At another time, in another life, Bellator MMA President Scott Coker would have made one hell of a house flipper. A fresh coat of paint here, some updated decorations there, a bit of good, old-fashioned elbow grease, and...voila.
Turning around a franchise isn't quite the same thing, but it's close. Coker, after all, inherited a product that had been built from scratch and appealed to a limited segment and, through vision, was tasked with taking it to its full potential and delivering it to the masses.
He's not there quite yet as this public renovation plays out in real time on a major stage. Last Saturday was another step forward for Bellator, though, which delivered an entertaining event filled with fun and madness and familiar names. A forward step, yes, but was it a shuffle or a leap?
For Coker, the question isn't whether he can cut the sizable gap between Bellator and the UFC. He already has. Instead, the question is whether he can turn Bellator into an actual threat to the UFC's long-standing industry dominance. The gulf between them is still wide, but there is at least a feeling Bellator is building momentum.
So far, in his 15 months at the helm, Coker—along with his bosses at Spike—has shown a willingness to experiment and to gamble, which is exactly the kind of approach a No. 2 should take in chasing No. 1. Whereas his predecessor Bjorn Rebney focused on his tournament slow-builds to write narratives and fill events—sometimes to his own detriment—Coker comes off as a riverboat gambler, ready to creatively play any cards that reach his hands.
Bellator Dynamite was an example of his imagination. In truth, the size of the show was its biggest selling point. Cage and ring in the same place. Four-man, one-night tournament. Twenty-one (21!) fights. It was a show about scale as much as substance: Hey, look what we can do!
On paper, in the light of day, it's not quite as riveting. The headline draw (Tito Ortiz) was 40 years old, with a body of work largely compromised by an extensive injury history. Several of the best-known names (37-year-old Josh Thomson, 34-year-old Muhammed Lawal) are probably past their athletic primes, and most of the fighters on the prelims and dark matches were unknowns.
But Coker's knack is for stirring in just the right ingredients at just the right time. Phil Davis may have had a bit of a checkered UFC run, but any fan had to admit it would be interesting to see how he would perform as a favorite and in a tournament. Liam McGeary may not be a household name, but it was obvious his style was always going to make for an intriguing grapple chess match with Ortiz.
And cage and ring together? How was that going to work? It was so intriguing you simply had to watch.
But some of those moves won't be as easy to replicate next time around. One-night tournaments are novelties, after all, and novelties have expiration dates. The cage-and-ring setup is another novelty. Hell, so is Kimbo Slice. Bellator has a few of them, and its future cannot be about the same kinds of things that the present is. The biggest impediment to that as presently constructed is the ongoing challenge of building its own major stars.
Will Brooks, Michael Chandler, Patricio "Pitbull" Freire and McGeary are all legitimate and exciting, but they have yet to find a way to take their names beyond the most loyal supporters. After the show, Brooks voiced his displeasure on the topic, tweeting a stream-of-consciousness rant about Bellator's preferential treatment of its newer talent acquisitions.
He might have a point. Really, as well-known as Ortiz is, his ceiling—both as a draw and fighter—is no mystery. He's a bigger star than anyone else on the roster with the possible exception of Kimbo, but at 40 years old, he's not a building block for the future. Neither is Slice, who is 41.
That leaves Coker in a tricky position of having to build most of his "tentpole" events around aging (aged?) veterans with little chance of meeting the expectations of constantly savvier audiences and then supporting them with former UFC stars (e.g. Cheick Kongo, Ken Shamrock, Stephan Bonnar, etc.) who rightly or wrongly often tend to be viewed as castoffs. This formula will never work to create a true threat to UFC as the market leader, because by definition, Bellator is playing from behind.
Where it has excelled in threatening the UFC is in recruiting. In recent months, the organization has looked long-term by signing four-time collegiate wrestling All-American Ed Ruth to a contract to compete upon the completion of his Olympic quest in 2016. Bellator also signed fellow Olympic hopeful Tyrell Fortune, a heavyweight, as well as super-prospect Aaron Pico. In at least one of those instances, the athlete cited the UFC's restrictive sponsorship landscape for driving his decision to move to Bellator.
True blue-chip talent is somewhat rare in MMA, but that sponsorship issue is a UFC vulnerability and a Bellator opening toward closing the talent gap and building an organization that can truly rival the big show. There will always be the fighters who want the prestige of fighting in the bigger, better-known organization, but the rest of them, the prizefighters, might be convinced by the bottom line. If they feel they can make more money in Bellator's cage, Coker has a chance to keep drawing them in.
And if that keeps happening, then look out, because fight sports are a young person's game. Right now, for Coker, everything old is new again. But to compete, to build a real threat, the emphasis must be on the new. Nostalgia is fun in doses, but when dwelled in for too long, it risks melancholy.
Coker certainly knows this. He's bright and resourceful, and he knows how to remodel from the inside out. When you do this long enough, you tend to understand when it's time to dust off what the old owners left behind and when it's time to refurbish with the newest and shiniest updates money can buy and hope they wow the market. To compete with the biggest house on the block, the latter way is the only way.
So is Bellator a threat as currently constructed? No, but Coker has it moving in the right direction. And just imagine if the recruiting landscape keeps shifting and he starts reeling in young talent to mix and match with his creative flair. That would really be dynamite.
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