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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=448172" target="_blank">
Coker lays out plans for Bellator in 2015
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<p>Strikeforce founder Scott Coker has been president of Bellator MMA for just four months. However, in an interview with <a href="http://http://www.mmafightcorner.com/2014/10/27/scott-coker-bellator/" target="_blank">MMA Fight Corner</a>, he related a clear vision for 2015.</p>
First major change is the end of tournaments, which was a solution Bellator founder Bjorn Rebney created to fix a non-existent problem. Coker explained that without tournaments, champions can fight more, cards will have more depth, and fighters can recover from injuries as necessary.
“Basically, Bellator will go once a month for its championship series,” said Coker to Heidi Fang. “And then four times a year, we’ll do a big tentpole event which will be stacked with all the big fighters and will be in big arenas across the country. So that will be a difference.”
"A weekly show going around the country from arena to arena, you see a lot of fights, but at the end of the day, I looked at the depth of the roster and it's going to be real tough to put on real big fights. And that's really what we want to do. We want to put on big championship fights and that's definitely why we had to change."
"I think that's the difference between that and doing a tournament where you kind of have to roll the dice. I started filling a lot of slots, just to fill slots. Bringing in bodies, just to bring in bodies. I don't want to be in that business. I want to put on big, special, big events as far as big fights, special events and then the big tentpoles will be really a marquee event that people are going to want to put on their calendar."
Coker is also restoring women in Bellator MMA.
"We're definitely talking with our guys internally, talking to Spike just to make sure that we the television time available for another division. But my goal is to bring a talented women's division into Bellator in the next six months," said Coker.
"To me, we have to put on fights that fans want to see, fights that grab television ratings, fights that put butts in seats, and fights that the media wants to cover," said Coker. "That's really the point of it and it's worked for me in the past when we were running Strikeforce and put on big, big fights. And we'll get there.
"I've only there there four months now. It's going to take time, but get us to the first of the year and I think you'll see a big change in the stars and we'll have some new stars that we're building from the ground up. I think that we're very good star identifiers and star builders and I think our past has proven that. We'll look upon free agency when fighters are free and we'll do our best to sign them up. We're going to build from the top down and we're going to build from the bottom up and that's going to be a good formula."
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