Friday night in San Jose, Calif., inside the HP Pavilion, Strikeforce hopes to resurrect the classic single-day tournament, a throwback to the vintage UFC events and legendary brackets of PRIDE.

The fight organization has assembled a sturdy four-man tourney composed of worthy middleweight contenders Trevor Prangley (Pictures), Jorge Santiago (Pictures), Yuki Sasaki (Pictures) and Falaniko Vitale (Pictures).

"The reason why we decided to do the tournament format is because after working for the K-1 organization for so long, I got to see some of the greatest tournaments in the world in stand-up fighting," Coker told Sherdog.com. "I always felt that it was a good format and an exciting and interesting format. PRIDE used to do the format, and since they're no longer around, I said for us to just go for it and do the tournament. It's going to be a great show because we have four incredible athletes, and if I had to pick [a winner], I don't think I'd be able to."

Pulling off a single-day tournament in this day and age, especially for it to take place in a state with such a strict athletic commission as California, was difficult at first. But after lengthy discussions, Coker and Strikeforce will be able to deliver fight fans a promising evening of combat.

"The reason that the tournament was allowed to go forward was that there had to be four qualified people able to compete against each other at any given time," said Armando Garcia, the executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission. "That's always an issue with [one-day] tournaments. In the past there were bouts within the tournaments that didn't fall into that category. In other words, there would be people far better than other people or people that weren't equally skilled. We have some past experience and history with that with ‘The Contender' event, and that was inherently more difficult because you're dealing with so many fighters that could fight -- potentially anyone against anyone. The main reason why we haven't gone with [one-day] tournaments in the past was because the names that were submitted to us did not meet our approval."

"Armando's job is to protect the consumer, the promoter, the fighter and to have health and safety at the fights," Coker added. "That's the number one reason why the commission is there. I've been talking to Armando for about four or five months about this event, and he didn't want to have, say, Prangley and Sasaki against two street guys or two guys who have no business being there. He said that if I could get him a quality tournament and a quality reserve match that he'd allow it. It took him a little while to fully get his arms around it, but once he did, it's been pretty smooth."

Much like K-1 operates its matchup system for tourneys, opponents had to draw lottery numbers and strategically choose where they would prefer to stand inside the brackets.

Thursday evening it was determined Sasaki would fight Santiago, and Prangley would face Vitale.

That was a decision urged by Garcia and one of the leading factors allowing Strikeforce to host the tournament.

"Our rule clearly states that the names of the participants will be picked at the weigh-in," Garcia said. "That's by our rule, not [Strikeforce's] choice."

Not one to disagree with Garcia's insistence of a lottery, Coker embraced the idea.

"The lottery is great because there are four envelopes with numbers in them," Coker said. "There is great strategy to pick where you stand in the lottery, especially if you pick first or even third. It's great and the lottery adds a ton of intrigue and suspense to making the matchups. This tournament could go probably 16 different ways depending on where the fighters choose to stand."

Deciding where to stand was one hurdle, or strategy, that faced each fighter. If that wasn't difficult enough, try being the man hailed by many as the favorite to win the entire ball of wax.

"I have heard that people have made me the favorite, but I don't see it that way," Trevor Prangley (Pictures) said. "This tournament is filled with four great competitors, and any one of us could win it. When you're fighting more than one time in one night, anything can happen. It adds a little bit of pressure, but honestly I don't think I am the clear favorite among these three other great fighters."

Being the favorite aside, you might think that not knowing your opponent could be a disadvantage in training. Taking into consideration the possibility of winning the first fight but being injured or drained for the second also plays a role in how a fighter would approach both training and the actual fight. Tourneys like this might scare off other fighters but not the four men who signed the contracts.

"Actually I like fighting in the tournaments," chuckled Prangley, who has competed in two single-day MMA tournaments in his professional career, winning one of them. "It's kind of an anomaly and it's something different, but I don't think I'd like to do it every time I fought. I think it's good to do one here and there, and I think to win a tournament like this is much more rewarding than just winning a single fight."

"As far as training for something like this goes," he continued, "I think it might be good to kind of know who I'll be fighting. But really it doesn't matter too much to me because you don't know who you'll be fighting in the second fight anyway. You could be training specifically for one style of guy and then in the second round you might fight someone who has a totally different style altogether. Basically, when I train for a tournament, I just train like I normally do, where I focus on every aspect of the game."

Santiago, whom Prangley believes will be his biggest obstacle as the "most technically sound" potential opponent, agrees.

"I train for all three of the guys, so I don't really care who I will be fighting in the first round," remarked the American Top team fighter. "I really just try to focus on winning my first fight, so I can remain fresh for my second fight. I fought more than 10 fights, and each one is different so when I train, I train to expect anything. I train to be on the ground, on my feet, everything because each fight is a different fight. I just try to be ready for whatever happens."

When asked whom he felt was the biggest threat, Santiago returned the favor and pointed to Prangley, but he wouldn't discredit Sasaki or Vitale either.

"Honestly I don't really know who the toughest guy is," Santiago said. "But I got to put my finger on Prangley. He just got done with the Bodog show, but everyone in this tournament is a tough guy. I consider Vitale to be very tough, and Sasaki just fought Dean Lister (Pictures) where he lost a decision. I really think [Sasaki] won that fight. Every guy is tough."

One of the biggest complaints about the tournament format, if not the biggest, is the possibility that one of the fighters will have to withdraw from the finals due to injury. It's happened countless times in K-1 and PRIDE and was an issue Garcia had with the promotion.

"I was hoping for there to be two reserve matches instead of one because there are a whole slew of issues that could come up," Garcia stated. "We're not entirely comfortable with the ‘survivor' rule, what's a foul, what's not a foul, et cetera. That's what we're still working on. Overall I think it'll work, but we still need to fix some of the issues with [tournaments]."

Coker agreed with Garcia, but his vast experience with one of the world's largest promotional teams has paid dividends.

"Out of the eight years that I worked for K-1, and this was with two events a year so that's 16 events, only one time did we have the reserve fighter come up and win the entire tournament," Coker said. "So once out of 16 times isn't bad. But even our reserve match is an incredible matchup where we have Sean Salmon (Pictures) fighting Dennis Hallman (Pictures). And if they had to step up, they already would have fought, so they're not exactly going to be fresh coming into a fight."

In the eyes of many, the four-man elimination bracket could go to any of the warriors, and their confidence could make for a memorable night of fights.