I'm not gonna doubt Coker's tournament concept in its entirety just yet because things didn't go as well the first time. I think he thinks a big tournament final featuring guys with big names that you normally don't associate with tournaments is the appeal Coker's going for, and considering there were extenuating circumstances that destroyed the tournament the first time around (like the 8-month gap separating the semis and the finals because of Cormier's hand-injury and Overeem leaving Strikeforce after beating Werdum in the quarter-final), I'm not gonna say that's unfounded.
The Strikeforce tournament was going pretty good between June and September, 2011. Sure, the four-month gap between the quarter-final matches messed it up, but you had 5 tournament bouts between June and September, and people were pretty excited for the finals at the end of it. If it weren't for the 8-month gap between the semi-finals and the finals due to Cormier's injury, the tournament would've had a lot more hype by the time the finals came around. If it had happened in December, when the memory of watching Barnett easily submit Kharitonov and Cormier get a gigantic, impressive upset over Bigfoot Silva (right after he'd beaten Fedor) was still fresh in people's minds, it would've been more well-received. It's not like those are really big ifs, either.
But, because of the 8-month gap... if it wasn't for the two or three gigantic lift-takedowns, I doubt winning the Strikeforce heavyweight championship 15 months after the tournament began would've gotten Cormier as much hype as it did.
The amount of time the quarter finals are going to take is frustrating, but I think spacing out the quarter-finals was done more out of necessity [it's not like Coker wants it to take 4 months for the first and fourth quarter finalists to be decided, but they need main events and he can't have a 7-month gap between the tournament being announced and the fights actually happening just to have 'em all on the same night, and he's not gonna have another four-month gap between quarter-final matchups being decided like last time just so he can, again, have them on the same night], so I can't blame Coker, and as long as semi-final/final time goes on schedule, it'll all be good in the end. Even if the guys get injured, they've got enough names in their heavyweight and light-heavyweight divisions to make up for it.