenue. We have seen in boxing how difficult it has been for foreign talent to draw on this side of the ocean with the state of the heavyweight division being a prime example of this and the supposed ‘need' to have a strong American heavyweight in the division to draw.

In the case of Cyborg, she is going to need the right opponent in order to deliver the type of numbers expected from her. No one in female MMA aside from Gina Carano is going to be able to duplicate the audience that was done this past Saturday and that is why a heavy focus needs to be placed on other women during this developmental phase in women's mixed martial arts and get fans accustomed with names such as Tara LaRosa, Erin Toughill, Marloes Coenen, Sarah Kaufman and Kaitlin Young.

In the case of Carano, the woman is so marketable and so popular right now that putting her in the cage with anyone is going to do very well especially now that you have the story to tell of Carano recovering from her first loss and how she responds. In a perfect world a deal is struck with CBS for an early 2010 broadcast and you can get Cyborg and Carano set for that show and the audience and publicity leading into that rematch will dwarf that of this past fight.

Fedor Emelianenko is the wildcat in the Strikeforce mix. Cyborg and Carano have one another as a natural feud that people are willing to pay to see but the opponents the general public are salivating to see Fedor fight are locked up with the UFC. There is no gigantic demand to see Fedor fight Alistair Overeem, Brett Rogers or Fabricio Werdum. The first fight by Fedor will be the easiest to promote because you are introducing him to a new audience and the allure of just seeing Fedor fight may be enough. Affliction did an adequate but not great job promoting Fedor and still generated approximately 100,000 buys per fight with ‘The Last Emperor' with his fights with Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski, who at least were bringing years of UFC exposure to the table, something that none of the Strikeforce heavyweights have in their back pocket. If promoted correctly a build to a Fedor Vs Overeem fight for the title could do moderate business but I don't see that doing more than either the Sylvia or Arlovski fights and would need a strong co-feature to draw with if it were to go the pay per view route.

Gegard Mousasi had a star making performance this past Saturday night where he made Renato Babalu Sobral look out of his depth with the 24-year old phenom. Mousasi could be the key to opening up Strikeforce's relatively thin light heavyweight division and putting a star in that division. The problem is depth and finding talent to match with Mousasi that the general public will buy into.

As a fan, I'm very excited about some of the upcoming possibilities for the promotion but conversely as someone that has followed every promotion that decided to run before they could walk I am always leery of promotions getting too ambitious too quickly. Next year Strikeforce plans to run 18 shows between their big cards and their Challenger Series events, which is a huge undertaking for this promotion. The three stars listed above have to be able to carry their own weight in this promotion in 2010 along with Nick Diaz while question marks surround the futures of Cung Le and Frank Shamrock and to a degree talent such as Jake Shields and Robbie Lawler becoming draws.

Scott Coker and company have put a ton on the table and the next 12-months will prove what the returns on investment will be to create a viable alternative national promotion in the Mixed Martial Arts landscape.