Pretty much since the day PRIDE Fighting Championships closed its doors and sold the whole kit and caboodle to their casino magnate foes from across the sea, mixed martial arts fans have longed for the return of the big, glitzy, Japanese-style fighting show.
That was the idea behind Bellator: Dynamite. Intended as the first of a yearly capstone event on the Bellator schedule—think "WrestleMania" and you aren't too far off the beaten path—the first iteration of Dynamite was a not-so-subtle homage to some of the greatest events in the history of combat sports.
Walking into the SAP Center on Saturday afternoon, it was impossible to not marvel at what Scott Coker had created. First, the most obvious thing: a Bellator cage and a GLORY ring, sitting side by side, with only 10 or so feet separating them.
They arrived on different paths, the ring and the cage, and perhaps also on different trajectories. Bellator, under Coker's careful promoter's eye, has experienced a surge in popularity despite the belly-aching of fans who believe what Coker is doing somehow denigrates the "sport" aspect of mixed martial arts, as though Coker has not always been aware of one simple fact: that all of this is about entertainment and eyeballs, and it always will be.
And then there was the GLORY ring, an afterthought and secondary attachment to the Bellator product on this night. The ring was given equal floor space alongside the cage, but the message sent on this night was: here is some kickboxing featuring Bellator people, we hope you like it. The only "real" GLORY bout, as purists will tell you (and they are correct), was the light heavyweight title fight between Zack Mwekassa and Saulo Cavalari.
The others? Those weren't GLORY fights. Not really. But they also perfectly illustrate why GLORY is having such a difficult time finding an audience in North America. The promotion has had an extraordinarily difficult time producing stars that connect with this audience, and so Bellator resorted to using its own stars (Paul Daley and Keri Melendez) in a GLORY ring, like a sort-of-GLORY-but-not-really.
And then, sweeping your eyes over to the right-hand side of the arena, there was the stage. It was elevated above the audience and somehow seemed much bigger than it actually was. Perhaps this was due to the giant automated LED screens sitting there, or the brash DYNAMITE logo being consumed by fire and flame in something resembling a fancy animated .gif.
Or perhaps it was because, standing there and staring at that stage and the pinpoint spotlights above it that extended to the very top of the arena, it was easy to be transported back to another time, when staying up until 6 a.m. to watch fights felt like something that was embarrassing to explain to your friends, even if it made sense in your head.
The thing about DYNAMITE was that it had a special feel to it, one that is hard to describe. It was just the SAP Center in San Jose. But for what it represented, it might as well have been the Saitama Super Arena.
The UFC is the world's biggest and best mixed martial arts promotion. It is a master of putting on a world-class production. You know when you tune into a UFC show what you're going to get, more or less, and there are no surprises.
But I don't know if that's a good thing. I like to be surprised every once in a blue moon. I like when people take chances and when they try new things, even if they fell flat on their faces when doing so. It takes a lot of a special kind of courage to fail in public. And rather than take the safe route and give fans the same kind of stuff they see nearly every single weekend (and sometimes three times in one weekend!) from the UFC, Coker and Bellator are trying new things. They're throwing a handful of stuff on the wall to see what sticks.
Not everything from DYNAMITE stuck. As mentioned, the GLORY portions of the evening were a letdown for the fans in attendance and at home. And that's unfortunate, because if Bellator fans were given a larger sampling of true world-class kickboxing—with GLORY fighters instead of Bellator fighters masquerading as such—there might've been a better chance to create some interest. Instead, the GLORY fights largely became something that MMA fans wanted to get through instead of something they wanted to watch, and that's a pretty big deal.
Coker's philosophy of booking fights that we can generously call mismatches also backfired. Daley was supposed to easily beat the dad-bodied Fernando Gonzalez because Daley is an experienced kickboxer and Gonzales was not.
But what was conceived as a showcase fight for one of Bellator's most exciting fighters turned into a thud of a thing when Gonzalez decided he'd actually show up to fight.
Keri Anne Melendez's one-sided beating of Hadley Griffith stood out like a sore thumb on the main card, mostly because it was apparent from about four seconds into the fight that it was not going to be much of a fight at all.
Melendez, the wife of famed lightweight Gilbert, is one of Bellator's future bright shining stars. She was signed for and is being groomed to be Bellator's first big female star. She has never fought a single mixed martial arts bout, but I can remember watching her grapple as far back as 2011 at the old El Nino Training Center in San Francisco. She is no novice.
And it was a good night for the light heavyweight Phil Davis. The man who became the first high-profile free agent to depart from the UFC and sign with Bellator upon expiration of his contract could not have imagined a better debut in his new home. Davis came out and ran right through former Bellator champion Emmanuel Newton like a hot knife through butter, submitting him with ease. And then he came back out and did the same thing to Francis Carmont, winning by knockout.
A fighter who unfairly earned a rep as a boring fighter in the UFC scored two finishes in one night. That is a promoter's dream, even if it nearly became a nightmare after first-round winner Mo Lawal was forced from the tournament after injuring his rib cartilage during a suplex festival with his first-round opponent Linton Vassell.
Now, Bellator is in a great position with the top of its light heavyweight division. Liam McGeary retained his title with an out-of-nowhere inverted triangle on Tito Ortiz, who—up until that point, at least—seemed more than capable of turning back the clock and running roughshod on dudes with ground-and-pound.
Davis will be the next man up for McGeary, and it is difficult to imagine any other scenario than Davis wresting control of the light heavyweight title away from the current champion. That's the power of the one-night tournament, especially when you put in a performance like Davis did. You come away with the sense that this man is unbeatable, even though you've seen otherwise with your own eyes. The tournament can instantly cement someone as the ultimate threat.
And then there was the arrival of Nobuyuki Sakakibara, the former PRIDE FC executive who announced the formation of a new mixed martial arts promotion. He did not tell us the name of the promotion, though sources close to him indicate the new company will likely be called Samurai FC. But what we do know is that Fedor Emelianenko, the man many still consider to be the greatest fighter of all time, will be the linchpin of his new promotion. He'll fight on New Year's Eve against an opponent to be named later, and Spike TV will air the card on delay.
If the sight of Sakakibara, Coker, former PRIDE doofus Gary/Jerry Millen and Emelianenko standing in the center of the cage with Spike president Kevin Kay wasn't enough to take you back to the old days, well, nothing will.
It was a circus, but the best kind of circus, the kind where you're not sure exactly what you'll see until you arrive. This one featured mixed martial arts and kickboxing. In talking with a Spike TV executive backstage, it seems like the next thing added will be boxing, likely courtesy of Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions, who Spike TV already has a relationship with.
And, in the future, you might even see a more realistic brand of professional wrestling mixed in there.
"Everything is on the table," the executive said.
MMA, kickboxing, boxing and pro wrestling on the same card? It sounds a little bit too ridiculous to be true. And yet it seems exactly like the kind of thing Coker, Bellator and Spike TV wouldn't mind trying out. Because in the search for eyeballs, everything must be considered.
And if capturing eyeballs means turning this whole Bellator thing into a circus once a year or so, well, that's a small price to pay.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report.
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