This past Saturday, Bellator took to the Spike TV airwaves after months of planning to do so on pay-per-view.
Bellator 106 was the event that almost wasn’t but then was, a night where aging guys would headline in hopes of attracting eyes to see the promotion’s true stars. Except, as is wont to happen when you sign a geezer to fight a has-been in your main event, one guy got hurt and the other got yanked from the card.
All was not lost, though, as the “headliner” dying allowed the real names to get exposure. Sure, it would happen on free television, but that’s been Bellator’s game from the get-go, and the promotion plays it pretty well.
So we were to be treated to a championship triple bill (all rematches), and it was the first time Bellator could claim to be offering a real can’t-miss card.
Pat Curran, arguably the second-best featherweight alive, would fight Daniel Strauss.
Mo Lawal would have a chance to avenge an improbable loss to Emmanuel Newton.
Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler would square off in a redux of the best fight the promotion has ever seen.
It’s easy to see why there was some excitement going into Saturday. Equally easy to see why there’s been relative peril ever since.
Curran and Strauss stunk out the joint, with Strauss winning the title in utterly uninspiring fashion and derailing Curran’s rising star in the process.
Lawal looked completely hopeless in absorbing a one-sided decision loss to Newton, effectively ending his time as a sellable name to the masses.
Alvarez and Chandler put on an epic rematch, one entirely deserving of its praise and that left the MMA world salivating at a third meeting, but there’s a case that Chandler was robbed and the decision was controversial.
Still, after all he’s been through, no one is going to complain too much that Eddie Alvarez got a break for once, and we’ll all just be happy we get to see them do it again.
To state it plainly, Bellator had all its eggs in the 106 basket. If it was ever going to be more than a second-tier promotion, this was the night it was destined to kick down the door and take a real Davidian swing at the UFC’s Goliath.
And it really, really didn’t.
The week leading up to Bellator 106 speaks for itself: The predictable Tito Ortiz injury, the feverish reshuffling of the fights from PPV to Spike, the considerable scrutiny and borderline celebrating of its circumstances.
The event, though, that could have been the saving grace. A dominant win by Curran, a victory by the trash-talking, crown-wearing almost-pro wrestler King Mo and the main event we ended up getting all would have added up to have people talking.
Instead, it’s all about heaping praise on Chandler and Alvarez and justifiably bashing the rest of what was a horrible event overall.
So where does that leave Bellator? With the biggest, best thing it could offer going off with all the pomp and circumstance of a fart in the wind, what could the promotion possibly do to overcome it?
Outside of completing the Chandler-Alvarez trilogy, which no casual fan is going to pay for even if Robot Rickson Gracie takes on a Mike Tyson hologram in the main event, nothing.
There is not one thing that Bellator can do to stake its claim to being an elite all-world MMA talent factory. It just tried, and it just failed.
It’s a second-rate promotion. Born to be a runner-up.
If Bellator had blown the doors off the place Saturday night and had everyone talking about the best free card of the year, the UFC might be taking notice. It might be reconsidering bi-weekly cards filled top to bottom with The Ultimate Fighter washouts and guys fresh out of Jungle Fights.
Now, Dana White and Co. don’t have to.
Bellator proved as much by proving that it’s not a threat. It had a chance to make MMA better for all of us, and it couldn’t do it.
The future for the promotion isn’t murky, though it’s definitely disappointing. Bellator’s going to be a distant second to the UFC, putting on tournaments so Spike TV has programming for Friday nights when the target demographic is out at the pub instead.
And Bjorn Rebney will be left to wonder what might have been if November 2, 2013 had looked just a little bit different. Actually, we all kind of will.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com