2022 was a wild one for the sport of MMA, and so with the year now officially in the rear-view, MMA Fighting is taking a look back at what happened in the major promotions, where they succeeded, where they failed, and what’s in store for 2023.
Bellator By The Numbers
In 2022, Bellator hosted 18 events overall, including the co-promoted Bellator vs. RIZIN fight card. All in all, Bellator put on 228 fights, yielding 105 decisions, 83 knockouts, 36 submissions, three No Contests, and one Draw.
2022 also saw the completion of Bellator’s Light Heavyweight Grand Prix, with Vadim Nemkov retaining his title, as well as the first two rounds of its Bantamweight Grand Prix. On top of that, Bellator held 15 title fights in 2022, crowning six new champions.
The Highs
Bellator has held the title of No. 2 promotion in sport for years (despite what some other promoters may try to tell you) and its 2022 only served to reaffirm that fact. While other organizations may have grabbed more headlines than Bellator, Scott Coker and company continue to churn out quality content with some of the best fighters in the world, which is more than most can say.
The strength of Bellator remains its roster of talent. Of the 165 fighters currently ranked in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings, Bellator accounts for 18 of them, or over 10 percent, a massive leap from the next closest non-UFC promotion. There’s a reason for that: Bellator has invested heavily in talent development, and in 2022 that development started to pay dividends. A.J. McKee now has a real rivalry with Patricio Pitbull, and he’s a going concern at lightweight. Usman Nurmagomedov, Johnny Eblen, and Vadim Nemkov are all champions with the elite talent to one day make legitimate claims to being the best in the world in their weight classes. And then there’s the bantamweight division, which already holds three top 10 fighters, with two more just missing the cut. The previous few years, Bellator felt like it was relying too much on past-their-prime fighters and UFC castoffs. There’s still a touch of that, but in 2022, Bellator’s youth movement finally ascended.
Putting aside its strong developmental year though, there are two specific highlights for the Bellator brand in 2022.
The first is the rivalry between Raufeon Stots and Danny Sabatello. Both men are extremely talented bantamweights, but more importantly, they are stars. Stots and Sabatello both know how to draw interest in their fights (even when the fights themselves aren’t always interesting) and Bellator did a good job of pushing its grand prix semifinal fight by having them promote the hell out of it. I don’t know Bellator’s numbers so I don’t actually know how well it did, but that fight certainly felt more significant than the McKee-Pitbull Grand Prix tournament final, which is a testament to both men.
Second, and perhaps more important, Bellator’s end-of-year card with RIZIN was exceptional. Scott Coker has always been willing to co-promote, and his loose partnership with RIZIN continues to create great moments in the sport. The Bellator vs. RIZIN card on Dec. 31 not only drew the full attention of the MMA universe, but it then delivered with an extremely fun event overall. Bringing back stomps and soccer kicks full-time is probably too much to ask for, but promoting events like this, that allow your fighters to show more personality and have fun, in way a traditional Bellator show does not — that’s just good business. Plus, Bellator went 5-0 in head-to-head matchups. Not too shabby.
The Lows
There are plenty of things you can nitpick Bellator for from 2022 — the RIZIN card was on tape delay, the grand prix don’t finish in the year they start, the viewing experience can sometimes be tough — but ultimately, you can live with all of those. The good of Bellator certainly outweighs those bad moments. But what must change is the overall promotion.
MMA is a sport that is built on moments, and Bellator offers so few of them to fans. Stots vs. Sabatello was a moment. The RIZIN show was a moment. But what else was there from Bellator in 2022? What other show or event did Bellator host that made someone mark their calendar in anticipation? Maybe McKee vs. Pitbull 2, and that feels generous. It is simply not doing enough to create these sorts of events.
Some of this may be attributed to not having the horses to do more. Twenty events a year is a lot for any promotion, and Bellator does not have the roster depth to make that many marquee matchups. No disrespect to these fighters, but when you’re headlining cards with Adam Piccolotti vs. Mansour Barnaoui, who had not fought in three years, you’re doing something wrong. If you’re choosing to hold the events, it’s on you, the promoter, to deliver something worthwhile, not just fill a quota. And ultimately, that’s my point: The UFC delivers lackluster cards on a consistent basis now because they are in it almost exclusively for the quota. That’s lame but it still works since the UFC houses 85 percent of the top fighters in the world. Bellator does not, and yet also frequently feels like it is going through the motions of promotion, instead of putting in its best effort to draw eyeballs to its product.
There’s a scene in Moneyball where Brad Pitt says something that sums up my thoughts for this situation: “If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there.” Bellator can’t compete with the UFC by playing the same game. It needs to think outside the box. The grand prix events are great, the RIZIN event was great, the frequent travel schedule abroad is great. But it’s not enough. It simply needs to find more ways to get people invested.
The Future
2023 might be the most interesting year in the the history of Bellator a number of reasons.
First and foremost, Bellator is now facing legitimate competition from the other non-UFC organizations. The PFL is coming off its most successful year ever and is poised to take a leap in 2023. ONE Championship is set to make its U.S. debut this year, and is now distributed by Amazon Prime. The stage is set for other players to make heavy inroads into the North American MMA market, and if Bellator doesn’t step its game up, they will likely come at its expense, not the UFC’s. Bellator’s CBS debut in February is going to be critical for the promotion, as is its impending Lightweight Grand Prix.
Second, the Ali Act is looming. The Ali Act is reportedly set to be reintroduced to Congress in 2023. Best guess is that it will take a long time to clear Congress and get enacted, if it ever does at all, but if that does end up happening this year, MMA as we know it changes almost overnight. The result is probably pretty bad for the UFC and creates a massive opportunity for every other MMA organization to reap the benefits.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there are rumors that Bellator might be up for sale. At the moment those are just rumors, but where there is smoke, there tends to be at least some sort of fire. Will Bellator sell, to whom, and what that even might look like? No one knows. But with PFL and ONE breathing down Bellator’s neck, a monumental shift like that could make or break the promotion entirely.
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