It didn’t take long for Phil Davis’ gamble in Bellator MMA to come up aces.
One night, two fights, just over seven minutes of action.
That’s all it took for Davis to seize No. 1 contender status in the Bellator light heavyweight division on Saturday, as he notched two emphatic victories in the company’s one-night 205-pound tournament.
As the tourney favorite, it wasn’t shocking to see Davis emerge triumphant from the four-man bracket.
Along the way, though, he managed a couple of more surprising feats. He crafted a pair of first-round stoppages—a submission over Emanuel Newton and then a knockout of Francis Carmont—and almost instantly rekindled the momentum he’d lost as his UFC career petered out earlier this year.
“Man, I don’t know what just happened,” Davis said inside the cage after knocking out Carmont. As Bellator CEO Scott Coker wrapped the tournament championship belt around his waist, it appeared the organization’s freshest star was marveling at his new surroundings.
With a dangerous but seemingly winnable 205-pound title fight with Liam McGeary now on deck, Davis is just one step from capturing the major title that eluded him throughout his five-year, 13-fight tenure in the Octagon.
Along with the potential to rehabilitate his image as an elite fighter, that makes the 30-year-old Pennsylvania native’s jump to Bellator immediately appear worth his while.
Early in his UFC career, Davis had been ticketed for greatness. His unique blend of size, aptitude and NCAA championship-level wrestling skills made it feel like he might someday be the one to give dominant champion Jon Jones a run for his money.
But Davis never fully progressed to that level and never earned a UFC championship opportunity. He went a respectable 9-3-1 but scuffled at times, drawing the ire of UFC President Dana White as a guy who just didn’t want it badly enough.
Davis’ unanimous-decision loss to Anthony Johnson at UFC 172 in April 2014 felt career-defining. Unable to take Johnson down, he spent the rest of the fight on his bicycle, concerned only with avoiding Johnson’s fearsome punching power as the clock ran down.
Many observers accepted it as the final verdict on his potential in the Octagon. Davis would eternally be a Top 10 light heavyweight but would never evolve into the full-fledged mixed martial artist capable of hanging with the division’s very best.
Leading up to the last fight on his UFC contract—a split-decision loss to Ryan Bader on January 24—Davis declined an extension. Instead, he said he wanted to test his value on the open market. When he did, he liked the offer he got from Bellator best.
"I have nothing but gratitude for those [UFC] guys," Davis told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour at the time (h/t Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting). "I would have liked to sign the big contract and stay with the UFC, sure. That was my first option. But as more options became available, I went with other options. It's hard to look at it emotionally. I'm entirely looking at it as a business move."
Business-wise, the decision already looks like a good one. In Bellator, Davis gets to keep his third-party sponsors (including assumedly big-ticket apparel manufacturer Affliction) and potentially gets to clean house against a shallow roster of lesser opponents.
At least, that’s how it looked on night one.
In the tournament’s opening round, he dominated former light heavyweight champion Newton on the ground before locking on a kimura near the end of the first stanza. Newton hadn’t been finished in a fight since 2009 and had been the company’s most successful 205-pound champion before losing the title to McGeary at Bellator 134 in February.
For Davis to defeat him so easily made a statement. Stomping past Newton and later decking fellow Octagon veteran Carmont in two minutes, 15 seconds made it seem as though a new era may be in the offing for Bellator’s light heavyweight ranks.
The era where Davis dominates.
In that way, his fledgling relationship with America’s second-largest MMA promoter may turn out to be a doubled-edged sword.
On one hand, it has already proved mutually beneficial. Davis brings some instant star power to a company that sorely needs it (preferably from guys under 40 years old) while also getting to mend his own image on a fairly grandiose stage.
Then again, if Davis eventually defeats McGeary as easily as Newton and Carmont, it may only reinforce the notion of Bellator as the UFC’s kid-brother organization. That perception will ultimately be one Coker’s fun-loving little company can’t escape unless it can lure more Octagon veterans across the aisle during 2016.
On the bright side, Davis’ tournament victory certainly added some new blood to a night with a decidedly throwback feel.
At its inaugural “Dynamite” event, broadcast on Spike TV, Bellator continued to sell nostalgia dressed as innovation.
It offered a mixed menu of caged MMA fights and kickboxing, added some flair back to fighter ring entrances and employed the screeching tones of former Pride FC public address announcer Lenne Hardt. It didn’t all go off like gangbusters, but it continued to make Bellator feel like the no-worries alternative to the UFC.
The promotion’s next move will be a high-profile co-promotion with former Pride boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara on a New Years Eve event in Japan headlined by Fedor Emelianenko.
For one night only, it also brought back a staple of MMA’s formative years—the one-night tournament.
Naturally, there were some unexpected (or entirely expected?) plot twists.
While Davis emerged from the opening round unscathed after a quick-and-easy victory over Newton, the opposite side of the bracket got messier. Muhammed Lawal scored a unanimous-decision win over Linton Vassell in the tourney’s first fight but ultimately couldn’t continue due to injury.
Carmont, who decisioned Anthony Ruiz in a tournament alternate fight early on the untelevised undercard, subbed into the final at the last minute.
The Frenchman was also in the midst of rebuilding himself since coming to Bellator earlier this year. That ended when Davis floored him with a leaping left hook early in the first round to cement his own tournament win.
Davis will now meet McGeary for the title at an event to be named later.
McGeary defeated Tito Ortiz by first-round submission in the evening’s main event, and his future meeting with Davis already shapes up as the best, most relevant light heavyweight title fight in Bellator history.
In addition to that opportunity, Davis may end up having to settle some business with Lawal in the near future. While it undermined excitement for the tournament final in the short term, Lawal's withdrawal from the bracket really only gives Bellator more options moving forward.
It all adds up to make Davis’ decision to go for the money and become the big fish in Bellator’s smaller 205-pound pond seem like a smashing success, at least after one night.
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