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Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney: I want to talk to Scott Coker and make a fight happen between Eddie Alvarez & Gilbert Melendez, and the money split should not be “disproportionate”

By Zach Arnold | May 20, 2010

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During an interview on Wednesday afternoon on Sherdog radio, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney made it very clear that he wants to talk to Scott Coker and get an interpromotional Lightweight fight booked between Bellator FC Lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and Strikeforce Lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez. Talk came to a head when Melendez, on Inside MMA, called out Eddie Alvarez and said he wanted to see the fight happen.

“Well you know I mean, as a fan I responded to it immediately,” exclaimed Mr. Rebney after watching the Inside MMA show. “I watched the same show that you guys did and Eddie did and we saw Gilbert call out Eddie Alvarez because he’s got you know the heart of a champion, he wants to fight the best of the best, they’re two guys ranked probably in the Top 5 world at 155 and I think it’s a great fight. I would love to make this fight happen. I said it immediately, Eddie and I talked about it probably six minutes after Gilbert made the call out. It’s a great fight, it would be a heck of a fun fight to watch and there really shouldn’t be any reason that it can’t be made. We should be able to make that fight.”

Rebney believes that both Bellator and Strikeforce would be on equal footing during negotiations to make the fight happen.

“Yeah, I mean, here’s the reality — this situation is easier than most. You got from a Q score perspective in terms of recognition with our endemic market, Gilbert Melendez and Eddie Alvarez are very comparable. If you’d ask the normal MMA fan on the street, do you know Gilbert Melendez, they’d say yes. Do you know Eddie Alvarez, they’d say yes. And if you asked them next who’s the bigger superstar, there wouldn’t be a big dichotomy, they’d go “I don’t know, Gilbert’s pretty big, I’ve seen him on TV, Eddie’s pretty big, I’ve seen him on TV, they’ve beaten really good guys, you know Gilbert coming off the (Shinya) Aoki demolition and Eddie coming off of his Josh (Neer) win in great fashion, so you’re not in one of those situations where you got an established Q score superstar here in the US and some phenom out of Brazil, you got two guys who are on equal footing, you got two guys who are equally well-known. It should be a situation where two heads of two companies can come together and make the fight. There shouldn’t be a disproportionate grab for economic benefit on any either side, it should be an equal deal, we should be able to go into it share revenues, share the opportunity and put on a great fight for the fans.”

When asked how likely he thinks a fight between Alvarez and Melendez could be booked, Mr. Rebney thinks the chances of it getting booked are very good — as long as the lines of communication are open.

“Yeah, you know, I’m not just from a PR perspective interested in talking about it. I’m actually very interested in making the fight happen. We’ve been trying to get a hold of Scott literally since Gilbert made the call-out and we put the press release out immediately. You know, we haven’t yet been able to make that connection and I know Scott’s running a business and he’s crazy busy and I surely respect that. I would love to talk to him about it. I have not yet had the chance to speak to him about it, my office has trying to get a hold of him and he hasn’t yet gotten back to us, but I have seen some comments he made and he seemed to be receptive to the concept and the idea of making it work and again I don’t think it’s a particularly different fight to make and you know my hope is we can get it done, but obviously I got to get on the phone with him or sit down and have lunch with him before I got any kind of a idea if it can be really made to happen.”

In a UFC-dominated MMA world, co-promotion is rarely done because UFC has such a huge roster of fighters that they can immediately book 11-fight cards on big shows. Mr. Rebney was asked on Sherdog radio if UFC was to blame for a lack of co-promotional deals in the industry.

“I mean I don’t know if it’s really a matter of saying that the UFC is to blame, I mean the UFC has you know a wide collection of hugely talented fighters that fight underneath that banner and they’ve been able to keep that confined and do what they do. You know I just, there’s as we’ve discussed many times, there’s room for a #2 and a #3 in the space and you know when there’s an opportunity like this to make a great fight like this it should be made, there shouldn’t be a promoter or a network executive that stands in the way of something like this. I should be able to sit down, have a burger and a Diet Coke with Scott Coker, spend you know an hour and a half talking through the dynamics and make the fight work. It’s a great fight and it should happen, two guys in their prime, so… you know I don’t know why it hasn’t happened in the past, but it can be made to happen and I can’t really for the life of me figure out a reason why it shouldn’t be made.”

