This weekend saw 2 of the biggest promotions hold cards.
Bellator in their 2nd Ever PPV at Madison square garden in NYC. And this forced the world's biggest promotion the UFC to shift their card to the Sunday which was a 'Fight Night' card relatively light on star power for them as far as they go..
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"BELLATOR - Scott Coker expects another Bellator pay-per-view early next year
BELLATOR NYC POSTMORTEM!!!
It took three years for Bellator to do its second pay-per-view show, but based on talk by Bellator and Spike executives, it won’t be that long of a wait for the third go-around.
“I think we were trending all night, we were No. 1 on Twitter all night,” Bellator president Scott Coker said Saturday night after Bellator NYC. “This night had a lot of heat and was promoted extremely well. This was our first one, so we’re excited to come back and do a pay-per-view maybe the beginning of next year and keep going. We’re not going to just do it every month, but when we do this, there will be mega fights and big events just like this.”
Coker speculated on either a return to Madison Square Garden or another major market for what would be the second pay-per-view event since he was put in control of the product.
“We’ll be back to do something next year, whether it’s here, or it could be Los Angeles, it could be Dallas, it could be the Bay Area, but that hasn’t been decided yet,” Coker said.
Bellator was the single most-searched term on Google on Saturday in the U.S., although the volume of 100,000 searches as of midnight was closer to a figure that a UFC television show would do, and well below what a UFC pay-per-view show would do. Terms like Bellator, Brent Primus, Aaron Pico, Tito Ortiz and Michael Chandler were all among the top trends for the night on Twitter.
Bellator’s only prior pay-per-view was in 2014, headlined by Quinton Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal, which did a little more than 100,000 buys. This show was considerably deeper when it came to name talent and championship fights.
“This is a new line of business, our pay-per-view business” said Jon Slusser, the senior vice president of sports at Spike TV. “This is the first of many we’ll be doing with all of our cable partners and pay-per-view partners in the U.S. and all over the world.”
The night was filled with major upsets. In at least four of the six pay-per-view fights, the lesser known fighter won. The only real exception would be Neiman Gracie beating Dave Marfone in a swing fight that wasn’t even scheduled for the pay-per-view. It’s hard to say who would have been considered a bigger name between Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva. Silva was a bigger name longer, but Sonnen has garnered more attention in recent times.
“I talked to some of the reporters,” said Coker. “I asked, `What do you think, give me some predictions?’ I don’t think anybody got it completely right.”
“To be at the Garden, it was fantastic and amazing, it was unbelievable,” he added. “It was definitely one of the biggest nights of my life to promote in Madison Square Garden, where Ali fought Frazier, and all the fights that have happened here.”
So while Scott Coker has a big reputation for being the 'fighters friendly boss and more professional CEO' I thought I'd still let the TTTHS show below sum up the weekends PPV event as it's accurate and certainly more entertaining than anything I can say!
UFC FIGHT NIGHT - So just how does the CEO of a multi a billion dollar company react to an average night of fights and a bad ref call?
I did mention Dana Whites notorious stark contrast to Bellator's Scott Coker didnt I?
I xan only imagine being in the room when Dana White was watching the UFC Fight Night 112 main event Sunday night. Trying not to pop a blood vessel
Kevin Lee locked in a rear-naked choke on Michael Chiesa in the waning seconds of the first round. Before Chiesa could tap or go unconscious, both of which would signal the end of the fight, referee Mario Yamasaki stopped the action and gave Lee a submission victory in Oklahoma City.
Was Chiesa on the way to going unconscious from the choke? Most likely yes, but we’ll never find out. Yamasaki prematurely ended the bout between two of the top lightweights and an obviously livid White absolutely undressed him in a scathing post on social media.
White refereed to Yamasaki as “Mario Mazzagatti,” in a reference to now little-used ref Steve Mazzagatti, who made a series of poor calls in his career. Yamasaki has been panned multiple times over the last few years about late stoppages and this was an early one.
In the post, White pointed out Yamasaki’s trademark move of making a heart with his hands for the camera before every round.
“This guy is more concerned with doing this dumb ass heart bullshit then Ref'n the fight!!!” White wrote. … “Nobody gives a shit that u can make a heart with ur hands like a 12 year old girl they want u to pay attention to what's going on in the fight and do ur job.”
The rest of the cards was quite average for a UFC card (the premier brand). However Felice Herring put on a spectacular performance as did Tim Boetch.
A quick wrap up video is below.
Hope you enjoy if so I'll start posting mid week as well as the weekend wrap up summaries.
Thanks for reading.