FiveKnuckles.com: Definitely, I follow you one hundred percent. If you look at the UFC, sometimes they don't care how good a fighter is because they know if they can build a base from a show like the Ultimate Fighter, the fans will be interested. Nobody wants to see Strikeforce drop the ball and make an avoidable mistake.

Gilbert Melendez: I agree with you there. A lot of UFC stars are fighters that don't really have that much talent, but fans get to know them so they totally buy in. Strikeforce needs to step it up in that aspect. They can use Fedor much better by telling everyone that we got the best fighter in the world. The guy is an undefeated heavyweight which is unheard of in today's game. They didn't really even push that angle. Don't get me wrong, people saw that fight and witnessed for themselves how good he really is, but they barely made an attempt to let people know that he is the pound for pound best in the world. They did one little twenty minute special on the guy two weeks before the fight. They should've put something up at least four weeks out and tried to scrape up some footage of his old fights if that's even possible.

FiveKnuckles.com: Well, as Strikeforce grows those things should fall into place, but if nothing else, they know they can get butts in the seats in San Jose, just like the UFC does it in Vegas. Strikeforce has many home grown Bay Area fighters on the roster so they can't fall behind on pushing the hometown guys like yourself and Josh [Thompson].

Gilbert Melendez: See, you know what I'm talking about. It would help too because we actually have people out here that know us, like us, and want to see us succeed. Let's refresh their memories a little bit and let them see us on a billboard so they know we're fighting. You can't drive two miles on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas without seeing a UFC fighter on a billboard.

FiveKnuckles.com: It's just like you said earlier, self-promotion doesn't really cut it anymore. Do you think Strikeforce Evolution could've garnered a competitive buy rate on pay-per-view? If I had to pay to see those fights, I wouldn't be complaining.

Gilbert Melendez: You know what, that's a hard one to say considering it was on Showtime and it only had 340,000 views or something close to that. I think the WEC had around 330,000 views for their event last month, and the Versus Channel is more accessible than Showtime. I don't know if Strikeforce is ready to be on pay-per-view, or maybe they should just throw it on and see what happens. I think it was certainly a pay-per-view caliber event. I think the people knew that too, after the fight, but not being sure beforehand would take away from the buy rate. It's going to be a while...