After four months that felt like five years, the circular cage of Bellator MMA, the United States’ second-biggest mixed martial arts promotion, will finally be occupied again on Friday for the start of Bellator’s 2021 season. It’s the start of a new era in Bellator’s history, as the promotion has a brand-new TV home: starting this week Bellator will air on Showtime, which will broadcast mixed martial arts for the first time since Strikeforce closed its doors in 2013.
Are you just thinking about getting into Bellator in time for its first run of shows this year? Just need to catch up on all the big fights and storylines to come? Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest plots to watch, starting on Friday night.
The finish of the Featherweight Grand Prix
Since Bellator’s re-launch under new president Scott Coker a few years ago, the company’s 16-man Featherweight Grand Prix promised to easily be the biggest tournament it’s done. So far, it’s delivered on every bit of the hype, with great fights, better talent and some new stars building their names.
The one stumbling block, of course, has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted Bellator’s 2020 schedule and forced the resolution of the tournament to be significantly delayed. The tournament’s last few fights were delayed even further by the four-month gap in between the end of the 2020 season and the beginning of 2021. But, at long last, we’ll get a winner – about time. This tournament, by the time it ends, will have spanned three calendar years.
And it seems like destiny has us hurtling towards arguably the single biggest and most important fight that Bellator MMA could possibly promote in the year 2021. Patricio “Pitbull” Freire is the greatest fighter in Bellator’s history, an absolute killer who has ruled Bellator’s featherweight division for years. In 2019, he moved up to 155, and knocked Michael Chandler silly to become a two-division champ. With Chandler set to fight for a UFC title very soon, his stock is even higher than ever.
Pitbull has looked as dominant as ever so far in the tournament. After outclassing current bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta over five rounds in Sep. 2019, Pitbull effortlessly KOed an outmatched Pedro Carvalho in the quarterfinals in November. He’ll face Emmanuel Sanchez in the main event of Bellator’s first card back on Friday, in a rematch of a 2018 bout in which Sanchez gave him some trouble.
Pitbull will be heavily favored in his fight with Sanchez, which would lead him into a finals showdown with undefeated A.J. McKee, the sport’s single best featherweight prospect and the most undeniable young talent under Bellator’s banner. 17-0 at just 25 years of age, McKee was born and bred for MMA superstardom – the son of longtime pro Antonio McKee, McKee has been training for this since he was a kid, and so far has lived up to every bit of his staggering potential.
McKee has been the breakout star of the featherweight tournament, graduating from “hot prospect” to “top contender” with aplomb. He’s finished all three of his wins, including an eight-second KO of respected vet Georgi Karakhanyan in the first round, and punched his ticket to the finals by tapping out former champion Darrion Caldwell with an incredibly unique neck crank from bottom position.
Pitbull-McKee is as exciting a fight Bellator can put on, and we’re one step away from seeing it. That, alone, is worthy of getting excited for the 2021 season.
The launch of the Light Heavyweight Grand Prix
But that’s not all: as one tournament winds down, another will be kicking into gear over the next few weeks, with the first quarterfinal matches being held next week. Bellator made significant investments to its light heavyweight division over the last year, dipping into the free agent pool and signing former UFC contenders like Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, Corey Anderson and Yoel Romero.
What better way to advertise your added depth than with a big tournament? And what better way to advertise your new champion, 28-year-old Vadim Nemkov, who won the title off Ryan Bader last year and looks like one of the best young light heavyweights in the world?
I already extensively previewed the tournament field when it was announced, but the matchups themselves are very interesting. Romero and Johnson will square off in the first round in what will be either the most aggressive staring contest of all time or an incredible explosion of violent mayhem. Nemkov will defend his title on April 16 against Phil Davis, who gave him a very tough fight a few years ago and whose length and wrestling ability make him a difficult matchup for anyone.
Ryan Bader is back looking to reclaim his crown, and he’ll headline next week’s show in a rematch of his 2012 loss to former UFC champ Lyoto Machida. And in perhaps the most interesting fight of the group, Anderson will meet the tournament’s unknown dark horse, talented former ACA standout Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov, as the co-main to Nemkov-Davis II.
