bellator

Back when it was UFC vs PRIDE, a week didn't go by without a top fighter patiently explaining how thick the dildo was that Zuffa demanded they insert into their rectums if they wanted to fight for the UFC. All those contractual freedoms for fighters seem like less of a big deal now that they've practically become Candycane Fairyland terms - or to be more accurate, since the UFC bought Candycane Fairyland and executed all the unicorns.

But when Eddie Alvarez recently laid out all the reasons he'd rather stick with his big fish / small pond situation in Bellator than make the jump to the UFC, they still make for a compelling argument to stay out of the UFC for now. From a Josh Gross radio show transcribed by FightOpinion:

I think they’re running their business the way they are supposed to. But my issue with it is the way fighters lose one or two fights and they’re fired and, not only that, there is no like, it’s not like a union like the NFL, the NBA, and these other sports where the finances are regulated and you have to receive a minimum in order to be a part of that league. Like NFL, I don’t know, maybe you have to receive half a million dollars per year just to play in the NFL or maybe a quarter of a million. The UFC’s not like that. They can offer someone, you know, $5,000 and $5,000, the guy can fight at first and get his face broken to pieces and then he can totally put on a poor performance and then get fired. That scares me. I would like to be paid like an athlete and, I don’t know. I guess I have a lot of issues with it and when I was, I believe when I was ranked #2 in the world, I was offered something from the UFC but it was significantly lower than what I was getting paid at that time, almost like insultingly low and I just, it wasn’t the right move for me at that time.

“It would be great to fight them guys but at what cost, you know what I mean? At what cost to me? Do I have to, what measures do I have to take in order to fight them guys? Do I have to take an $80,000 pay cut? Do I have give up all my, every single ancillary right I can dream of? Do I have to, you know, now I can’t get certain sponsors that I want to get certain sponsors that I want to get because I have to pay the UFC before they pay me? There’s a lot of issues involved and I don’t know if people understand that. And if I was 20 years old and I was single and I had no kids, I would jump to the UFC tomorrow. But the reality is (that) I have three kids and I have a family to take care of and everything has to line up. Yeah, I want to be #1 in the world but I also want to be able to maintain a home for my family so I can’t tell my wife and kids, ‘hey, Daddy’s going to take a huge risk and this may not work and hopefully we do well.’ Like, I can’t tell my kids that. I got to tell them that I’m going to work hard and I’m going to get compensated correctly for my hard work and that’s all I really ask for.”

Pretty reasonable. On the other hand, is the scaredy cat too pussy to test himself against real competition? Huh pussy? Huh?

Everyone has been cautiously optimistic about Bellator's move to MTV2 - after all, it can't get much worse than being pre-empted nearly every week by whatever baseball / hockey / soccer match happens to be going down somewhere in America. But when the league announced a move from Thursday to Saturday nights, people started to get a bit nervous. Saturday night is to MMA as Sunday afternoon is to football, and it meant Bellator would regularly be competing head to head against Strikeforce and UFC shows.

This includes a killer's row of events like UFC 128, the UFC Fight Night with Tito vs Lil Nog, the UFC 129 supershow, the next Strikeforce heavyweight quarterfinals, and on and on. I likes me some Bellator, but it's not difficult to imagine who's going to win those battles for fanboy eyeballs. Fortunately, Bjorn Rebney says MTV2 didn't overlook that little issue when scheduling them - they did it on purpose so they could catch some lead-in viewers:

"That's part of the magic we have here," Rebney said. "When I was sitting down with the MTV folks, they said, 'Look, if there's a big UFC event, if there's a pay-per-view event, we'll kick our show an hour or two earlier so that it can be an MMA night for fans.' They can go from MTV2 to Spike TV or go from MTV2 to pay-per-view.

"You can make a night of it. Get some beers, grab a pizza, hang out with your buddies, and watch MMA for five hours instead of two and a half or three. It's continuity and ultimately trying to serve the fan base I'm a member of and you're a member of."

Shows are gonna have to start hella early because even UFC Prelims are > Bellator. I might decide that on a case by case basis if I was just a fan watching sports, but as a blogger you're just not allowed to ignore the UFC, even if it's a choice between a shitty Stefan Struve vs Travis Browne prelim on Spike and an awesome judo showdown between Jim Wallhead vs Rick 'the Olympian' Hawn on Bellator. Still, this is a much better situation than going head to head with the actual events, and it's not like MTV2 has much going on Saturday Nights anyways. I like Silent Library and all, but 5 hours of it?

If you're wondering where Roy Nelson's pasty white ass went, it's currently riding the bench over a legal dispute from Roy Jones Jr's short lived MMA / boxing hybrid promotion company. Nelson fought once for them back in March of 2009 but signed what Dana White called an evil old school boxing contract. No one is really willing to explain more - least of all Roy - but long story short, he isn't fighting in the UFC again until the case works itself out in court.

