(The purple hue really brings out the chestnut color of Alvarez’s eyebrows. / via twitter)
The best Sundays are post-event Sundays. There’s tons of great articles to read about the valiant, violent displays of physical fortitude that occurred the night before.
Usually, there’s not enough interest in a Bellator card to warrant a slew of interesting sound bites and pictures. But Bellator 106 was different. Bellator 106 was the canceled PPV that became one of the most important free, non-UFC televised cards in MMA history. Let’s look at some of the fallout, the crucial and the just plain cool.
Dana White, predictably, had nothing positive to say about Bellator 106 (but that’s not just because he’s a jerk; the show really wasn’t that great). Bjorn Rebney responded to Dana’s comments about karmic justice like a shady Winnebago salesman, saying “If karma is that we just put on the best mixed martial arts fight I’ve ever seen, that’s karma I’ll take big boatloads of.”
Rebney had some other important statements. He pessimistically dismissed the future of Bellator’s “Ultimate Fighter” knockoff “Fight Master.” Typical of post-Viacom buyout Bellator, Rebney didn’t do this without taking a shot at the UFC.
“Reality fight TV is having its difficulties now. You can see it in the UFC’s ratings, they’re having the lowerst-rated TUF they’ve had in the history of the show,” he said (he was right, by the way).
But Rebney couldn’t continue his streak of smart post-fight quotes—he all but flat-out said that he’s planning another PPV for Bellator…because it went so well the first time. He said he wouldn’t put Chandler-Alvarez III on free TV unless he had his brains removed, which is funny because your brain (or at least part of it) would have to be removed to think putting Tito Ortiz vs. Rampage Jackson on a PPV in 2013 was a good idea.
Presumably, Chandler-Alvarez III would serve as this hypothetical PPV’s main event. That’s great because Bellator would be promoting it’s own stars rather than UFC castoffs, which is what a lot of fans and writers want. But if Bellator 106 showed anything, it was that Bellator doesn’t have the supporting cast to make a PPV worth $45, no matter how exciting the main event promises to be.
On the lighter side of things (and it’s interesting commentary on MMA that a fighter tweeting a picture of his injured face is the lighter side), Eddie Alvarez shared a picture of his stitched-up, swollen eye. The shiner was probably worth the $160,000 Alvarez earned though; he was the highest paid fighter of the night.
Interestingly (and sadly), King Mo only made $10,000 despite being one of the most well-known fighters on the card. For reference, low-level journeyman Hector “Sick Dog” Ramirez (the very same Hector Ramirez that Forrest Griffin won a boring decision over way back at UFC 72) made $7,000 to lose on the prelims. Guess it’s not so good to be the king—unless you count meeting former WCW champ Diamond Dallas Page after the fight as part of Mo’s kingly benefits (which is pretty cool).
That’s all for now. Soak it up, because there might not be another Bellator news roundup until their next PPV.