Scott Coker seems to have a winning formula for television success.
The formula goes a little something like this: Fill up a card with great prospects and great style fights. Upgrade your presentation with a mixture of World Wrestling Entertainment and PRIDE, tossing in a little bit of rock-concert action on the side. Set yourself apart from the competition by creating custom entrances, lighting packages and music. Give each fighter a memorable and branded identity.
And for the main event, sign two fighters with name value, and pit them against each other. It doesn’t matter if they are old. It does not matter if they were never a champion. The only thing that matters is that they have recognizable names.
And not just to the hardcore mixed martial arts community. They’ll be watching anyway, because that is what they do. They need to be recognizable to the casual fans who tune in once or twice a year, at most. They need to capture the attention of the people who started watching MMA back in the early days of The Ultimate Fighter, or when Brock Lesnar began pulling astronomical pay-per-view numbers.
Those viewers tuned out at some point over the past five years, but it’s easy to bring them back. All you have to do is give them names they recognize.
It worked for Coker‘s first “tentpole” show in Bellator. When he announced that Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar would headline the November 16 show in San Diego, the hardcore community jumped all over it and not in a good way. And yeah, Ortiz and Bonnar had a terrible fight, which is about what you’d expect from two old men far past their primes.
But the ratings showed that fight quality doesn’t really matter to the masses. Ortiz and Bonnar, winded and wounded, peaked at two million viewers. It was the most-watched cable TV fight of 2014, and it was a success regardless of how painful it was to watch.
Now, Coker will attempt to replicate that success with two more old men. One of them is very old. Ken Shamrock, 51, has not competed since 2010. Kimbo Slice, 41, has also been out of mixed martial arts action since 2010, though he stayed somewhat busy by beating a steady stream of cans in barely passable boxing matches.
Slice was never good at mixed martial arts. Like CM Punk, Slice was brought into the UFC because he could bring eyeballs. It did not matter that he was completely out of his element once the fight went anywhere but on the feet. He was an attraction, and the UFC needed him. It got what it needed out of him on The Ultimate Fighter and two subsequent bouts, and then it sent him on his way.
And now Slice is back, ready (along with Shamrock) to help bring eyeballs to a product attempting to differentiate itself from the market leader. Different is good. Former Bellator czar Bjorn Rebney tried to present his promotion as pure sports. The tournament-based format for determining championship fights was novel, and it was different, and it felt like real sports. It felt like all fighters had a real stake in determining their future.
But it was also boring. At the end of the day, mixed martial arts is still a business built on bringing in the largest amount of money possible. It is an entertainment business. It’s all well and good to create intriguing fights between young, talented competitors. But what good do those matchups do if nobody is watching?
The UFC has the greatest roster of mixed martial arts talent in the short history of the sport. It has nearly 600 fighters on a roster that ranges from the greatest fighter in the sport (Jon Jones) all the way down to young prospects earning their stripes on the preliminary card. Talent for talent, there is no way Bellator (or anyone else) can compete with what the UFC offers. And it certainly cannot attempt to present the same style of product as the UFC and hope for any kind of success.
Bellator has to be different. If the UFC is your dependable and rock-solid father, then Bellator is the crazy uncle that shows up completely hammered at the family reunion and hits on the catering staff. You’ll act embarrassed, and you’ll shake your head, but you won’t stop watching, because you have to see what he does next.
Make no mistake about it: There is a good chance that Slice vs. Shamrock will be one of the worst fights you have ever seen. If both men make it to the end of the second round without collapsing, it will be a victory. On that night, the hardcore MMA fan inside you will die a little bit.
But you aren’t Coker‘s target audience. He already has you. With fights like this one, he’s trying to bring in the folks who rarely watch MMA, in the hopes that they’ll tune in and then see something else on the broadcast they enjoy. He’s trying to set his product apart from the UFC to create new fans and bring back old ones.
And if it takes something as ridiculous and over-the-top as a very old former UFC star against a street fighter, well, so be it. At least he’s doing something different.
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