On September 5th, Southeastern Connecticut is going to host way more top-notch MMA than it deserves, honestly. That’s the date of #FridayNightWars (hashtag patent-pending), the night when the UFC and Bellator put on simultaneous shows ten miles away from each other.
As we previously reported, UFC Fight Night 50 in Ledyard will feature a suspiciously-stacked lineup featuring Ronaldo Souza vs. Gegard Mousasi, Alistair Overeem vs. Ben Rothwell, Matt Mitrione vs. Derrick Lewis, and Joe Lauzon vs. Michael Chiesa. But Bellator isn’t going down quietly. The promotion has announced three more bouts for its Bellator 123: Curran vs. Pitbull 2 card in Uncasville, and they all feature guys you’ve heard of…
Cheick Kongo vs. Lavar Johnson: Kongo bounced back to the win column with a second-round TKO of Eric Smith at Bellator 120 in May, and has put together a 3-1 record under the Bellator banner. He’ll face fellow UFC veteran Lavar “Big” Johnson, who has struggled to find his footing in Bellator, dropping to 1-2 in the promotion after his April submission loss against Blagoy Ivanov. Johnson has lost four of his last five fights overall.
(Disclaimer: Black guys not drawn to scale.)
On September 5th, Southeastern Connecticut is going to host way more top-notch MMA than it deserves, honestly. That’s the date of #FridayNightWars (hashtag patent-pending), the night when the UFC and Bellator put on simultaneous shows ten miles away from each other.
As we previously reported, UFC Fight Night 50 in Ledyard will feature a suspiciously-stacked lineup featuring Ronaldo Souza vs. Gegard Mousasi, Alistair Overeem vs. Ben Rothwell, Matt Mitrione vs. Derrick Lewis, and Joe Lauzon vs. Michael Chiesa. But Bellator isn’t going down quietly. The promotion has announced three more bouts for its Bellator 123: Curran vs. Pitbull 2 card in Uncasville, and they all feature guys you’ve heard of…
Cheick Kongo vs. Lavar Johnson: Kongo bounced back to the win column with a second-round TKO of Eric Smith at Bellator 120 in May, and has put together a 3-1 record under the Bellator banner. He’ll face fellow UFC veteran Lavar “Big” Johnson, who has struggled to find his footing in Bellator, dropping to 1-2 in the promotion after his April submission loss against Blagoy Ivanov. Johnson has lost four of his last five fights overall.
Bobby Lashley vs. Josh Burns: The former WWE star quietly built up a three-fight win streak last year, and has been keeping busy in the wrestling world this year as the TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Now, he’ll look to reintroduce himself to MMA fans on a larger stage. Lashley will compete at Bellator 123 again Josh Burns, whose 8-7 record includes an 0-4 tally in Bellator (all losses by stoppage). Seems like Bellator is taking no chances here.
(Alistair Overeem wielding Mjolnir / Photo via Getty)
Sometimes fans need more to remember a fighter by than just a performance or a gimmick. They need an accessory to associate that fighter with–and the very best fighters understand this and know how to accessorize.
We brainstormed at Castle CagePotato as to what accessory was the greatest of all time. After several thought-sessions ended in magic ice cream binges and Martin Luther cosplay sessions, we decided to just list off all the best ones rather than just decide which one among them was the best:
(Alistair Overeem wielding Mjolnir / Photo via Getty)
By the CagePotato Staff
Sometimes fans need more to remember a fighter by than just a performance or a gimmick. They need an accessory to associate that fighter with–and the very best fighters understand this and know how to accessorize.
We brainstormed at Castle CagePotato as to what accessory was the greatest of all time. After several thought-sessions ended in magic ice cream binges and Martin Luther cosplay sessions, we decided to just list off all the best ones rather than just decide which one among them was the best:
King Mo is pro wrasslin’ tonight. I learned this by looking at the above poster, which was posted on his Instagram last night. According to all sources, this event is an actual thing that is happening. I don’t whether to laugh or cry.
I have so, so many questions about this poster: Why is “The Beast” wearing a Tron outfit? Where does one obtain a degree from the House of Hardcore? Or is that like when someone says that they graduated the School of Hard Knocks, The Streets, or ITT Tech?
Is “Macho Man Richie Boombots” the most hackneyed, unforgivably terrible wrestling nickname of all time? On the contrary, is “Merican Mayde” the greatest? Do you think the member of “Merican Mayde” doing the bird hands is a member of the 19th Street Gangsters? Why isn’t “Senor Entertainment’s” name “Senor Entretenimiento,” you know, so that both words are actually in Spanish? Does Flash (or maybe he’s Cash) have the most uninspired costume of all time? Is he wearing that pink headband in support of breast cancer?
Do you think…
(Best. Fight Pass card. Ever.)
King Mo is pro wrasslin’ tonight. I learned this by looking at the above poster, which was posted on his Instagram last night. According to all sources, this event is an actual thing that is happening. I don’t whether to laugh or cry.
