There’s no shame in being second-best.
Depending on how many are running the proverbial race you’re in, second-best can be pretty good. You might be ahead of hundreds or even thousands of other participants, so falling short of the apex isn’t that big a deal.
It could be that the top dog is just so far ahead of you and everyone else that you were never going to catch them anyway. If that’s the case, you may just fancy settling in and accepting your place, content to work with what you’ve got and steal a little shine for yourself whenever possible.
In the MMA space that’s very much what Bellator MMA has been doing over the past couple of years. The promotion once known for strict adherence to a tournament system and weekly shows on Spike TV has shifted its focus since Scott Coker became president in 2014, getting away from the realm of stringent competition and more into making things fun and drawing eyes.
Sometimes that’s taken the form of wild, hybrid events. Other times it’s been guilty-pleasure freakshow fights. But most notably, and perhaps most shrewdly, Bellator has made a business out of signing athletes and promoting fights that the UFC has done all the work on.
First Bellator landed Josh Koscheck, a legitimately huge name that the UFC spent a decade promoting, keeping in the title picture and using as a main event talent. He’d outlived his usefulness there after a lengthy losing streak and an increasing discontent with the money he was making, but for Bellator he made perfect sense.
Why?
Because Bellator already had his longtime nemesis, Paul Daley, under contract. That feud started at UFC 113, when Koscheck ground Daley to a nub for three rounds and then goaded him into throwing a punch after the fight. Daley was released from the UFC soon after and spent years bouncing around various promotions, staying relevant enough to keep people interested in the dream of a Koscheck rematch down the line.
Needless to say, as soon as Koscheck landed in Bellator the talk of lining the pair up began, and the fight was booked for this past summer. Koscheck ended up injured so it was called off, but it’s still out there and will provide a major payday for all parties involved once it’s rebooked—a payday that was built almost entirely on work done by the UFC.
More immediately it’s emerged that Bellator intends to book former UFC megastar Chael Sonnen, a recent signing, against Wanderlei Silva, who was also most recently seen on UFC marquees and remains a legend in the sport. The feud between the two is years long, dating back to the days of Sonnen’s rise through the UFC’s middleweight division and involving a number of heated exchanges, sniping in interviews, a gig coaching The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil that culminated in an all-out bareknuckle brawl and a sanctioned bout at UFC 175 that was cancelled after both men were busted for various illegal substances.
It’s not unreasonable to contend that the UFC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in promoting that bout, even if one chooses only to focus on the costs of producing TUF and promoting UFC 175. Truthfully the number is probably into the millions, and now Bellator gets to reap the rewards a couple of years later without having to do any extra legwork.
It’s a brilliant approach to doing business for the second-best promotion in MMA, and one that you’re likely to see more of as Bellator poaches more UFC talent and hunts for big names to oppose it. It’s not that Bellator don’t have the cash to promote stars itself (it’s owned by media giant Viacom, after all); it’s that you can’t buy the type of promotion that UFC does because it’s been in the business and doing it at the highest level for so long that Bellator could never catch up.
So it’s not trying.
It’s buying names the UFC made, then buying feuds the UFC made, then cashing in. Even February’s Ken Shamrock vs. Royce Gracie rematch was a UFC feud packaged and sold by Bellator, although it came two decades after their last meeting.
Make no mistake, Bellator will never be the UFC. The best it will ever be is second-best, a viable alternative for disenchanted fighters to sign with and fans to get some solid action from.
There’s no shame in that, though. In fact if you do it right, it becomes a uniquely appealing offering in and of itself because everyone knows what you’re selling and no one expects it to be what the top dog is selling.
So stealing the shine of the UFC by promoting feuds it built but never paid off? That’s both brilliant and exciting, and Bellator should be commended for it.
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