Tag: Bellator

Bellator CEO Takes Veiled Shot at Chael Sonnen, UFC Pay-Per-View Model

Since Bellator Fighting Championships was created, there hasn’t been much vitriol between them and the UFC, which happens to be the biggest MMA promotion on the planet.
Certainly there have been jabs back and forth, here and there over the years, but n…

Since Bellator Fighting Championships was created, there hasn’t been much vitriol between them and the UFC, which happens to be the biggest MMA promotion on the planet.

Certainly there have been jabs back and forth, here and there over the years, but not until Bellator signed on to replace the UFC on Spike TV did the gloves come off a bit more.

In addition to airing on Spike TV, Bellator is now owned by Viacom—the parent company of Spike TV which televised the UFC for several years including during the launch of The Ultimate Fighter in 2005.

Since the split with their former network home, UFC president Dana White has made no secret that he’s not a fan of Viacom or their business practices. When the announcement was made that Bellator was going into the pay-per-view business this November, White went on a tirade proclaiming “they have no f—king clue what they’re doing.”

Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney disagrees with White’s assessment of the company’s move into the pay-per-view market. He even took a back-handed slap at the UFC’s willingness to put on a pay-per-view card every single month, regardless of who is fighting on the card.

While he never said the UFC by name, it was pretty clear who Rebney was talking about when he discussed Bellator‘s future plans for pay-per-view during a press conference on Monday.

“The one thing that I’ve always said about pay-per-view is that you can’t force feed pay-per-views down people’s throats month in and month out. You can’t do it as a repetitive vehicle,” Rebney stated.  

“We’re a free TV mechanism and a free TV business. Our partnership and our alliance is with Spike, and when incredible opportunities come up for us, and I sit down with our partners and we have the opportunity to Tito (Ortiz) vs. Rampage (Jackson) or we have the opportunity to another huge fight that as an MMA fan you go ‘that’s great, I would watch that’ we will probably jump back into the pay-per-view arena.

“It’s not going to be one of those things where every single month, do or die, we keep putting it out same time, same place, same channel, where we don’t necessarily have or someone else doesn’t necessarily have the fighters to fuel it that a premium purchase should be fueled. We’ll be back in it, but we’ll be back in it when the time’s right to be back in it.”

The question then came up to Rebney about the main event that will lead Bellator‘s first foray into pay-per-view pitting two former UFC champions against each other. Both Tito Ortiz and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson are coming off multiple losses in a row, but are viewed as big names and legends in MMA.

Just having a legendary name doesn’t mean Bellator is planning to forgo its current system of crowning contenders. Since its inception, Bellator has depended on the tournament format to hand out titles as well as find contenders in each weight class.

Rebney says that standard won’t change just because Bellator is putting on a big fight between two well-known names like Jackson and Ortiz. He says in Bellator, fighters have to earn their shot at the belt.

This is when Rebney took another crack at the UFC, again without ever saying a name, but obviously talking about current UFC light heavyweight Chael Sonnen. Sonnen received a title shot at 205 pounds despite coming off a loss in a middleweight title bout in his last trip to the Octagon. Sonnen is known as a prolific talker, and apparently Rebney isn’t a fan of how he got his shot at the belt.

“Our point of difference is that we’re real sports competition, and when it boils down to world title fights, when it boils down to crowning our champion at 170, or 55 or 45 or whatever weight class, guys are going to earn the right to fight for that championship and they’re going to have to beat the champion. It’s the toughest tournament in sports, it’s real sports competition,” Rebney said. “We’re not sitting around waiting for some wrestler to lose two fights straight and then bark his way into a 205 world title fight. That’s just not the essence of what we do.”

During the entire press conference, Rebney rarely if ever even uttered the words UFC, and never mentioned any fighter or executive by name, but reading between the lines it was pretty transparent who he was speaking about on both accounts.

While there’s no doubt the UFC will likely always be the No. 1 MMA promotion, Bellator certainly seems willing to poke at the bear with some of the comments he has made lately.

Whether it gets a reaction from the UFC, or if they even care, remains to be seen.

Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report and all quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Felice Herrig Wants to Be the Last Fighter to Face Megumi Fujii

Women’s MMA will lose a legend this October when former No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter Megumi Fujii hangs up her gloves after one final fight in October under the Vale Tudo Japan banner.
Fujii has been recognized as one of the best women’s fighte…

Women’s MMA will lose a legend this October when former No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter Megumi Fujii hangs up her gloves after one final fight in October under the Vale Tudo Japan banner.

Fujii has been recognized as one of the best women’s fighters for several years. She held an undefeated record for most of her career and faced the top competition in Japan before she tried her hand in Bellator back in 2010.

The Japanese star has wins over several top names including current Invicta champion Carla Esparza, but she will still put a bow on her career this October. There’s at least one current women’s star who hopes to travel to Japan and land the retirement fight with Fujii.

Felice Herrig, who has won her last four bouts in a row, including two victories in Bellator, is putting her name in the hat as the person to draw the final fight with Fujii in October.

While her hope is to land the fight, Herrig isn’t trying to be disrespectful towards Fujii—it’s exactly the opposite.

Herrig knows that Fujii is a legend, and the best way to honor that is to give her the best fight possible before she calls it a career.

“It would truly be an honor to compete against Megumi in her final fight,” Herrig told Bleacher Report. “She is a true pioneer for WMMA and I would like to be able to look back on my career and say I had the opportunity to face her.”

Herrig is one of the top rising prospects in the women’s division at 115 pounds, who also carries solid name value in the sport.

It’s unknown at this time who the candidates are to face Fujii in her final fight, but it’s well known that many promotions in Japan don’t settle on a fight until just weeks before it’s set to actually take place.

To make sure she’s in fighting shape in case she gets the call, Herrig is staying busy in the mean time.

She will return to her striking roots this weekend in a Muay Thai fight in Chicago when she takes on Amanda LaVoy in a special attraction bout.

Herrig hopes that her next fight will be against Fujii in Japan this October.

Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report and all quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Recapping the Most Notable/Embarrassing Moments From the ‘Rampage vs. Tito’ Press Conference

(Our favorite moment? The six seconds of lead-in music that was apparently played on a phonograph. Bellator truly spared no expense.) 

Ugh.

We don’t mean to keep hating on Bellator’s Rampage Jackson/Tito Ortiz/MMA/TNA clusterfuck, but literally everything about this matchup has been equal parts humiliating and downright laughable from the get-go. A botched head fake to cap off a horrendously overdramatized staredown? Check. Straight up goofy forays into the world of pro wrasslin’? Oh, BellaTNAor’s got that in spades.

Which brings us to today’s press conference, an hour-long suckfest in which Bjorn Rebney dutifully tried to convince us that he was both a tried and true MMA fan and honestly excited about the prospect of watching the two half-asleep gentlemen sitting on either side of him fight in the near future. He tried, dammit.

Being that your time is way too valuable to spend an hour of it watching Rebney stroke two former champions egos to full completion while they both push their newfound love of the sport on us like a Ronco Rotisserie, we’ve recapped some most notable moments from yesterday’s press conference after the jump.


(Our favorite moment? The six seconds of lead-in music that was apparently played on a phonograph. Bellator truly spared no expense.) 

Ugh.

We don’t mean to keep hating on Bellator’s Rampage Jackson/Tito Ortiz/MMA/TNA clusterfuck, but literally everything about this matchup has been equal parts humiliating and downright laughable from the get-go. A botched head fake to cap off a horrendously overdramatized staredown? Check. Straight up goofy forays into the world of pro wrasslin’? Oh, BellaTNAor’s got that in spades.

Which brings us to today’s press conference, an hour-long suckfest in which Bjorn Rebney dutifully tried to convince us that he was both a tried and true MMA fan and honestly excited about the prospect of watching the two half-asleep gentlemen sitting on either side of him fight in the near future. He tried, dammit.

Being that your time is way too valuable to spend an hour of it watching Rebney stroke two former champions egos to full completion while they both push their newfound love of the sport on us like a Ronco Rotisserie, we’ve recapped some most notable moments from yesterday’s press conference after the jump.

