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Bellator: Season Two (start of FSN, Telemundo/NBC promotional era)
By Zach Arnold | April 8, 2010
Over the course of their programming season on Fox Sports Net/Comcast Sportsnet and NBC/Telemundo (check your local listings), the promotion will be featuring fights from their Featherweight, Lightweight, Welterweight, and Middleweight tournaments. Here is how it looks on paper:
Featherweight tournament
Joe Warren vs. Eric Marriott (W1)
Georgi Karakhanyan vs. Bao Quach (W1)
Wilson Reis vs. Shad Lierley (W2)
Patricio Pitbull vs. William Romero
Lightweight tournament
Roger Huerta vs. Chad Hinton (W1)
Joe Duarte (W1) vs. Carey Vanier
Pat Curran vs. Mike Ricci (W2)
Toby Imada vs. Ferrid Kheder (W2)
Welterweight tournament
Ben Askren vs. Ryan Thomas (W2)
Dan Hornbuckle vs. Sean Pierson
Jacob McClintock vs. Jim Wallhead
Steve Carl vs. Brett Cooper
Middleweight tournament
Bryan Baker vs. Jared Hess
Sean Loeffler vs. Matt Major
Ryan McGivern vs. Eric Schambari
Luke Zachrich vs. TBA
As Kenny Rice said on HDNet’s Inside MMA program last week, “And you’ll need a roster to keep up, that’s the thing, there’s a lot of guys fighting.”
Taping schedule
4/08 – Hollywood, Florida at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino4/15 – Chicago Theatre- 4/22 – Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut
- 4/29 – Kansas City Power & Light District
- 5/06 – Citi Performing Arts Center, Wang Theatre (Boston)
- 5/13 – Monroe Civic Center in Louisiana
- 5/20 – not announced
- 5/27 – not announced
- 6/03 – taped program
- 6/10 – Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida
- 6/17 – not announced
- 6/24 – Kansas City Power & Light District
Josh Gross has a preview of this upcoming Bellator season.
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 18 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I only have a 90 minute telecast for this week. I thought it was supposed to be 2 hours.
I’m going to the Mohegan Sun show. Get to see Dan Hornbuckle fight live which should be good.
The two negatives for this season are:
1) Many markets have weird tape delays.
2) Having it live has it’s negatives. This won’t be like SpikeTV, CBS, Showtime, or Versus. If they go over, I highly doubt they will be given extra time. Which means they are going to have to schedule the main events with enough time available in the broadcasts. If some of the earlier fights go the distance, I can’t imagine them being able to fit 4 fights into a 2 hour show, especially with commercials and fighter intros.
Really looking forward to Mclintock vs Walhead. I saw Jacob fight at a UWC show in Fairfax. Dude is a beast.
This airs for me at 10pm after a replay of this afternoon’s Mariners game. I’m planning on checking it out.
Hoping they get better treatment than IFL did. I lived in Vegas during the IFL days and those shoes bounced around even though we didn’t have any local teams to preempt them. Crazy.
I’m in NM and we have no local games tonight, regardless it is airing at 11pm. Retarded.
FSN has such a bad history with fight companies that I’m not quite sure WHY they went the FSN route.
Mine’s on at 5PM PST. I forgot to tape it and won’t be out of work by then, but there’s a 7PM replay in HD. Stoked!
So far the pacing has not been terrible. Quick commercial breaks and short interviews/intros.
Completely missed the 1st 30 minutes of the show. My local Comcast Affiliate showed something else instead. How was the 1st fight?
Seems weird they would interview celebs instead of trying to get a 4th fight shown…. Not a good idea.
Joe Warren looked decent, but is putting himself into the fire too early into his career. Against any guy with decent BJJ, he would have been submitted. Doesn’t seem to be able to pick up submissions quickly at all. The same mistake over and over again.
Quach got hit with a couple knees and was out cold. Happened, sorta paid attention, it was over.
Warren has no submission defense. None.
