Back in November after Bellator MMA’s non-PPV event, I coined the phrase “That’s so Bellator!” as a way of describing the awkward, frustrating and unintentionally hilarious decisions of the Viacom-owned mixed martial arts organization.
On Monday afternoon the company announced the lineup for this season’s light heavyweight tournament, setting the marquee pairings atop the card for Bellator 110, which takes place on Friday, Feb. 28 at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn.
It’s a four-man tournament with Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal lined up on opposite sides of the draw against Christian “TonTon” M’Pumbu and Mikhail Zayats respectively.
Say it with me — “That’s so Bellator!”
Listen, putting your two biggest stars on opposite sides makes complete sense, but honestly, the whole “Toughest Tournament in Sports” thing is becoming downright laughable at this point.
Last week, Bellator eschewed their long-standing way of doing things in order to schedule a rematch between featherweight champion Daniel Straus and Pat Curran, even though (a) no one was clamoring for a third fight after Straus won the second bout handily, and (b) Patricio Freire is already waiting for the title shot he earned by winning last season’s 145-pound tournament.
Now they’re shrinking the size of the light heavyweight tournament for a second time in hopes of getting the big-name fight and favourable result that escaped them the last two times Lawal was expected to emerge victorious. Having Jackson and Lawal meet each other in the final is the only real outcome Bellator will be happy with, so they’ve chopped the field in half in hopes of increasing their odds.
When you need to stack the deck in your favour after the same plan already backfired last summer, when Lawal failed to beat Emanuel Newton in their second meeting, it’s time to abandon ship on the whole tournament format and quit with the “title shots are earned, not awarded” posturing.
It’s been fun while it’s lasted, but enough is enough already. And here’s what really makes this entire situation suck: you could see it coming.
Once you start investing big money into certain fighters, you’re committed to them and need to get as much of a return on your investment as possible. That would be nice and easy if things always went according to Hoyle, but this is MMA and that never happens, leading to Bellator being in the unenviable position they’re in now.
They’re now financially committed to promoting the fighters they’ve opened the vault for, win or lose, and that creates problems when those needs conflict with the tournament format and championship promises that comes with winning one of those competitions.
The entire business model of the organization has changed in the last year and a bit, which would be fine if they would just come out and say, “We’re shifting gears and scrapping the tournament format completely.” But that’s not how they’re playing it.
Instead, they’re invoking their championship rematch clause to make a third fight between Straus and Curran happen, pleasing the established former champion, while pissing off everyone else. Straus has been outspoken about his frustration with the rematch, and Freire has voiced his displeasure with how everything is playing out—it’s a no-win situation for the organization, but one that they got themselves into.
And now they have to find some way to get out of it, because this stuff is going to keep happening.
Dave Jansen is still waiting on the lightweight title shot he earned after winning the Season 7 lightweight tournament, and “Ill” Will Brooks is queued up behind him following his tournament win this past summer. Jansen’s already closing in on the one-year anniversary of his win over Marcin Held and with a date for Alvarez-Chandler III not yet announced, he (and Brooks) are going to be waiting some time before they get the championship opportunities Bellator promised them.
At which point they’ll face the same miserable choice Freire is going to have to make in the near future: fight again and risk losing his place in line or sit out for a minimum of six months to wait for the winner.
Did I mention that “Frodo” Khasbulaev is also waiting in line at featherweight and he’s actually ahead of Freire? Yeah, that’s definitely happening as well.
When they changed their approach from building stars in-house and unearthing new talent to signing guys like Jackson and Lawal, Bellator needed to just do away with their tournament format—it’s just too hard to be financially committed to a handful of fighters and cross your fingers that they stay on top or make their way there via the tournament.
But they didn’t, and now they’re alienating quality fighters and catching a ton of negative press in the interim—and no, not all press is good press.
Fight fans are always up for watching a good, fun scrap that was just thrown together for no reason other than because, and that should be the approach Bellator takes going forward.
You want to make Jackson versus Lawal or have Alvarez and Chandler go best-of-seven? Awesome, we’re in!
Just stop pretending like your tournament format means something, do right by the fighters that played the game and are waiting for the opportunities they earned, and quit being so Bellator all the time.