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Commentary on the structure of both Bellator and Strikeforce events
By Zach Arnold | August 17, 2010
From Larry Pepe’s radio show on Monday night.
Bellator — tournaments, champions, and television deals
“Bellator got started with their third season last week and I can’t help but feel that they’re losing some momentum. I think there’s a couple of problems. I think they put out a good product, I really do, and I really started following them in season two and that’s when I saw some of the problems. I was stoked for the beginning of the season, I think they did a lot of things right. I like the tournament format BUT there are definitely some flaws.
“The first thing, call me crazy, the TV deal sucks. The TV deal is horrendous. When I was following it in season two my guide would show that it was going to be on at 8 o’clock one week, 10 o’clock another week, 11 o’clock another week, and half the time it didn’t even come on at the time that was listed because it got pre-empted by the end of a baseball game or a basketball game or there was post-game programming. Sometimes there was programming that wasn’t even related to a live event that pre-empted it. One time I think it went on at 12 or 12:30 AM when it listed for 10 o’clock and I don’t know how you can get any momentum. I don’t know how you can get fans really following this thing if they don’t even know when it’s going to be on and there’s no consistency. I think that’s a big problem.
“I think another problem that I noticed was that once you got about midway through the season, half or more of the fights each week had nothing to do with the tournament and that was very distracting. I think it takes away the momentum. The 12-week format, I think it should be pared down. I think every fight you see should be tournament-relevant. I mean, imagine if you had March Madness and in the second week, the third week, half-way through the tournament, you started watching basketball games or you were getting basketball games that had nothing to do with the teams in the tournament, they were two teams that maybe you’d never even seen before, maybe really not followed, never even heard of and somehow they’re slammed in the middle of March Madness. It would be ridiculous and in some respects that’s what happens with these Bellator fights as you get deeper in the tournament and I think a way to solve that and I know maybe it’s not as friendly in terms of sponsors and in terms of lengthening the season but make the tournaments shorter or put more fighters in the tournaments so that when you’re watching every week because when you are watching and you know that this guy beats this guy, then he’s going to go on to the next round. It definitely adds something to it. When you know you’re watching a fight that has zero relevance, it really is distracting and to be quite honest, I think it causes you to lose interest. And then the other aspects is the champions. I think champions just for the season, like TUF for example, NOT for the promotion. There shouldn’t be a Bellator Middleweight champion. There should be a Bellator Season One Middleweight champion and a Season Two Middleweight champion because look at what happens. You have guys like Hector Lombard who have fought twice now in ‘non-tournament affairs.’ You now have Pat Curran getting hurt and being replaced by Roger Huerta. This idea that these champions are carrying over from a year ago… Eddie Alvarez took on a very tough Josh Neer, had a very dominant fight, looked great. What if he loses that fight and now Eddie Alvarez, who you just saw lose a couple of months ago in the Bellator cage fighting for the promotion is now defending his title against Pat Curran? It just doesn’t make sense. I don’t think it makes sense for the fluidity of it and it makes things very confusing. I mean, there’s a lot of risk because at some point one of those champions is going to lose in a non-title fight and it’s going to make the belt look a bit silly. So, I don’t know. I just think they need to restructure things a bit. They need to tighten it up a bit. They need to get a better television deal with some consistency and if you want to do champion vs. champion, then when the season two winners make it, then do an event where the season two winners fight the season one winners but not for some mythical overall Bellator belt that doesn’t get defended when you’re seeing those same guys fight half the time. It just, I don’t know, to me it’s messy, it doesn’t flow, and I think it has potential but I think if it’s going to realize its potential there needs to be some restructuring and there definitely needs to be a better TV deal.”
Strikeforce – surplus of titles, champion’s clauses, and promoting from event-to-event
“Strikeforce Challengers… We’ve talked about this. Not a fan of the format given that they don’t use it any way. Joe Riggs on what he calls a ‘last title run.’ Certainly not an up-and-comer. One of the most experienced fighters they have. I thought Challengers was supposed to be about up-and-coming fighters so you get to know them, those you never heard of. Matt Lindland headlines an event a couple of months ago. Riggs had a nice fight, gets a W, calls out Nick Diaz. I’d like to see that fight but the highlight, supposedly, of this event was the women’s tournament. Which really, when you peel it back, was to decide who the third-ranked fighter would be in their 135-pound division and this was not even a #1 contender tournament because Sarah Kaufman will be defending against Marloes Coenen later this year, we think, and a couple of things bothered me about this. The first, of course, is that the fighters weren’t even told who they were going to fight. It was done with some kind of hokey, like they all open a card and find out who they’re fighting at the weigh-in. I think that’s unfair to the fighters. I think the fighters should be at least preparing in camp for their first-round opponent. It deprives them of the opportunity to do that.
