Bellator and Spike TV had more than a year to plan their first event together. That was the waiting period required by Spike’s previous broadcast partnership with the UFC. And while many of us might have been tempted to procrastinate, it was apparent right away that the two companies, both owned by media giant Viacom, were plenty active in preparing for the this show.
“There’s really not an area of our show you’ll see up on the screen that hasn’t been touched by Viacom and Spike,” Bellator president Bjorn Rebney told Bleacher Report. “Everything from production elements to the huge traveling production trucks, monster tractor trailers that are just edit bays….we’ve got a new graphics package premiering that is just state of the art. It gives great clarity to everything we are doing.”
It was a brand new Bellator, from the graphics between bouts to the HD picture for a promotion that had mostly been seen only in standard definition for most of its four-year run on a variety of television networks. The result was a huge win overall for Bellator and Spike.
But what about the individual fighters? In every MMA bout there is an official winner and an official loser. Sometimes, however, a fighter can lose by winning a boring decision and win in the hearts of fans by losing an exciting slugfest.
So who were the real winners and losers at Bellator’s Spike debut? Read on.