Yes I agree about the interview but I think they were doing quite well on time so they threw it in there. There’s been plenty of time for the 4 tournament fights to air. I know there was an undercard but it was mainly local fighters and the tournaments are what Bellator is concerned with.
If the Huerta fight went the distance, that last would have been ending as the telecast came to a close, without even announcing the official decision.
So no, they didn’t do good on time at all. They don’t have the luxary of even going 1 minute over. Which means proper time management is critical. Interviewing actors is not.
That is true. But it didn’t so it worked out for them.
Apart from the Huerta fight, nothing I’ll remember. I already forgot who most of the guys who fought are. There’s literally a show just like that almost weekly on TV in this country, sometimes two or even three.
When Bellator goes under, it will be said that it was because of them being “too sports oriented”. Its as if no one has learned anything from the WEC; people don’t want to watch minor league MMA. Period. Morons can stomp their feet all they want that the UFC should run a minor or developmental league and put that on; the general MMA fanbase does not care and does not want to see it. They want to only see fighters that can be perceived as credible threats – who on Bellator is?
“Apart from the Huerta fight, nothing I’ll remember. I already forgot who most of the guys who fought are. There’s literally a show just like that almost weekly on TV in this country, sometimes two or even three.”
It’s funny you say that. While watching Bellator tonight, specifically during that last fight, I started to think to myself: “This must be how random people channel surfing view MMA fights between two lesser known fighters.”
I had no vested interested in the fight. Had no clue who either of the guys where. And I was kind of bored with it as well. I’ve never really felt that watching MMA before. I have seen with Zuffa’s schedule increasing that I do care less about the smaller events…. But never to the point where I cared so little. And that’s how the telecast came off really.
As much as TUF can be garbage, at least it is an interesting twist on bringing up emerging fighters and getting casual fans familiar with them. It does a far better then what Bellator is doing. As a hardcore fan, I’m kind of viewing this season of Bellator like most TUF Seasons. Mostly junk with a few good prospects coming out of the junk pile…
Yeah Huddle I can relate to that feeling. It can be hard to be interested in watching a fight when you don’t know anything about the fighters. Even the guys from Bellator last season who pulled off some exciting finishes, I don’t even remember their names. At least in the UFC, when a prospect shows a lot of promise, their hype machine will make sure you never forget them (ie. Jon Jones, Todd Duffee, Phil Davis, Anthony Johnson, Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin, etc).
The Qatch fight was fun. I fell asleep during the second fight and missed the rest of the show. Any of the last two fights worth watching?
1) Missed the first fight again due to a basketball program.
2) I can’t help but think after 2 weeks of watching this that they would have been better off putting each weight class as it’s own show. It would make the whole tournament thing much easier to follow. Plus, it would be good to see all 4 winners inside the cage at the end to hype up the future show….
3) The Askren/Thomas fight was one of the worst stoppages I have seen in a long long time. Pathetically bad. Askren is very green right now… And the way he didn’t even flinch to those jabs is not a good sign. Looks like he could be one of those wrestlers who just doesn’t pick up striking at all. Does seem like a nice guy….
4) I didn’t see Curran fight, but unless he showed something special, I don’t see anybody beating Roger Huerta in the Lightweight Tournament. The talent level hasn’t been very good.
MMA organizations need to stop doing business with FSN. FSN is a big waste of time.
VERY upset with that premature stoppage. There has got to be some penalty to the referees and retribution for the fighter cheated fresh out of their fight prep camp.
That ref is SO full of shit for saying dude’s eyes were closed or that he didn’t give him any signal that he was ok. First of all, the fighter in that hold (don’t believe it was a solid submission, and may never know) had very little ability to react to a request for a sign, let alone make one.
Second, the ref said, give me a sign, are you ok, and before the fighter could react, the ref almost immediately ended the fight. It was an instantaneous reaction taken immediately after prompting the question. I felt heated for the fighter who was cheated.
This event wasn’t as good as the first, but it’s free MMA so I’m stoked/jazzed/amped.