Bjorn Rebney: MMA Superfan

Perhaps the most earnest moments from the Jackson vs. Ortiz press conference (or at least attempts at being earnest) came from that of Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney, who really, truly wanted to convince us that he was just as diehard an MMA fan as the rest of us. At one point during the aforementioned suckfest, he discussed Rampage vs. Liddell 2 down to the exact second that Rampage KO’d “The Iceman,” as if he didn’t just look that stat up two minutes before the press conference began. We get it, Bjorn, you’re just one of the guys. But you’re starting to sound like Lois Griffin on the softball field.

Quinton Jackson and Tito Ortiz are Excited to Be Here, You Guys

Maybe it was jet lag, maybe everyone involved had just rolled out of bed, but the utter lack of energy or anything resembling enthusiasm was noticeable from the very start of this press conference. “I’m really excited to be fighting for…uhh…Bellator,” started Ortiz (to be fair, at least he got the promotion’s name right). “I got an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he continued, which is odd considering that Ortiz has been discussing his un-retirement from pretty much the exact moment that he retired.

Jackson, on the other hand, sounded about as lethargic as he did when we forced Danga to talk to him about smartphone apps. He repeatedly stated how upset he was that his previously rumored fight with Roy Jones Jr. was off and alluded that the reason he agreed to fight Tito was because Bellator “made his dream come true of being a pro wrestler.” I really don’t know what world I am living in anymore, but I fucking hate it.

CagePotato Bans Violated: At Least 4 

Whether it was Tito discussing his unretirement, his past personal troubles, blaming injuries for his recent performances (he’s FINALLY healthy, you guys!) or Rampage’s declaration that he is “working on a lot of old skills that I forgot about,” CagePotato bans were being treated with less respect than a Florida bus driver. A truly defining moment came when Ortiz dropped this little nugget of wisdom:

“The way to be great again is not to fight chumps.”

While this is undoubtedly true, it also does not apply in any way, shape or form to the career of Ortiz. In fact, the only “chump” you could argue that Tito has fought in the past ten years was Ken Shamrock (twice) back in 2006. You know, back when Tito was winning.

Rampage Jackson’s Reasons for Moving His Training Camp to Mexico

Moments after describing “how serious” he was about his comeback, Jackson told reporters that he would be moving the latter half of his training camp to Rosarito, Mexico. When asked why he would be doing that and whether or not there was someone down there he planned on training with, Jackson gave the following response:

I like Mexico. I bring whoever I want to come train anywhere in the world with me…this time I chose Rosarito, Mexico. It’s right on the beach. The people are really nice. They got quads you can ride right on the beach, right on the street. There’s senoritas walking around. They got burritos everywhere and taco stands. I’m trying to learn my Spanish. 

I like Mexico. I got a condo right on the beach. I can look out the window butt naked and look at the ocean and nobody can see me…I can do a little penis smack, pap, pap, pap. 

It’s just good to know that all of Mike Dolce’s hard work has paid off. Where the old, careless Rampage would just hide candy bars under his bed, the new, focused Rampage will be stuffing entire gorditas and taco supremes into his pillowcase each night. Progress!

As for Jackson’s next training camp? You guessed it, Passages Malibu.

Bellator is *the* Promotion to Bring MMA Out of the Dark Ages

For every compliment Rebney threw Jackson’s or Ortiz’s way, the two former champions returned the favor tenfold. It could not have sounded any less authentic.

“I knew that fighters was gonna come over when they found out how cool Bellator is and how they know how to treat fighters. I knew it was gonna happen!” exclaimed Jackson.

“They’re not about the brand, they’re about making stars!” chimed in Ortiz, obviously referring to bang-up job Bellator has done in making Michael Chandler, Attila Vegh, Ben Askren, Alexander Shlemenko, Pat Curran, and Eduardo Dantas the household names that they are today.

Tito Ortiz is Still Bitter Over the Third Griffin Fight

Stating almost verbatim what we’ve been hearing since the moment he retired, Ortiz made sure to inform us once again that he dropped Forrest Griffin twice and took him down four times yet somehow lost a decision at UFC 148. TRAVESTY, THY NAME IS PEOPLES. Also, Ortiz uses the phrase “like no other”a lot (you might say he uses it like no other). He entertains like no other, he fights like no other, he is even in a better mental place like no other. Sorry Tito, but Deepak Chopra you are not.