Mr. Rebney admitted that it wouldn’t make much business sense (at the moment) for UFC to work with other promoters to book fights since they have so much top talent on their roster.

“Yeah, I mean you know you guys are on radio so I mean there’s an old axiom in radio and it’s at the top of the list of the radio axioms and that is when you’re #1 you never talk about #2 or #3. When you’re #2 and you’re #3 you always bark about #1, so the reality is is that the UFC doesn’t have a strong motivation or a strong driving force behind needing to do it. Their numbers are strong, their ratings are great, their PPV buy rates are significant, they pack arenas everywhere they go. So it’s not at the top of their list of things needed to do, but the reality is I happen to believe and there may be a lot of people who agree with me, maybe they don’t, but I happen to agree that Eddie Alvarez if not the best is one of the Top 2 Lightweights in the world today, that’s my feeling and those who share it can join in. I think Gilbert’s way up there as well and so I mean the reality is we should be doing these kind of things. We should give this kind of a show to fans to ultimately determine who is the best and then maybe you know BJ (Penn) and Frankie (Edgar) fight again and whoever wins that fight you know then you can have the good faith argument, you have can an objective argument and go ‘wow, Eddie beat Gilbert or Gilbert beat Eddie, that puts them as #2 and the winner of the BJ fight versus Frankie, that’s going to determine #1″ or maybe it isn’t but that should be put into play.”

When asked if he would be saying the same things about co-promotional fights if he was in the same shoes as UFC, Mr. Rebney hedged his bets.

“It’s a very interesting dynamic and it’s a great question, I mean you know the UFC is the 800-pound gorilla in the space and have become synonymous with amongst general market consumers the sport in of itself. A lot of people call MMA “ultimate fighting” so it’s an interesting question. I’d like to think that I could maintain the position of having my fan hat more often than I have my CEO hat on and if I were in a position if I had the #1 guy in the world, which a position that BJ has held for a long period of time up until his most recent fight, that I would look at it very seriously and say, ‘hey, you know, if Eddie Alvarez or Gilbert Melendez or whoever that fighter might be at the time is a really viable test, let’s see if we can make it work.’ But again, it’s always difficult to make those calls until you actually sit in that position, it’s always neat to talk about being King until you’re King and then you got a different perspective on things, so my gut’s reaction is that I’d like to think that I have the same perception that I do now and that is, it’s a great fight, it should be made, it shouldn’t be impossible to get made, and if I can just get Scott Coker on the phone we should able to make it work and I’d hope I’d have the same perception of it if I were in a different spot or if our organization were in a different spot some time in the future.”

Mr. Rebney believes that his professional sports-style business model allows Bellator to be able to do co-promotional fights better than the pro-wrestling style business model used by UFC.

“It’s a sport business model that cognizant of the fact that our demographic is young, that there needs to be big music and big lighting and great feature pieces and you know super slow-mo shots in terms of what you’re seeing on screen promotionally but ours is a real sport model, it’s objectivity, it’s fighters controlling their own destiny, it’s a tournament format that’s very analogous to what you see in other sports, so we have shied away to date from some of the more kind of marquee names that maybe haven’t established that marquee Vis-à-vis what they’ve done in the cage but more so what they’ve done with their mouth or Youtube or other places, so it doesn’t mean that that’s wrong, it doesn’t that I mean begrudge, I mean watch you know I watched every single of the heavyweights in The Ultimate Fighter and part-in-parcel it was because of Kimbo (Slice), but it’s not our model, it’s not what we do. We’re much more kind of focused on that competition that would take places purely in the cage and you know shying away from those elements of it just because we don’t have the time, the staff, or the ability to do it and it’s just doesn’t, it doesn’t fit into what we’re about but so you know I would say we’re more of a sports business model and less of a kind of a WWE/WWF modeling in terms of ratings and those kinds of issues.”

Would Kimbo Slice be invited to participate in Bellator’s upcoming heavyweight title tournament?

“Not a very high likelihood, no.”

Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |

One Response to “Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney: I want to talk to Scott Coker and make a fight happen between Eddie Alvarez & Gilbert Melendez, and the money split should not be “disproportionate””

  1. Chuck says:

    Rebney would probably get Kimbo Slice on board if Kimbo’s asking price isn’t too high. It really shouldn’t be at this point.

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