Is 300 their last show? Will you be sad to see Bellator go? I’ve enjoyed their GP’s and a couple of their legends fights and the Pitbull bros, Pico, Chandler etc… but overall Bellator has not been so great.
They try to do like UFC Fight Night level cards but with less than half the talent UFC has available and its not unique to a certain niche market like a RIZIN/KSW.
Not one of my top five all time promotions, I’ll put it that way.
If 300 is their last show, I don’t miss Bellator like I miss PRIDE and DREAM and thats coming from someone who hates the PFL point system.
The more options available to fighters the better. Most people don’t realize that Bellator undercards are filled with local talent. They give local guys a chance to shine on a big stage and save money that way. A win win.
I hear you loud and clear and agree from the fighter side Bellator has been great. They just never built the sort of big shows other promotions have held though.
People talk about and remember a lot of big shows from UFC, PRIDE, K1, Strikeforce and DREAM and I just don’t see them looking back at Bellator cards the same way.
Strikeforce arrived at a good time. 2006, PRIDE was going away and UFC was so small compared to what it has been in the Bellator era. The UFC and the sport was “hot” in the US but it was still much more niche than today. There was room for Strikeforce in the US in terms of demand for MMA.
When Strikeforce arrived UFC was only doing like 18-20 shows a year. Last year UFC did 42 shows plus they also run Contender Series and thats another six shows worth of UFC fights.
The world was also much less digital at the time in terms of sports and entertainment.
You make some fair points but also the UFC didn’t have such a monopoly on all the talent like they do today.
You had some great fighters in Strikeforce at the time who were also stars. Like Nick Diaz for example.
They put on some great shows as well with really exciting match ups. I think in hindsight I maybe expected too much out of Coker given what he had to work with in Bellator.
They have great fighters but they’re branding is just terrible. It’s a cheap UFC clone with boring announcers and everything is so damn dark. The name doesn’t help either.
The only way they set themselves apart from the UFC was the tournaments but their roster is too shallow for tournaments. Let’s pray the UFC picks up their entire roster, they have a great LHW and FW division. Some of the HWs are probably also competitive in the UFC and they could really need some HWs
They did an amazing job with that 16 man FW GP at the start. Held four of the 1st round fights on one card and two weeks later did the other four. Then the lockdowns slowed the whole thing down but that is another story. It took two years for them to finish the damn thing.
Getting Usman, Barnaoui, Shabliy, Musayev and then already having Patricky, Primus, Bendo and McKee they really created some interest quick in their LW division when they created the LW GP but its just been too slow to grab the casuals.
PRIDE/DREAM/RIZIN know how to run GP’s, whether its a 16 man or an 8 man, they do the whole thing start to finish over 3 shows in 5 months. Perfect. Bellator always fucks it up with the time it takes to get through their GP’s. PFL fucks it up with their season and point system.
I don’t know how you can take the PRIDE GP blueprint and fucking ruin it but both Bellator and PFL have managed to do it in unique ways.
There is no shortage of talent outside UFC… They just don’t have names… Because there isn’t an org capable of building them.
Even the new killers that came out of strike force didn’t really get Popular until after they went over to UFC. Strikeforce was full of fighters who became stars elsewhere.
Patrico Pitbull is a great example of this. In Bellator he won tournaments, tons of titles, tons of defenses, was in wars, had exciting finishes, etc… was there a decade and has like 30k twitter followers.
A single fight on DWCS could have got him more exposure than his entire Bellator career.
I do think Bellator has got a little better with the social media stuff but its taken a long time.
You think so? I think UFC is pretty weak in some places.
185-265 I don’t think even half the championship level (including challengers) talent is in the UFC. I think Jones is the only champ in those divisions that’s actually the best fighter in his weight class in the world.
I don’t know maybe I think probably the #2 HW in the world isn’t in the UFC. Probably the #1 MW and #1 LHW are fighting outside UFC too.
Overeem that fought in strikeforce is the same overeem that destroyed Brock and was the #2 HW in the world, fedor was #1 at the time both in strikeforce. Cain and DC were probably 3 and 4, they had probably the top 4 HWs in the world.