The Doggy Bag: The Holiday Wish List Edition
The Bracket-Burning Generation
After taking a peek at Bellator’s lineup so far for Season 8, I must say I am pretty hyped up. However, seeing so many title fights getting lined up for these cards, it makes me wish the Bellator product looked more like this all the time. Is there any hope that it ever does away with the format and just puts its best fighters against each other? -- Dominic from Lexington
Jordan Breen, administrative editor: “To tourney or not to tourney?” is Bellator’s ongoing dilemma. The company has deftly changed tack multiple times already in its four-year existence -- remember the ESPN Deportes era? -- and has been generally capable when it comes to adapting its product. However, the tournament remains one angle to which Bellator brass is married to. “Bellator” has no real brand recognition, so the idea is that the tournament format legitimizes the product entirely.
Advertisement
Functionally, they’re lovely for Bellator. Considering so much of the company’s roster is made up of unproven Europeans, neophyte wrestling converts and/or recent inmates, the three-fights-in-six-weeks grind can really put appropriate pressure on a prospect. A fighter like Andrey Koreshkov was likely helped considerably in the Season 7 process, steadily improving over the course of the tournament. The rapid amount of exposure these fighters receive over the balance of a season also does a lot to implant them in a fan’s consciousness.
However, it is a bizarre Bellator trait that the promotion has produced a healthy amount of highlight-reel Youtube fodder in the knockout and submission department, yet has had few truly outstanding, memorable MMA fights. Bellator has promoted nearly 100 events at this point and more than 700 MMA bouts. It is hard not to at least consider whether or not this is tied to the format. At least half of those bouts are local-dude-versus-local-dude fodder and many other tournament bouts. Yet, when we got a pairing of arguably the two most talented guys on the roster at the time, Michael Chandler and Eddie Alvarez put on last year’s “Fight of the Year.”
Plain and simple, Bellator has only a few stars and they should ultimately be what it bases the brand around. If the company hopes its presence on Spike will leverage it into finally starting to make money in year number four, it can only do so if athletes like Chandler, Muhammed Lawal and Pat Curran become intriguing and viable to TV watchers. Unfortunately, a tournament-based structure forces the best fighters Bellator has to sit around, twiddling thumbs and waiting for challengers. The constant tournament format also has the capacity to create a backlog of challengers if there’s a slate of injuries, as is the case for Bellator’s 145-pound division.
It is not an easy problem to fix. Bellator’s stars have to be culled from somewhere and there aren't very many elite, compelling free agents in MMA right now. That fact alone is enough to substantiate the tournament format in Bellator’s future. However, if the ultimate long-term goal of Bellator is still a pay-per-view presence, eventually some mind will have to be given to being able to produce top-to-bottom, relevant, entertaining MMA cards. It has been a consistent and rational complaint about the product that Bellator’s champions simply aren’t active enough. If the most talented and most interesting athletes on your roster are underexposed, something is wrong.
For the foreseeable future, Bellator’s tournament structure is going to play some role in its matchmaking. However, if the company finds a way to keep pumping out brackets while getting its heavy hitters in the cage three or more times per year, people might find a quiet peace with the tournaments.
Continue Reading » Never Too Late for More 10-8
Related Articles