There are few things I love more than a good tournament, and this one’s got some heft to it. I can’t wait to see how it shakes out.
The impact of new rankings
It was way, way overdue, but Bellator finally followed the example of UFC and ONE this year, unveiling their inaugural set of fighter rankings earlier this week. The reception was, how should we say, mixed.
So yeah, there are some head-scratchers on there. But it’s the first run, and you hope that in the future, once fights start to shake out with the rankings in place, things will settle into a hierarchy that will make more sense. What I’m more interested in is how the new rankings will affect matchmaking: ideally, the booking around Bellator’s way will make a bit more sense.
Take the aforementioned welterweight division: Michael “Venom” Page has been pushed as one of the 170-pound group’s biggest stars for a while now, but has been almost exclusively booked against unheralded fighters. Meanwhile, Yaroslav Amosov, undefeated with several very impressive wins under Bellator’s banner, has had his quality of opposition seemingly vacillate wildly.
With a set hierarchy now in place, you hope this means the best will fight the best, and the promotion will no longer be able to justify feeding fighters Page can after can. With actual rankings, a fighter’s progression up the Bellator food chain should be more linear and easier to follow. Even if the first crop of rankings isn’t the best, that in and of itself should be quite valuable.
Rising stars
Bellator has done a really nice job in recent months scooping up some great talents that have been more or less overlooked by the UFC – particularly when it comes to one of the sport’s talent hotbeds, Russia. We’ll get to see a wave of really good young fighters take their opening steps in Bellator over the next few weeks and beyond.
Bellator’s 2021 debut on Friday alone features the second promotional appearance from grappling ace Magomed Magomedov, who until the dumbest knee in MMA history was the only man to defeat former UFC bantamweight champ Petr Yan; the Bellator debut of Usman Nurmagomedov, the undefeated and extremely talented cousin of Khabib; the return to the cage of Khalid Murtazaliev, a potential UFC star at middleweight before a PED suspension cost him two years; and the debut of Mukhamed Berkhamov, another very promising young ACA standout.
There are more to come, as well. Perhaps Bellator’s biggest under-the-radar capture of the offseason was Russian lightweight Alexander Shabliy, who became an all-violence team favorite over the last few years and should prove an excellent addition to that division. The Russians are coming, and they’re taking over. At least a couple of these names are going to break out in a big way this year.
Back together with RIZIN?
This is more speculation than anything, but I’m curious to see any new developments to come over the course of the next year regarding Bellator’s partnership with the Japanese promotion RIZIN, after their cross-promotion was easily one of the highlights of the year 2019 in MMA.
Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic threw one hell of a wrench into the works, as well as the devastating knee injury suffered by Kyoji Horiguchi, RIZIN’s top pound-for-pound fighter, who beat Darrion Caldwell to win Bellator’s 135-pound title in June 2019. Horiguchi relinquished the Bellator title after tearing his ACL that fall, and Juan Archuleta went on to win the vacant belt last year. A situation in which Horiguchi doesn’t get injured and holds the Bellator title as the pandemic hits would have been a very interesting one.
Instead, Horiguchi returned on New Year’s Eve and looked as great as ever in a knockout win of young star Kai Asakura. RIZIN is running a bantamweight grand prix of its own in 2021 – Horiguchi, the champion, is noticeably absent from the rolls. Although Horiguchi will almost certainly defend his RIZIN belt against the winner of the tournament, he’s got to do something until then, right?
Popular speculation has him returning to Bellator to go after the title he never lost at some point this year: he’ll likely face either Archuleta or top contender Sergio Pettis, who challenges for the belt on May 7. Scott Coker hinted as much last month. Coker also expressed that the lines of communication are still open between himself and RIZIN president Noboyuki Sakakibara, a very welcome thing to hear.
As the pandemic (hopefully) winds down over the course of the year and travel starts to open back up, it sounds like we should once again see some cross-promotion between Bellator and RIZIN. What shape that will take, at least for now, is up in the air.
The Big Fight 