By Pramit Mohapatra

Just a day after news broke that EliteXC was canceling its September 20 Showtime event, there's word today that Pro Elite (the parent company of EliteXC) is also canceling today's Cage Rage Contenders event in England.

MMAWeekly.com has this quote from Cage Rage co-founder Dave O'Donnell:

“We cancelled the show in order to focus on the November contenders show, which will be the first time we have done a live contenders show in full direct to TV. It made no sense to spread ourselves thin on this occasion.”

Cage Rage is one of a number of promotions that Pro Elite has bought in order to become a more global company. The Contenders events are Cage Rage's version of EliteXC's ShoXC events -- essentially a venue for up-and-coming talent, a minor league of sorts.

In addition to canceling this event, the report states that Cage Rage is scaling back its operations, not only moving events to smaller venues but also laying off employees, including talent.

Cancellations just the latest issues for Pro Elite

While the latest cancellations are certainly troublesome, Pro Elite has been putting up warning signs for a while now.

Earlier in the year, the head of ProElite.com -- Kelly Perdew -- left to pursue another venture. While an official connection between the two was never made, ProElite.com had lost a reported $3.5 million in its brief history up to that point.

Then, EliteXC's second show on CBS on July 26 tanked in the ratings even though it was a much better night of fights than the promotion's first show on network television a couple of months earlier. The poor ratings came a week after UFC Fight Night 14 did well on Spike TV and a week after Affliction's debut event proved that the clothing company had already assembled a more impressive roster of talent in a shorter amount of time.

Shortly after the July 26 show, word came that Gary Shaw and Doug DeLuca had resigned from Pro Elite's board of directors.

And now, the news of two event cancellations and scaling back of certain aspects of the company.

Clearly, any of one of these issues would be disturbing on its own but in totality the signs are not very good for a company that was already losing quite a bit of money anyway.

May 31 CBS debut not a long-term success

While EliteXC put a lot of hope into its May 31 CBS show and although the ratings for that show were decent, the problem is there hasn't been much positive carryover from the event.

Why?

For one thing, Gary Shaw and the other architects of EliteXC built the promotion more like a boxing promotion (which makes sense given Shaw's boxing pedigree) and focused on building up essentially two stars -- Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano -- to the detriment of the rest of the roster.

How many casual fans who watched the May 31 show can name five EliteXC fighters outside of Slice and Carano? Do they even know that the promotion's most talented fighter is Jake Shields? Probably not.

The results of this short-sighted construction of the promotion are evident. Any card that is not headlined by Slice and Carano barely registers on the mainstream radar. And, this is mostly EliteXC's fault. The powers-that-be in the company have conditioned us to believe that Slice and Carano are the promotion's two biggest stars and there has been little to no marketing push behind the other fighters on the roster.

A secondary problem with putting all its eggs in one basket (or two) is that Slice was a major disappointment on May 31. Although he came away with a victory, he was exposed as a newbie in the sport, which he readily admits is the case. Likewise, Carano has not really had to face anyone of the caliber of Tara Larosa or even Cristiane Cyborg. In fact, in most cases, Carano is much bigger than her opponent.

If nothing else, the May 31 event showed us that EliteXC is not much more than a one- or two-trick pony. Its last big splash in talent acquisition was Kimbo Slice last fall. Since then, Affliction has come in and built up more depth in a much shorter amount of time.

EliteXC's new affliction

And, that's another part of EliteXC's problems -- Affliction. We now have another fledgling promotion to compare EliteXC with and EliteXC pales in comparison. When put up against the now-defunct IFL and Bodog, EliteXC looked pretty good, seemingly on a much stronger path to competing with the UFC.

However, next to Affliction, EliteXC looks almost amateurish. Affliction has been bold with talent acquisition and has been able to snatch up much of the free agent market since the demise of the IFL. Affliction's first show was well-done and appealed to hard-core sensibilities by showcasing talent respected throughout the world and by putting on at least a couple of intriguing matchups.

There were no gyrating dancers and no inexplicable backdrops at Affliction's event. Just good old-fashioned MMA.

Certainly, it must be disheartening to EliteXC officials to see a newcomer do in a few months what they themselves have been unable to do in close to two years -- put on an all-around credible event.

But, maybe that's what happens when you have a promotion run by people who don't understand the sport or its fans. Being on CBS wasn't the cure for EliteXC's ills -- it only put those ills under a very powerful microscope.

What happens from here?

While I'm not writing EliteXC's obituary quite yet, I do believe the promotion faces an uphill climb. And history is not in its favor.

I've always believed that the explosive growth in the number of promotions trying to compete with the UFC a couple of years ago would eventually be overtaken by a contraction in that number. That contraction began late last year with the folding of Bodog. Then came the end for the IFL earlier this year.

That leaves us with two national promotions -- EliteXC and Affliction -- vying to compete with the UFC. I don't think both can survive so if I was to put money on which one will win the title of "the other promotion", right now I'd have to say it's Affliction.

Affliction has been built the way a true MMA fan would build an MMA promotion. And, interestingly enough, the company has a couple of striking similarities to the UFC. First, Affliction brought in the deep pockets of Donald Trump, who is a partner in the promotion. Think of Trump as Affliction's version of the UFC's Fertitta brothers.

Second, Affliction has a frontman in VP Tom Atencio who could very well be UFC President Dana White's equal in acting as a megaphone for the promotion's exploits. Shaw, unfortunately, was very inadequate in that role for EliteXC. In fact, Shaw rarely provided writers with any useful information, usually falling back on promotional speak with very little substance.

So, would a merger between Affliction and EliteXC make sense? Maybe. At this point, Affliction could certainly bolster its ranks with some of EliteXC's fighters. However, I believe the main reason for Affliction to consider such a merger would be to get a piece of what makes EliteXC truly valuable -- its relationships with CBS and Showtime. An Affliction event on those two networks -- with Atencio and Trump at the helm -- would have to be considered a serious threat to the UFC.

Who else is out there?

While I believe Affliction will end up as the UFC's main rival (its new PRIDE, complete with a ring) on a national/international basis, there's another promotion lurking out there that should also be watched closely -- Strikeforce.

Strikeforce operates like a regional promotion but has a very good pool of talent with the likes of Cung Le, Frank Shamrock, Josh Thomson, Gilbert Melendez, and Kazuo Misaki in its ranks. The promotion puts on interesting events in venues that it can sell out (which was a problem EliteXC, Bodog, and IFL never solved), without venturing far from California or the West Coast.

In addition, Strikeforce also has its own show on network television -- albeit a very late night show on NBC -- that is actually outperforming expectations.

With WEC being reorganized and partially absorbed by the UFC, I see Strikeforce as a regional counterpart to WEC.

So, while the picture is currently bleak for EliteXC, there are still other viable competitors out there to go head-to-head against Zuffa's UFC and WEC. In the end, the market simply could not bear the large number of promotions vying for limited spending dollars on a national level, especially in the current down economy.

It's round three for EliteXC and the promotion is down on all the judge's scorecards. Only something completely unexpected can salvage the fight.