Bellator Fighting Championships gained a lot of momentum last weekend with its more-than-stellar season premiere, which saw the crowning of a new Bellator featherweight champion as well as the establishment of the semifinals in the sixth season of the featherweight tournament.
Heading into the start of their middleweight tournament, the question is whether the momentum will carry on as we progress through this break period in the UFC’s schedule. And the answer is that they will be able to capitalize on the UFC’s break with a momentum that only Bellator can carry.
Let’s face it: the only UFC programming that fans have to look forward to is the current season of The Ultimate Fighter. And while Cristiano Marcello is definitely a preseason favorite with the defeat of Jared Carlsten in the TUF archives, the real money is in the question of how many weeks we will have to go without Urijah Faber and Dominick Cruz finding themselves one split-second away from starting an unofficial first round to their UFC 148 contest.
Other than that, this TUF: Live season looks like it will have fans judging the winner at the end of one round of fights instead of seeing if bouts will hit the sudden victory round at the end of two rounds. For fans who have been watching it ever since at least one of the first dozen seasons, that could be hard to adjust to.
In contrast, fans who recognize the existence of MMA outside of the UFC will be thrilled to see fresh new faces and a few somewhat familiar ones in Bellator’s middleweight, welterweight, lightweight and bantamweight tournaments, all of which could end in either the first 30 seconds or at the end of the full 15 minutes of the fights.
Regardless of what should go down for the rest of this season, there is no question that Bellator will capitalize on the UFC’s break period and make it one that we all remember before we find ourselves thrust into the chaos and cage history that will be made when we approach fight week for UFC 145: Jones vs. Evans.
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