Dan Henderson’s UFC win over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Michael Chandler’s title win over now-ex-champ Eddie Alvarez both will go down as some of the best fights in MMA history.
Unfortunately, the Bellator fight was overshadowed by the UFC’s marketing and promotional muscle, and Bellator got a fraction of the viewers.
Bellator does a lot of things right. The three-year-old organization has a professional-looking presentation, a unique tournament format and MMA’s best international-recruiting department. But little of that matters when you’re going up against the behemoth that is the UFC.
Viacom recently purchased a controlling interest in Bellator, and once the UFC’s deal with Spike TV ends prior to 2013, Bellator is expected to take its slot on the higher-rated (and Viacom-owned) cable station. But even before the move, chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney said 2012 events could air on a new night on MTV2.
“We’ve had some consistent amount of investigation and due diligence into what’s the best time, the best day,” he said. “We’re always talking about it, always thinking there might be a better fit and looking at every single piece of information ... to find the best day to reach the largest number of people.”
Your average MMA fan can’t get enough of the sport, especially now that Bellator is consistently producing top-20 fighters. But if forced to make a choice, the UFC is going to win the viewers more often than not.
Rebney surely knows he just needs to give fans an opportunity to watch both.
Xenia’s Brown submitted in UFC
Xenia native and UFC welterweight Matt Brown (12-11) suffered another setback following a submission loss to Seth Baczynski (15-6) Saturday at UFC 139 in San Jose, Calif.
After an evenly matched first round, Brown shot for a takedown in the second, but Baczynski slapped on a fight-ending guillotine choke to end the preliminary-card bout, which streamed live on Facebook.
Brown, who opened his UFC career with a 4-1 record, is just 1-4 since then. However, UFC officials love his crowd-pleasing style, so he won’t necessarily be cut.
Dann Stupp is editor-in-chief of MMAjunkie.com, voted best media outlet in the 2008, 2009 and 2010 World MMA Awards. For the latest mixed-martial-arts news, go to MMAjunkie.com.
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