Not so for TUF 12 winner Jonathan Brookins, who's in a similar situation to Nelson with Bellator. They signed him in 2009 and claim he actively tried to hide his participation in TUF from them. Brookin's manager says that Bellator verbally released him from their contract. Normally a legal scrum like this would take a guy out of the fight rotation. But that hasn't sidelined Brookins yet, and here's Bellator head Bjorn Rebney giving a pretty good guy answer as to why:

"That's a legal question in terms of what our lawyers may or may not try to do, but part and parcel of the philosophy I've employed is that fighters should fight," he said. "If promoters have a conflict or argument, ultimately, typically the best-case scenario 99 out of 100 times is that the fighters get to fight and the promoters battle it out and whoever prevails in the argument gets compensation from the other one."

Even though he does kinda leaves the door open to his lawyers being cunts and stopping Brookins from fighting, that's still a refreshingly non-shitty attitude for an MMA promoter to have. Bjorn sometimes gets accused of being a sketchy bastard, mainly because of what happened with Dave 'Pee Wee' Herman and some seriously convoluted and possibly imaginary stuff that went down when he was a boxing promoter. But thus far in MMA he's behaved pretty well, overall. Maybe not 'Saving a little girl's life' well, but at least he's not out there actively crushing people's dreams and ruining their futures.

Bellator has been teasing us with rumors of a new TV deal for months now, and now they've finally announced where they're going: not G4 or FX or FuelTV as previously speculated, but MTV2. This is a little interesting as MTV2's past forays into sports have been limited to lingire football and Mountain Dew style XTREME crap, but Bellator head Bjorn Rebney seems pretty happy about the deal:

"There is absolutely no question our first choice was MTV2," Rebney said today from Bellator's Chicago offices. "It's about who you reach and how reach them. There was no mistake in this deal or in this structure. TNT or USA or ESPN or FX or CBS or NBC or every TV station, the biggest concentration of men ages 12-34 is on MTV2. It's the same demo that lives and breathes MMA.

"If you're going to build a brand ... in this space, where could there be a better home? There's no question this was the No. 1 option."

Here's the good news: no more constant Fox Sports Net pre-emption of half the events, more shows per season, and interim shows between seasons so Bellator doesn't disappear for months on end any more. Now the big question is if Bellator keeps the same production style they had for FSN or if they're going to revamp it for the current MTV generation. Sure, there's about a million ways they could stink the whole product up going that route, but past the fights (which have been generally great), the shows themselves were pretty dull and dreary. If the price we have to pay to have good non-UFC MMA survive is Bellator getting a Bully Beatdown style makeover, I guess it will at least be entertaining to make fun of.

Things have been kinda up and down for Bellator this week. First, Bjorn Rebney announced that the company would be around for many more seasons and they would be announcing a new TV deal soon. Then MiddleEasy dropped a multi-pointed rumor saying there is no TV deal, Bellator is bleeding six figures per show, and it's investors are about to pull the plug. There's a pretty significant amount of distance between these two assessments of the promotion, so who should we believe? For his part, Bjorn Rebney says everything MiddleEasy reported was le bullshit:

"Usually, when you see rumors that are completely ridiculous, they're coupled with something that's true," Rebney told MMAjunkie.com  (www.mmajunkie.com). "In this instance, it's false on top of false on top of completely ridiculous on top of completely unfounded."



"Either it's someone just starting rumors for the sake of starting rumors, or it's just the most ridiculous type of amateurish nonsense," Rebney said of the report. "I don't even like to call it journalism because it has no connection to reality.



"That blog, whoever that is that wrote that, is just so filled with nonsense. It's completely, unequivocally untrue on every front they wrote. It's literally as if someone stepped out and just said, 'I'm going to create whichever fantasy I choose to create, and I'm going to write it.' There wasn't even the slightest hint of accuracy or truth in anything that showed up on that blog.



"It's the downside and the negativity of the Internet. Any idiot can write any ridiculous, completely unfounded nonsense thing, and it can gain traction."

One point that everyone agrees on though: there is no deal with G4, although there is still apparently a deal with some other mystery TV network that Bellator will reveal a month from now. Past that the 'idiots' at MiddleEasy are saying they 'hope that [they're] wrong', while at the same time reminding everyone that we still don't really know how the hell Bellator's business model works.

Hopefully after a week with such bullshit news as the UFC returning to Brazil, Tim Sylvia getting another shot in the UFC, and Bellator dying, we will all remember that just because something showed up on the internet, that doesn't mean it's true. Unless it is and we're being lied to. In which case I suggest wrapping your head in tinfoil and never believing anything ever again.

Scott Coker isn't exactly a question dodging master, but he's gotten okay enough at it since he rarely seems to have answers to the stuff the press asks him about. "Let's just let this event happen and then we'll start looking into that" is a regular response. Then there's "We should know in about two weeks", or my personal favorite two weeks later, "Gimme two more weeks."

