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When launching Adrenaline MMA, Monte Cox spoke of his plan to model the promotion on the Bay Area power Strikeforce. One of the key components of success mentioned by Monte was a strong showing at the gate, but judging by the early numbers the promotion seems to still have a ways to go to measure up to Scott Coker's creation from a business perspective.

MMAJunkie's Steve Sievert reports attendance of around 2,000 while Sherdog is a little more generous with an estimate of 2,500. Either number represents a weak gate for such a large metro area. Cox commented to MMAJunkie:

"I talked to other promoters in music and other things, and everything seems to be down right now," he said. "Last time I did a show here, we had people driving 100 to a 150 miles. We didn't get that tonight. It's hard. A 150 now is costing you 70 bucks, and I think people factor that in. Plus, the Quad Cities, where we normally draw really well from, is flooded. We just didn't have a lot of things go our way."

With no big stars on the card the payroll was likely on the low side, but with that level of attendance I doubt the card was profitable. While the show had several local fighters on the card, the show lacked a mainstream name or charismatic fighter to break through to a larger audience. Strikeforce has been lucky in that respect in that they have two charismatic guys in Cung Le and Frank Shamrock that both have strong local ties from which to draw strong crowds. Next week's card being head lined by Gilbert Melendez should be an interesting test of how well Strikeforce can draw without either of their big two on the card.

The September card being put on by Adrenaline will face much more pressure at the gate. On that card will be Adrenaline's two big ticket signings, Tim Sylvia and Ben Rothwell. Rothwell is set to make $200,000 for his Adrenaline fights and one has to believe that Sylvia is making somewhere slightly north of that, so right there you are looking at a half a million on payroll. If you are going to bring in half way decent names to face these two, you are looking at probably another 100 grand and then you have to fill out the undercard as well. Adrenaline will have to have a close to capacity crowd to break even with those kind of salaries being thrown around.