Ottawa Senators Fighting Championships? So there is an MMA organization out there that hasn't put on a show yet but is snapping up talent and spending dollars like crazy. It's called BFC, or The Bellator Fighting Championships, and they have a television deal in place with ESPN (Deportes -- the Spanish ESPN Sports channel). Bellator is Latin for Warrior. Why not guerrero, which is Spanish for warrior? I don't know. I don't know how big the Spanish television audience is on the Roman motif. BFC is founded by Bjorn Rebney. Rebney is from Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing--so yes, we have another boxing agent/promoter crossover. He was involved with the production of Knockout Kings, an old EA video game from the late 90s. He's also a lawyer and entrepreneur which reminds me of the original team that put together the UFC in the early 1990s. BFC will operate under the unified rules of MMA recognized in states such as California and Nevada, which is to say 3x5-minute rounds, elbows, no stomps or soccer kicks, etc.. The typical set-up. The caveat to the promotion is that their belts will be won through tournaments. They will have tournaments in four weight classes from featherweight to middleweight, for the first "season". They have a section on their website for heavyweight fighters but no tournament is expected for that weight class. Fighters will need to win three times in a three month time period in order to win the tournament, which I suppose means there will be eight participants in each weight class plus reserves. The final round of each tournament will not be a 5x5-minute fight, for some reason, but rather another 3x3-minute bout. Each win nets the fighter more pay--beginning at $25,000 for a first round win and improving to $50,000 and $100,000 for the second and third rounds. They plan on holding one event per month over twelve months. Friday night's alright for fighting Which brings us to another issue. Fighters sometimes win bouts but are still issued medical suspensions by the athletic commission of the state they competed in. Instead of spacing out the rounds, Bellator wants to have only four weeks between competition for their fighters--so, expect to see replacements. I presume they have it set up this way because they need to keep on a weekly schedule. So far Bellator has been open with their plans and are inviting feedback from the somewhat unwelcoming MMA community at large. The reason they are interesting is because they have some good fighters committed to their league. Signed fighters include #3 ranked lightweight Eddie Alvarez, budding featherweight fighter Wilson Reis, PRIDE veteran Hector "Shango" Lombard, Cuban lightweight standout Jorge "Gamebred" Masvidal, and former #2 ranked middleweight Paulo Filho. Not a bad start. Carefully plucked eyebrows FTMFW The concept is a novel approach to the traditional MMA tournament setup, though it is largely a copy of the format Dream and Sengoku have been using for over a year in Japan. It is infinitely better than The YAMMA (if you don't know what it is, nobody can tell you; either you survived the YAMMA or you didn't). BFC's pay scale is also on an appropriate level. Their maximum fighter payout for the twelve events shouldn't exceed $1.2-million for an entire year, not including undercard fights. Hear that, Affliction? A whole year of fights for what you paid Tim Sylvia and Matt Lindland alone for your first event. If BFC can be a poor man's WEC, that is fine. So long as they keep their hands out of the Ken Shamrock cookie jar they might be able to succeed. I have no idea who gets ESPN Deportes, if anyone, but check them out in April if you can. Hopefully they'll stream the event to showcase themselves out of the gate. Good luck, guys!