I have so, so many questions about this poster: Why is “The Beast” wearing a Tron outfit? Where does one obtain a degree from the House of Hardcore? Or is that like when someone says that they graduated the School of Hard Knocks, The Streets, or ITT Tech?
Is “Macho Man Richie Boombots” the most hackneyed, unforgivably terrible wrestling nickname of all time? On the contrary, is “Merican Mayde” the greatest? Do you think the member of “Merican Mayde” doing the bird hands is a member of the 19th Street Gangsters? Why isn’t “Senor Entertainment’s” name “Senor Entretenimiento,” you know, so that both words are actually in Spanish? Does Flash (or maybe he’s Cash) have the most uninspired costume of all time? Is he wearing that pink headband in support of breast cancer?
Do you think Mikey Mondelli is on TRT? Because that pose kind of suggests that he’s on TRT. Why is Sidney Jones so serious? Did he just find out that the big break he thought he was about to have is taking place in an MMA gym following a BJJ belt ceremony? And why, oh why, did he not choose a more intimidating wrestling name than Sidney? Unless that his actual name, in which case, do you think his parents chose to be emancipated from him?
Does King Mo wear that crown everywhere, kind of like how Tim Sylvia treated his UFC belt? Does he bring it into the bedroom? Or do you think he just dons it during his post-coital pee while posing like Captain Morgan? Is this the low or high point of his professional wrestling career? It’s the low, isn’t it? Do you think Mo hates Felice Herrig?
Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.
There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.
In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.
Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.
Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120’s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173’s.
Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.
There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.
In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.
Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.
Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120′s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173′s.
Other random insights:
The time spent on page, an important and overlooked metric, was “virtually identical” for both Bellator 120 and UFC 173. Referral sources, too, were identical, with much of the traffic coming from search (Google) and social (Facebook and a bit from Twitter). This isn’t terribly surprising.
What does all of this mean, then?
At a glance, people are probably saying “The best Bellator has to offer only barely edges out a lower-level UFC card!” And that’s fair to an extent. But it’s worth noting that before the card, most of our UFC 173-related content wasn’t doing too well. There was very little hype around the event. Fans had a “how dare the UFC charge us for this crap” attitude about it. Even the live-blog was sub-par during the event. Once it was updated to reflect the huge upset that was TJ Dillashaw defeating Renan Barao, however, traffic on it exploded. The massive upset could’ve definitely helped UFC 173.
Alas, web traffic means little in terms of PPV buys. It’s highly likely that many people who read our post-fight Bellator coverage wanted to see if the event was a train wreck without having to pay for it. Furthermore, we’re just one website. A sample size of one isn’t much to go on. When asked on Twitter, some sites reported that their Bellator 120 traffic was far below expectations.
So, to get a clearer picture, we ran a Google trends comparison:
Interestingly, the search term “Bellator 120″ peaked the day after the PPV, indicating our theory above about most of the traffic coming from people who didn’t watch the PPV. And UFC 173′s peak was slightly higher than Bellator 120′s.
If anything is to be taken from this, it’s that Bellator is capable of generating at least as much Internet-interest (even if it derives from schadenfreude) from the fans as the UFC. Whether that’ll hold true for their future PPV outings is impossible to tell.
Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney didn’t give out the gate numbers at the post-fight presser, even when asked (which probably means they were bad). And it’s still too early to know how Bellator 120 performed at the box office. So, financially, Bellator’s first PPV can’t definitively be called a success or a failure.
Regarding entertainment value, however, Bellator 120 was a success. There were some pacing issues, yes, but overall the card delivered.
In the first fight, Michael Page did his best Anderson Silva impression, knocking out Ricky Rainey (who’s name was hilariously spelled wrong at the post-fight presser) after taunting him mercilessly. In the next bout, former Bellator heavyweight champ Alexander Volkov scored an upset submission win over Blagoi Ivanov.
Then came Tito Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko. Ortiz was the laughing stock of this card, without a doubt. He was a relic from a bygone era who hadn’t won a fight in three years. His ridiculous pre-fight promos (he promised to make Shlemenko “literally shit himself”) only made him look worse. Shlemenko, on the other hand, was Bellator’s middleweight champ and a stern Russian killer. He’d have no problem with Ortiz despite the considerable size difference, or so the world thought. But Ortiz won the fight. He submitted Shlemenko with an arm-triangle choke in the very first round. Then he gave the worst post-fight interview of all time; he pretended to be Hulk Hogan.
As crazy as Ortiz-Shlemenko was, it wasn’t the emotional high point of the PPV, nor was Michael Chandler vs. Will Brooks. Chandler-Brooks was not a particularly anticipated match. In fact, the entire Bellator PPV was centered around the rubber match between Chandler and Eddie Alvarez. When Alvarez withdrew due to a concussion, many thought it meant death for Bellator 120. Will Brooks was thrown in against Chandler, but it was a squash match—or at least that’s what conventional wisdom held. But Brooks upended fans and pundits, beating Chandler via split decision. He was made of sterner stuff than we all gave him credit for.