Ortiz’s Response to the Rumor (specifically and hysterically made public by Stephan Bonnar) That He is Broke and Only Fighting Again for Money :

Ortiz: “How do you feed your children or your family?”
*silence*
Reporter: “Well, yeah, you gotta get paid.”
Ortiz: “OK, well, mysthethatsthe…that’s really not a problem, my kids are going to get paid either way (?). I was smart enough to save my money. I mean, I invest. And the biggest thing that you can invest that some people, they don’t make much of, it’s called land. And I own a lot of it.”

Other notable quotes/moments:

(33:25) “I’m putting my poker face on and Rampage better shuffle the right cards.” – Tito Ortiz.

(55:40) – ”I don’t know, I guess if you poke the pitbull so many times…” -Tito Ortiz, who was mercifully cut off by a technical issue before he could finish murdering another common euphemism.

(56:19) – Rampage getting so bored by Tito’s self-inflated yammering that he fakes throwing what appears to be a CD case at a reporter. If only Bjorn had provided straws and paper, we could have seen Page hawk a spitball at Tito’s monstrous dome.

-Rampage asking if he can fight Darrill “Titties” Schoonover on pay-per-view in the future. We’d LOVE to see this fight, but only with the stipulation that Titties gets trounced by Aleksander Emelianenko in August. Otherwise, pairing a heavyweight on a four-fight win streak against a light heavyweight on a three (or possibly four) fight losing streak would just be cruel and unfair.

–J. Jones

Bellator 97 Ratings Show Improvements but Still Less Than Last Season’s Average

Bellator returned to Spike TV on Wednesday night with one of its most stacked cards in history, and the ratings went up dramatically from the last show but were still not close to the numbers that the promotion reached just two events ago.
Bellator 97 …

Bellator returned to Spike TV on Wednesday night with one of its most stacked cards in history, and the ratings went up dramatically from the last show but were still not close to the numbers that the promotion reached just two events ago.

Bellator 97 featured two title fights in the main and co-main events. Lightweight champion Michael Chandler blasted Dave Rickels, while welterweight champ Ben Askren picked up a TKO victory over Andrey Koreshkov.

The show also featured former Strikeforce champion Muhammed Lawal as well as the announcement that the first-ever Bellator pay-per-view would pit Quinton “Rampage” Jackson against former UFC light heavyweight king Tito Ortiz.

The Nielsen ratings system released the final numbers on Thursday in an email to Bleacher Report. Bellator 97 averaged 697,000 viewers over the three-hour broadcast.

The show peaked at 856,000 viewers just after the announcement was made about the Bellator pay-per-view on November 2 starring Rampage and Ortiz.

Those numbers are much higher than those from Bellator 96 on Spike TV in June, which averaged 480,000 viewers while going up against the Stanley Cup Final in hockey. Bellator 95 in January had a much better final number, however, averaging 901,000 viewers and peaking with 1.046 million viewers at one point during the broadcast. 

This show didn’t have any sports competition on Wednesday night, and the numbers reflected a much higher viewership but still didn’t reach Bellator‘s previous numbers on Spike TV when it was running in tandem with TNA Impact Wrestling on Thursday nights.

Bellator‘s first broadcast season on Spike TV saw the upstart promotion average 793,000 viewers, with peak numbers reaching well over one million viewers on a couple of occasions. The shift in times and nights has forced Bellator to start over again as it approaches the full schedule that will kick off in September.

The increase in numbers from the last show is encouraging, but Bellator 97 still had about 100,000 viewers less than it was averaging last season when alongside the professional wrestling show also airing on Spike TV. The ratings for Bellator 97 were lower than any other single Bellator show that aired on Spike TV during last season. The lowest previous number was 705,000 average viewers for Bellator 87.

Summer does present harder times for ratings, as witnessed by lower-than-average ratings for the UFC on Fox 8 show that aired last Saturday night.

