When news came of the lawsuit against the UFC, Scott Coker took exception with the idea that Bellator MMA was being considered as a minor league organization.
Coker addressed the issue with MMAfighting.com’s Marc Raimondi), saying: “Do I think Bellator is a minor league? The answer is no.”
As a relatively new figure in the promotion, it is not surprising that Coker would come to the defense of his employer; he managed to keep Strikeforce going in the MMA scene for many years before the UFC finally bought it out.
“I would say four years ago, people would say that about Strikeforce. They’d say ‘Oh, UFC has the best fighters, the best champs.’ That can be debated.”
Then, Coker spoke of the future as proof positive that big things are to come Bellator’s way.
“Labeling a league based on the past can be misleading because the fighters that are here today fighting for us are going to be the next Luke Rockholds, the next Daniel Cormiers. They are going to be the next stars of MMA.”
It’s an optimistic point of view, to be sure. Coker has the acumen to grow Bellator into something much bigger, and he has made some big strides already in abandoning the tournament-based format for big cards with bigger names.
Sadly, those names are either seriously faded or being plucked from his roster by the UFC.
Right now, Bellator has three big names: Tito Ortiz, Stephan Bonnar and Kimbo Slice. The fact that Slice is even being considered as a major player in the Bellator scheme of things is telling.
Thus far, the kinds of fighters that a man like Coker could build an organization around have already been pulled from his stable or abandoned the promotion, through no real fault of his own.
Hector Lombard, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Ben Askren and Eddie Alvarez used to claim Bellator home, but no longer. None of this is Coker’s fault; he’s essentially been given a fixer-upper project that just happens to have a television deal and major backing.
And, of course, he has some very good fighters who are toiling in relative obscurity because hardly any of the MMA fanbase knows them.
So, how can he go about pulling his new promotion up by the bootstraps?
Well, going after fighters like Fedor Emelianenko, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic and Slice is not the answer. Neither is signing professional wrestling notables. That makes Bellator look like it doesn’t have any original ideas of its own.
If it is going to succeed at all, it needs to come to grips that it is in direct competition with the UFC; Bellator can no longer subsist from the scraps that fall off the Zuffa table. If it didn’t know that before, seeing the UFC lure away Jackson and yank Cro-Cop out from under its nose should be proof enough.
Zuffa is not about the business of abandoning resources that might feed the enemy. The UFC didn’t need either fighter; it reached out and took them because it would damage Bellator as a rival.
If Bellator ever wants to be taken seriously as a legitimate alternative to the UFC, for both fans and fighters, it has to start making serious moves, with full conviction.
So how can Bellator remake itself as a force in the sport?
Here are 10 basic ways it can get the job done.