“And now you only have two rounds of fighting because there’s only four fighters, so you have to win twice to win the whole thing. The first round, which I guess for a lack of better word is the semi-final round, is two rounds. Is just three minute rounds, two rounds a piece, that’s it. It would seem to be like that should be a three-round fight and it certainly set up the possibility for draws, one 19-19 score(s) and stuff like that, but I don’t understand that, that’s the first thing. Especially when the rounds are three minutes. And to be perfectly honest, not taking away anything from Miesha Tate, Miesha’s a great fighter, congratulations to her for winning the tournament… but then there’s this belt that’s brought out to the winner of the tournament. It seems odd to me, like you’re bringing out a belt. I was like looking, thinking, what is the belt for? And the belt was for winning this tournament which was the equivalent of winning two fights that total, at maximum would have been five rounds and it’s to determine the #2 contender in your 135-pound division. It just, it just seems odd to me and people have listened to me before know that I think Strikeforce makes a lot of mistakes promotionally, yet they continue to to put on great cards. They continue to put on great performances with the fighters. I just think the way that things are structured in terms of their divisions, their belts, their titles, the lack of divisional fluidity, the lack of consistency from one event to the other and promoting those events so there’s some anticipation so that people are really looking forward to the, understand who’s fighting, that’s missing and that’s been missing for a long, long time and I hope it’s something they get a grip on because they do have a good stable of fighters and they put on good fights but the structural issues, these promotional issues, are a real hindrance for me.”
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
1) What TV deal is Bellator going to get? I can’t think of any network that would be an option. They thought by getting on ESPN Deportes that it would be a fast track to ESPN, but that failed. There are no other good options.
2) Strikeforce is just trying to get as many fighters under contract under their championship clause. Which for females shouldn’t even matter because they really can’t go anywhere. And for guys, all it will mean is that they will have fighters who skip out on both title fights AND tournament fights in order to avoid these clauses.
Surpluses of title belts and booking from show to show is the story in almost every MMA promotion on this earth. The latter I don’t care about. Like I’ve said many times, I am not a child. I do not need to have a storyline (real and pushed by the promotion or a flight of someone’s fancy on the internet) constructed for me to understand what I’m seeing. Nor do I actually care what the promotion wants me to believe regarding a particular bout and its value should it be an obvious lie. Really, what we’re getting to with that talk is “I want the promoter to lie to me”, which is pretty fantastic stuff as far as I’m concerned.
I have no idea how Bellator is supposed to not have tournament bouts on. What if the tournament fights end early, as they did on their first show? They show nothing? Well, that would garner some hate. How do you have nothing but tournament fights? Sounds like a dude who’s only ever heard of March Madness and never actually watched. Or done math; Fighters eliminate one another, meaning you have less competitors and then less fights than you did at the beginning. Bellator isn’t going to survive letting its champions walk away either – You’re not gonna get a TV deal being a pure vehicle for fighter development unless you have the UFC’s name attached.
This is like hearing about how the WEC should just be turned into a feeder organization. Great idea that has the slight problem of being impossible due to what Versus wants in terms of programming.
Storylines is what sells.
Whether it be the NFL selling a dynasty. Or MLB selling a rivalry. Storylines are woven into all sports. They give the sports extra purpose. Without those story lines, you end up with the NHL… Which is a bunch of games nobody has any veste interest in.
And it has nothing to do with being a child. Adults can be fed storylines and still enjoy it. As long as it’s based on reality.
Storylines sell? True. Is every bout part of an important overall linear narrative? No. Not even close. The difference is that people will argue that any shit on a UFC card matters because its on a UFC card, whereas Strikeforce or Bellator fights lack any sort of overall “story arc”. This is not a comic book though, and really people are just transposing their emotions on the fights in the biggest way. 90% of bouts in the UFC have no relevance to the title picture and a goodly amount aren’t made for any other reason than to have two guys throw bombs. Is that really a story?
Sounds like ECW back in the day.
I don’t have alot to say about Strikeforce any more that hasn’t been said. But as for the Bellator comments, this is my perspective.
The TV deal definitely sucks! Several times here in NY i haven’t even been able to see a round. Fox Sports just doesn’t carry it at all according to the program guide. But like someone else mentioned, what other TV deals are they getting? So i guess some exposure is better then none.
As for the non-tournament fights. They have done some fights they use as ways to get into the next seasons tourney. You win and you are in type fights. I really think they should continue exploring those. Because that gives us a way to see the fighters and maybe build up some hype for them for the next season. I think it was Jose Vega that knocked out Jarrod Card in brutal fashion. I am really excited to see him in the up coming seasons tourney. I hope they really do more of those to fill in once the tournaments move out of the quarterfinals.
Pepe pretty much summarized all the broken record nitpicking that goes on on this page. It is almost like he woke up and said to himself “I’m going to get on FightOpinion today and I don’t care how curmudgeonly I have to get to do it!”
I think Alan pretty accurately identified why his criticism of Bellator in particular is absurd. It sounds like this Pepe character doesn’t quite understand how tournaments work. Are they going to have the final card of each season just be one fight?
FSN is awful for MMA and it always has been. It was awful with the UFC, it was awful with Pride, it was awful with the IFL, and now it is awful with Bellator. MMA isn’t even a second class citizen on that ‘network’, it’s more like a fifth or sixth class citizen.
I have completely given up on trying to watch Bellator on FSN. The final straw was when I had to sit through the tail end of a live Cavs game (acceptable), then the Cavs postgame show (annoying), then the nightly sportswrap show (really annoying), and then REPLAYS of the Cavs postgame and nightly sportswrap shows (friggin’ ludicrous) before they finally aired the Bellator event on a three hour tape delay.
These days, I just download the torrents the next morning and watch them later in the week. Sorry Bellator. I want to support your product, but there is no way in hell I am wasting that much time trying to find your shows.