Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
The promotion already has four champions already in Hector Lombard (Middleweight), Lymon Good (Welterweight), Eddie Alvarez (Lightweight) and Joe Soto (Featherweight). Which means, after the three new tournaments in the third season of the Bellator Fighting Championships concludes, there will be seven championships in the promotion.
If you look at the other three major promotions currently in the United States, the World Extreme Cagefighting promotion has three champions (Benson Henderson, Jose Aldo & Dominick Cruz), the Ultimate Fighting Championships has five champions (Brock Lesnar, Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre & Frankie Edgar) and Strikeforce has seven champions (Allistair Overeem, King Mo, Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez, Cristiane Santos, Sarah Kaufman and an uncrowned middleweight champion).
Which brings me to the topic of the column, will the Bellator Fighting Championships have more titles than it could contend with?
One could instantly point out something I put up in this column a little earlier, the Strikeforce promotion currently has seven champions, much like the Bellator Fighting Championships will have after the third season concludes. However, if the Bellator Fighting Championships wants to succeed with so many champions, that have to succeed in two ways that Strikeforce has failed.
The first mistake is with the Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Allistair Overeem, who up until his battle with Brett Rogers, hadn‘t defended the title in over two years. This is a potential situation that the Bellator Fighting Championships needs to make sure doesn’t happen, because if it does, it will instantly destroy any value the title or titles has.
When Strikeforce debuted on Showtime, it featured a card full of top flight fighters like Nick Diaz, Frank Shamrock and Scott Smith, but if you asked the majority of the fans in attendance, most would never had said Allistair Overeem was the Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion. If the Bellator Fighting Championships wants to keep their champions valid in the minds of MMA fans, they must keep them active in the cage.
The other mistake that Bellator Fighting Championships needs to avoid is to not make any of their titles seem worthless in any way. This is something I truly feel that Strikeforce has done with the Strikeforce Women’s Welterweight Title held by Sarah Kaufman. I say this because while all of the other titles in Strikeforce are defended on the bigger Strikeforce cards, the Strikeforce Women’s Welterweight Title has been regulated to the lower Strikeforce Challengers Series cards.
Now, Bellator Fighting Championships does have one odd advantage over Strikeforce in this scenario, which is the Bellator Fighting Championships doesn’t hold events in a similar vein to the Strikeforce Challengers Series events. However, if the Bellator Fighting Championships wants to keep their belts valid, they got to treat them equally and not put one champion above the other.
Overall, the Bellator Fighting Championships can survive just fine with a larger roster of champions, but they must avoid the mistakes of Strikeforce to do so successfully.
You can contact David Tees at bigtees360@yahoo.com
