UFC owners would probably bristle at the suggestion they even occupy the same universe as their counterparts over at Bellator MMA.
Actually, the bristling is obvious pretty much every time the topic comes up.
“I don’t give a s–t what Bellator’s doing or what’s going on with them,” UFC President Dana White said five months ago—via MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn—as the two rivals prepared to put on competing shows at Connecticut casinos on Sept. 5. “It’s not like Bellator is some organization you have to look out for. Let’s be honest here.”
White’s demand for honesty is rational and well put. He’s right. So far, Bellator hasn’t been on the UFC’s level. Not close. Not yet.
Still, it was impossible not to notice that Bellator 131 actually played fairly well juxtaposed opposite UFC 180 last Saturday. The smaller company’s new-look stage, smart mix of nostalgia (Stephan Bonnar vs. Tito Ortiz) and relevant action (Michael Chandler vs. Will Brooks) as well as the fact it aired for free on SpikeTV made it an appealing alternative to plunking down $55 for the UFC’s 42nd event of the year.
The action was hit-and-miss, but the production much improved and as of Tuesday morning, the ratings were fairly staggering. Bellator 131 averaged 1.2 million viewers and peaked at 2 million during its Bonner-Ortiz main event, according to a press release. Those numbers reportedly made it not just the most-watched MMA event of the jam-packed weekend, but the most-watched cable MMA event of the entire year.
The overall impression is that Bellator and new CEO Scott Coker are coming on strong for 2015, and it could be closer than a lot of people think to stealing some of the spotlight from the UFC.
If pressed on the topic, UFC bosses would likely point to the 20,000 fans who reportedly turned out for UFC 180 in Mexico City. They would no doubt invoke the 47 live events their company will pull off this year and remind us of an expanding, worldwide brand, which made pit stops all over the globe—Sweden, Australia, Brazil, China—during 2014.
All valid points, though the whole story is a bit more topsy-turvy. We all know this hasn’t been a banner year for the UFC. By most accounts, pay-per-view numbers were down across the board, and the only thing that outnumbered cries of oversaturation were injuries to many of the organization’s top stars.
On Monday, the UFC held a gala press event to announce all 45 events on next year’s schedule. It will include 13 PPVs, four on the Fox Network, 18 on Fox Sports 1 and 10 on its own digital subscription service.
It’s going to be a lot—again—and Bellator obviously can’t come close to matching it, either in scope or pure ambition.
The question is, does it have to? Would it even want to?
One of the ingenious things about Bellator’s upcoming 2015 slate is that it actually plans to scale back its menu of live shows. The company will move away from the weekly Friday night time slot it held down on Spike during the last few years, in favor of doing just one event each month.
It is, frankly, a wonderful idea—one that will better suit its relatively shallow roster of fighters and allow Bellator to better advertise and better stock each of its broadcasts. Once a month, it will sail in on the breeze, with a fun little fight card featuring a handful of fighters we sort of recognize.
Oh yeah, and it will be free, assuming you already have basic cable.
Meanwhile, the UFC confirmed this week it will only continue to test the limits of our attention spans, not to mention our bank accounts.
If you were already feeling a bit fatigued, tuning in to the ironically named “The Time is Now” press conference on Monday likely didn’t help. Sitting through the barrage of tired nu-metal music on the event’s live stream, hearing Jon Anik’s bombastic introduction and then White’s admittance that the big announcement it had promised wasn’t coming, only served to reinforce how one-note the company’s product has become.
Occasionally, it appears that the UFC only knows one way to sell a fight—with shouting and loud, increasingly dated music. That’s fine if you only do 20 events a year, but when you’re charged with promoting a fight card basically every weekend, it becomes tediously, painfully obvious.
What the UFC could really use right now—besides a more Spartan calendar—is a complete top-to-bottom change in its art direction. New music, new posters, new graphics, an altogether new feel to its promotional efforts. But so far, it seems unwilling to recognize that.
Bellator, on the other hand, just experienced significant regime change and with it, perhaps a whole new lease on life. It promises to attack 2015 with a whole new product, at exactly the moment the MMA industry sorely needs one.
If nothing else, Saturday night’s action demonstrated Bellator’s willingness to evolve. All-around improved production values were highlighted by its new Jumbotron stage set. It was a little bit pro-wrestling, and some of the entrances felt a bit too contrived, but at least it felt fresh, at least it felt new.
Bellator’s 2015 slate begins on Jan. 16, with the first of three events all featuring title fights. The stretch will be highlighted by its Feb. 27 “British Invasion” show, co-headlined by Paul Daley vs. Douglas Lima and Emanuel Newton taking on Liam McGeary. On March 27, Joe Warren will defend his bantamweight crown against Marcos Galvao.
During the same stretch, the UFC will promote nine events, and the fights it has announced for early next year so far look unspeakably awesome. If it can hold them together, the chance for a turnaround seems good.
Yet, even with a UFC rebound, Bellator’s future looks bright. It hasn’t caught the UFC. It might never catch the UFC. But America’s second-largest MMA promotion has finally found the right leadership, an identity and a niche in the marketplace.
Along the way, it will face continued obstacles. As it squeezes every drop of promotional firepower from its cadre of aging former UFC stars, it will have to forge its own new, relevant draws. It will have to sustain its momentum and continue to build a product its parent company at Viacom is interested in supporting.
But the outlook for next year is clear: Once a month, it will put on fun, free fights that—with some shrewd marketing—could seem like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise never-changing landscape.
And while we’re being honest, let’s admit it: Anymore, that could be all it takes to make Bellator the kind of organization you do, in fact, have to look out for.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com