When it's come to a potential Gilbert Melendez / Eddie Alvarez fight to hash out who's got the best lightweight champ, he's taken a different approach: he's claimed that Bellator head Bjorn Rebney hasn't gotten in touch with him about it despite Rebney pushing the fight with every MMA reporter who'll listen:

“Bjorn’s saying he’s texting me 11, 12 times an hour. I’m not sure if he’s trying to be a level-five clinger or anything like that, but I haven’t received one text from the guy,” Coker said. “I’m not sure what the motivation is, but maybe it’s just his way of staying in the media, staying in the press.”

“Let’s face it: Gilbert’s fought everybody,” Coker responded Friday. “He beat the guy that Eddie lost to. For them to say, ‘Oh, Gilbert’s ducking him’ — come on, let’s be real. Gilbert has ducked nobody, and neither has Eddie. These are two great fighters. The thing is, if Bjorn’s serious about doing this, then there has to be a business component that has to be worked out. Unfortunately that hasn’t started yet. It’s just been a bunch of stuff in the media. He’s chosen the media to use it as a platform to try to push this thing along, but I think it’s maybe a PR move.”

“It’s very obvious to me he’s using the media as a platform to try to do his business, but that’s not how we’re going to do business,” Coker said. “If he wants to do business, call me or fly out here, come sit down with me. If there’s a deal to be made, we’ll try to make it, but I’m not going to do it in the media. That’s for sure.”

Meanwhile, Rebney has no problem turning this into a he said / she said by posting several of those imaginary text messages to Scott Coker:

Many point out that Strikeforce has nothing to gain from co-promoting with Bellator and that's why nothing is going to come of this. Dispite Strikeforce's claim that Bellator was calling Scott's old phone number, Bjorn Rebney might have figured out he's getting ducked by now. But that's not going to stop him from using this as an opportunity to say his champions are on the level with Strikeforce's and so good Strikeforce won't let these fights happen. Even if none of this shit ends up happening in the cage, Bellator is already winning.

And here I was thinking Zoila Frausto was gonna be the latest fighter to get bent into a pretzel by Mega Megu. Instead Fujii tried to strike her way to the Bellator 115-pound belt and lost a split decision because of it:

Fujii abandoned her usual grappling-heavy game plans and chose to strike with Frausto. On their feet, Fujii landed with more accuracy while Frausto landed the harder strikes, making for difficult rounds to score.

"It's the best feeling in the world," said Frausto (10-1). "A lot of people said I couldnt do it. I've been through so much, I deserve it. I worked so hard, and I've got the Lord to thank."

Fujii, who had 18 of her 22 career wins by submission, didn't put Frausto on the mat until there were 30 seconds left in the fight, but she never came close to a submission. Still, many likely walked away with the belief Fujii should have left victorious as she seemed to control the location of the fight and left Frausto with a badly swollen eye.

Fujii came into the tournament considered to be the top female pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but she'd never won a title. That run was expected to end at Bellator 34, but instead, she fell to 22-1 with the first loss of her career.

"I wanted to fight in her area," Fujii said. "I did a lot of striking but I did my best."

Strange ... you'd figure if anyone was going to pull a Jorge Gurgel and ignore their best skills, it'd be Jorge's girlfriend Zoila. Instead Fujii got cocky and decided to gunsling with a woman 25 pounds heavier than her. I suppose it's a testament to her skills that she nearly won anyways, but close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.

Meanwhile, the Zoila Frausto bandwagon is revving up pretty hard all of a sudden: MMA Fighting just gave her the #2 spot on the women's P4P list, which makes my skull hurt like the weight of the internet's stupidity is about to crack it in half.

I haven't had a chance to watch last night's Bellator yet and I'm happy Zoila Frausto won, but it sounds like she only won because surprise surprise, MMA judging still sucks big fat dongs:

Aguilar spent the majority of the fight chasing down her opponent, though she bucked expectations that she would use her grappling abilities to take the fight where she had a paper advantage. Instead, she jammed in on Frausto and played the striking game. 

What transpired largely was a point sparring affair, with no more than three strikes thrown per exchange. It appeared, though, that Aguilar landed a greater number of clean punches while avoiding Frausto's bombs. 

It appeared to be a clear-cut victory for Aguilar, who earned her semifinal berth with a submission victory over Lynn Alvarez. But in a bizarre tally, two judges gave the contest to Frausto (8-1 MMA, 2-0 BFC) with 30-27 scores. The other dissented completely and awarded Aguilar a 30-27 mark. Aguilar (9-4 MMA, 1-1 BFC) was stunned, and the audience vocalized its displeasure. 

My penis scores it 30-27 Zoila on account of the fact that she's hawt but that's why my penis isn't a commission judge. That task is left to other penises. It will be interesting to see if Bellator does anything for Aguilar. When Ryan Thomas got screwed over via ref whoopsie at Bellator 14 (the ref thought he was out when he wasn't), Bellator stuck him back into the tournament when that volcano thing stopped another one of the competitors from making it into the country.

Now we're down to the finals, so unless there's volcanic activity in Ohio (one can hope) or something happens to Zoila I think Aguilar is SOL. Any Tonya Harding types out there thinking what I'm thinking?