The next Bellator card will take place on September 7 from Connecticut. It will be the last Saturday night broadcast before the remainder of the season shifts to Friday nights starting on September 13.

As for Bellator‘s reality show, Fight Master: Bellator MMA, this week’s episode averaged 629,000 viewers.

Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report.

 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Bellator PPV: Will Anyone Actually Pay to See Rampage Jackson vs. Tito Ortiz?

Sometimes I feel that as fans we are tested to see how much we remember. Somewhere along the line, a fighter will make a name for himself and, regardless of how that fighter performs after a “signature win,” we latch on to the star he once was.
There h…

Sometimes I feel that as fans we are tested to see how much we remember. Somewhere along the line, a fighter will make a name for himself and, regardless of how that fighter performs after a “signature win,” we latch on to the star he once was.

There has never been somebody in MMA more evident of this than Tito Ortiz.

Ortiz has won just one fight since December of 2006 (1-7-1), but he remains a very popular figure in the sport because of the brand he created for himself between 2000 and 2002 when he rattled off five consecutive defenses of his UFC Light Heavyweight Championship.

It should be noted that although “The People’s Champ” is in the midst of a stretch of futility, he has faced some of the better fighters in the division. His losses during his 1-7-1 stretch have been against:

  • Chuck Liddell
  • Lyoto Machida
  • Forrest Griffin (twice)
  • Matt Hamill
  • Rashad Evans
  • Antonio Rogerio Nogueira

With that being said, we’d really have to go back about seven years to the Ken Shamrock days if we wanted to watch a complete fight from Ortiz. Let’s face it, his win over Ryan Bader stemmed from a punch that Bader inexplicably ran into.

Ortiz’s opponent for Bellator‘s first ever pay-per-view event on November 2 will be Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

We haven’t seen the old Rampage for five years, not since he knocked out Wanderlei Silva at UFC 92. Somewhere between that fight and today Quinton lost the “Rampage” and simply became another fighter who’s popularity was based on old fights and current theatrics.

Now these two men will come together in what fans hope will somewhat resemble how they fought a decade ago. Ortiz, now 38, and Jackson, 35, are no doubt going to be going back and forth with each other for the next three months in an effort to display tension and build the fight.

But will fans buy the fight?

I think so, but the price has to be right.

If Bellator thinks they are going to charge $54.95 for a HD broadcast of this fight, they are shooting themselves in the foot. They do, however, have an opportunity to launch themselves into the PPV market and show fans that they are an elite MMA organization that won’t require you to drain the bank account in the same way the UFC does.

My opinion is that $19.95 is the perfect price for the event, although I’d expect to see something more along the lines of $39.95. Anywhere in between should still attract a solid number of viewers.

Any MMA fan or member of the media who have immediately scoffed at these two veterans headlining a PPV card will no doubt have an interest in this fight when the night arrives.

It happens all the time. If you need proof, just read all the negative articles and tweets about Ortiz vs. Jackson, then jump on Twitter the night of the fight and I guarantee those same people will be watching.

We just love the sport. Most either hate or love Ortiz, and the same goes for Jackson. There is no middle ground. As long as these two don’t get hurt leading up to the fight, just seeing them in the cage together is something we’ll probably remember down the road (for better or worse).

Are you going to tell me, as a fight fan, that you aren’t the least bit interested in watching them? I don’t believe you. You’ll buckle and buy the fight just like the rest of us.

 

 

Joe Chacon is a MMA columnist for Bleacher Report and The MMA Corner. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeChacon.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Rampage vs. Tito: What Happened to Bellator Not Wanting UFC Castoffs?

Donning his trademarked flaming Punishment Athletics skull cap while waving his half-Mexican, half-American flag, it was a bit surreal watching former UFC light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz stroll into the Bellator MMA cage on Wednesday night. Set to headline the promotion’s first pay-per-view card opposite fellow former champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in November, the spectacle that occurred […]

Donning his trademarked flaming Punishment Athletics skull cap while waving his half-Mexican, half-American flag, it was a bit surreal watching former UFC light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz stroll into the Bellator MMA cage on Wednesday night. Set to headline the promotion’s first pay-per-view card opposite fellow former champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in November, the spectacle that occurred […]

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