Bellator looking to add fifth tournament to upcoming sixth season

As expected Bellator Fighting Championships chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney is actively working to eliminate the organization's non-title "super fights."

And as Rebney first told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) this past month, the implementation of more tournaments could achieve that goal.

So far, Rebney said four tournaments are planned for Bellator's upcoming sixth season, and a fifth tourney could be added to the mix.

Over the weekend, Rebney told MMAjunkie.com that season six, which is expected to begin on MTV2 in the spring, will feature eight-man featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight tournaments.

"I'm hopeful we can put one more weight division into that season and figure out from a timing perspective how to do five tournaments instead of four," said Rebney, who's hosted four tournaments in each of Bellator's first five seasons.

As a tournament-based promotion, Bellator crowns champions and determines title challengers solely by the 12-week, multi-event tourneys (both with male and female fighters). However, with Bellator now boasting eight champions (none of whom has defended his belt more than once), they face potentially long layoffs while waiting for tourney winners/title challengers to emerge. That's led Bellator to book non-title bouts for the champion, though they're usually against overmatched competition. Or even worse, disaster recently struck when light-heavyweight champion Christian M'Pumbu suffered a non-title loss to Travis Wiuff that arguably tarnished the championship.

That's why the organization hopes to eliminate the fights completely.

"The way we'll eliminate the super fights is we will do more tournaments per season and get a quicker turnaround and a turnover for world title fights for our existing champions," Rebney said. "It's not a complicated process. It's just having more tournaments running simultaneously so that there's a quicker turnover and a shorter period of time between the end of one season and the beginning of another. It's just a matter of doing more tournaments."

Rebney recently said the implementation of more tournaments could force some opening-round matchups off MTV2 main cards and onto prelims. However, that's not much of an issue now that Spike.com streams all preliminary-card action. Additionally, as the organization recently did with its three monthly "Summer Series" events, a tournament could be held during the offseason shows (the next is currently targeted for early 2012).

Whatever ultimately is decided, though, just don't expect the tourney format to disappear.

"It's worked for us," Rebney said. "Title shots are truly earned, not given. The fighters appreciate that. I think the fans do too. The format has worked for us."

probably a smart move to drop those super fights. i'm hoping nothing like one weight class's tourney watering down other tourneys happens though, especially after the weird end to the HW season 5 tourney. they need to fire up their woman's weight classes again too.

glad to see Bellator making different and new moves, keeping their org fresh yo.

Bellator is getting huge

more the better.

I hope they do a light heavyweight tournament as the fifth weight class. They have some good international light heavyweight prospects signed.

I gotta admit, I was really disappointed by Iganov's withdrawal this season. It's still been good though, and there've been some notable upsets to keep things interesting. These HWs just don't excite me that much, outside of Iganov.

light heavyweight please.

So the world can see Marcus Vänttinen. Finland's number 1 LHW.

Bellator should just drop their light heavyweight division, or get a few light heavyweights that matter. Christian M'Pumbu, as shown in him being the only champion to lose a super fight, sucks, as does the entire Bellator LHW "Division". Unless they're going to get a guy like Gegard Mousasi, who would undoubtedly have an unprecedented reign of terror over Bellator, I don't see the point in continuing to tease the idea of a legitimate LHW division. It's why they dropped the Women's division after they screwed Megumi Fuji, the only legit FMMA fighter outside of Strikeforce.

^^just because a champ finally lost in a super fight doesn't mean they should drop that whole fucking division

Travis Wiuff is fucking HUGE cutting down from HW and M'Pumbu doesn't cut any weight at all and could easily make MW if he did. It's not like M'Pumbu got completely tooled or anything dude, he lost a decision to a big guy who laid on him. besides that's nothing but more fuel for the next guy to win a tourney and earn a shot at the LHW belt. don't act like Bellator can't build up it's own stars at that division, ridiculous.

also i'm pretty sure Bellator didn't just drop their Women's division, it's just that 115 lbs for women's is scarce and the fact that Zoila even cut that much weight to compete and win puts them in a weird position since she seems to no longer want to compete that light.

InTheJungle wrote:Bellator should just drop their light heavyweight division, or get a few light heavyweights that matter. Christian M'Pumbu, as shown in him being the only champion to lose a super fight, sucks, as does the entire Bellator LHW "Division". Unless they're going to get a guy like Gegard Mousasi, who would undoubtedly have an unprecedented reign of terror over Bellator, I don't see the point in continuing to tease the idea of a legitimate LHW division. It's why they dropped the Women's division after they screwed Megumi Fuji, the only legit FMMA fighter outside of Strikeforce.

The Bellator LHW division has 2 new beasts in Marcus Vänttinen and Attila Vegh and a LHW tourney would be more exciting (IMO) than the heavyweight tourney. Both of these dudes are finishers and will make Bellator's LHW division a lot more interesting.

edit- PLUS Attila's name is Attila. That's an awesome name. p4p.

Seth Petruzzeli is rumored to drop to LHW as well..

It don't matter if their LHW is weak as far as rankings. Who cares about rankings if the fights are great. They are filling a niche, as I love tournament format.

The only thing is superfights is how they kept their champs busy and paid between tourneys. I am curious what they gonna do now, I think they should co-promote.

AudaxPowder wrote:^^just because a champ finally lost in a super fight doesn't mean they should drop that whole fucking division

Travis Wiuff is fucking HUGE cutting down from HW and M'Pumbu doesn't cut any weight at all and could easily make MW if he did. It's not like M'Pumbu got completely tooled or anything dude, he lost a decision to a big guy who laid on him. besides that's nothing but more fuel for the next guy to win a tourney and earn a shot at the LHW belt. don't act like Bellator can't build up it's own stars at that division, ridiculous.

also i'm pretty sure Bellator didn't just drop their Women's division, it's just that 115 lbs for women's is scarce and the fact that Zoila even cut that much weight to compete and win puts them in a weird position since she seems to no longer want to compete that light.

+1