Why the Four-Man Bellator MMA Tournaments are Better
By Christopher Jester
On Wednesday April 10, 2013, Bellator MMA announced its Summer Series will now implement four-man tournaments instead of its traditional eight-man tournament. A date has not been released for the start of Bellator’s Summer Series, but it has been announced that the three four-man tournaments will center on the heavyweight, light-heavyweight, and bantamweight divisions. This willingness to move to smaller tournaments is a good move for Bellator, and here are several reasons why.
An obvious implication of four-man tournaments is to keep certain stars more active. To be specific, major draws like “King Mo” Lawal, who was a big pickup for Bellator and his loss to Emanuel Newton in the most recent season of Bellator is obviously a setback to the plans of Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney. Lawal was a key free agent pickup after his stint in Strikeforce and was a heavy-betting favorite to win the light-heavyweight tournament last season. The good thing about creating smaller tournaments is to get major players like “King Mo” immediately back into contention; especially after losses. This even eliminates potential qualifying matches, at least for “King Mo”, where typically fighters would have had to qualify to be in the upcoming tournament. However, seeing how extremely valuable “King Mo” is for Bellator, creating smaller tournaments put fighters like him right back into the fray of things.
The tournament format has worked for Bellator. Fans have praised its usefulness as it makes legitimate contenders instead of simply crowning someone the top contender. The problem Bellator has faced over the years is that these larger tournaments has often left their champions without contenders and waiting on the sidelines until there is a winner from the next tournament. Four-man tournaments in between eight-man tournaments will churn out more contenders for Bellator’s champions, lowering the time spent on the shelf.
The focal point of Bellator as it evolves now that it is on Spike TV is to create more marketable names. The organization already has strayed away from UFC castoffs unlike the #3 North American promotion World Series of Fighting, and for good reason. Finding unknown fighters and creating them into marketable exclusive fighters has worked better for Bellator. The tournament itself will help these upcoming names to become more known in mixed martial arts households. What worked successfully for Bellator this season is that these names were repeated quickly and champions such as Pat Curran was able to demonstrate his elite-level skills twice in one season. Smaller tournaments will have the turnaround needed for such fighters to grow their name and marketability.
There is a strong case to be made that this smaller four-man tournament will create more popular exclusive promotional fighters. Having its fighters more active will help Bellator create a fan base for its roster. This can only lead to developing a larger following for its fighters and for the organization itself. The more active these fighters become, the more common their names will become to fans. This will likely have more fans watching and the fighters will become synonymous to Bellator and to potential dream matches for the Bellator product.
What Bellator lacks is that they do not have enough fighters with the popularity of a Pat Curran, “King Mo” Lawal, Michael Chandler, and Eduardo Dantas. Smaller tournaments will help create more favorites for the organization. In the end, implementing four-man tournaments only has an upside. Fighters will have a quicker turnaround and this will lead to them becoming bigger household names. Ultimately, it will lead to these more popular names meeting in the tournaments and making this tournament format only bigger and more effective for Bellator.
Follow Christopher “sLapDatSuCKa” Jester on Twitter @sLapDatSuCka
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