Then we had the main event, Rampage Jackson vs. King Mo. The fight itself was banal. Mo dominated Rampage with wrestling while Rampage landed a couple of decent shots throughout the fight. It seemed like a pretty easy decision win for King Mo, but the judges didn’t see it that way; they awarded Rampage with a unanimous decision. What happened after the fight was the real draw though. King Mo and Rampage started jaw-jacking. During the Spike TV portion of the broadcast, King Mo accused Bjorn Rebney of “dick riding” Rampage. He didn’t hold in such feelings in his post-fight speech, nor did he silence himself at the post-fight presser. Him and Rampage yelled at each other while the presser stream intermittently died possibly due to the sheer volume of viewers.
So what’s the fallout?
(Because Getty had no images from last night. / Photo via Getty)
Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney didn’t give out the gate numbers at the post-fight presser, even when asked (which probably means they were bad). And it’s still too early to know how Bellator 120 performed at the box office. So, financially, Bellator’s first PPV can’t definitively be called a success or a failure.
Regarding entertainment value, however, Bellator 120 was a success. There were some pacing issues, yes, but overall the card delivered.
In the first fight, Michael Page did his best Anderson Silva impression, knocking out Ricky Rainey (who’s name was hilariously spelled wrong at the post-fight presser) after taunting him mercilessly. In the next bout, former Bellator heavyweight champ Alexander Volkov scored an upset submission win over Blagoi Ivanov.
Then came Tito Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko. Ortiz was the laughing stock of this card, without a doubt. He was a relic from a bygone era who hadn’t won a fight in three years. His ridiculous pre-fight promos (he promised to make Shlemenko “literally shit himself”) only made him look worse. Shlemenko, on the other hand, was Bellator’s middleweight champ and a stern Russian killer. He’d have no problem with Ortiz despite the considerable size difference, or so the world thought. But Ortiz won the fight. He submitted Shlemenko with an arm-triangle choke in the very first round. Then he gave the worst post-fight interview of all time; he pretended to be Hulk Hogan.
As crazy as Ortiz-Shlemenko was, it wasn’t the emotional high point of the PPV, nor was Michael Chandler vs. Will Brooks. Chandler-Brooks was not a particularly anticipated match. In fact, the entire Bellator PPV was centered around the rubber match between Chandler and Eddie Alvarez. When Alvarez withdrew due to a concussion, many thought it meant death for Bellator 120. Will Brooks was thrown in against Chandler, but it was a squash match—or at least that’s what conventional wisdom held. But Brooks upended fans and pundits, beating Chandler via split decision. He was made of sterner stuff than we all gave him credit for.
Then we had the main event, Rampage Jackson vs. King Mo. The fight itself was banal. Mo dominated Rampage with wrestling while Rampage landed a couple of decent shots throughout the fight. It seemed like a pretty easy decision win for King Mo, but the judges didn’t see it that way; they awarded Rampage with a unanimous decision. What happened after the fight was the real draw though. King Mo and Rampage started jaw-jacking. During the Spike TV portion of the broadcast, King Mo accused Bjorn Rebney of “dick riding” Rampage. He didn’t hold in such feelings in his post-fight speech, nor did he silence himself at the post-fight presser. Him and Rampage yelled at each other while the presser stream intermittently died possibly due to the sheer volume of viewers.
So what’s the fallout?
It’s tough to parse this one out, Potato Nation.
Michael Page looked great, which is obviously a good thing for Bellator. And there’s not much to say about Ivanov vs. Volkov. It was a good fight. Volkov will get a title shot at Vitaly Minakov, and Ivanov will likely get placed into another heavyweight tournament sometime soon.
Ortiz-Shlemenko is tough to pass judgement on. Bellator obviously has more invested in Ortiz, so him winning his first fight under their banner is a positive thing. Now he can be featured in other fight cards. How much Ortiz’s presence will increase viewership remains to be seen. Still, it’s better than him losing, which would’ve damaged whatever remaining value his name had beyond repair. However, no good can come from your middleweight champion losing to an ancient UFC washout and has been—and looking like a total scrub while doing it.
At first, it seemed like Will Brooks defeating Michael Chandler destroyed the Bellator lightweight division. But apparently Eddie Alvarez can demand to fight Chandler anyway, meaning Brooks’ victory didn’t wreck the much-anticipated rubber match between Alvarez and Chandler. Brooks beating Chandler helps get him over as a legitimate talent. Brooks winning, while maybe not optimal, isn’t the disaster people made it out to be.
Last night’s crown jewel was Rampage vs. King Mo, and not because of what happened in the cage. It was all about the post-fight hysterics. The questionable decision and (now seemingly legitimate) beef between the two makes a rematch enticing from a promotional standpoint, something that couldn’t have been said if either man decisively finished the other.
The PPV could’ve gone much worse. Could it have been better? Maybe. There have been worse UFC PPVs that we paid more money for. Bellator 120 didn’t go bad enough to destroy Bellator, but it certainly didn’t go good enough to bring the Viacom-owned promotion to new heights of excellence. If nothing else, Bellator 120 was a perfect example of the inherent insanity that makes MMA special.
