The second “tent pole” event of the Scott Coker era of Bellator took place on Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut and featured Liam McGeary becoming the light heavyweight champion with a decision victory over Emanuel Newton.
I was unable to attend the first “tent pole” event in November, so this was my first experience with the Bellator stage setup.
As someone who has attended many Bellator shows over the past couple of years, the stage setup brings a much different feel to the fight card, it makes it feel like an event and let’s be honest, we need more of that in today’s MMA.
Mohegan Sun is a tremendous venue for Bellator and they always draw well in terms of attendance. While the attendance number is not known at this time, I would expect that number to be around what Bellator 123 drew in September of last year. At that event, the attendance was just over 7100 and I would not be surprised if Friday night’s show beats that number.
At the beginning of the main card, I thought the signing of the national anthems was a great production element. Bellator has to make their product look different than the UFC and they did that. I know that everyone may not have liked it, but I personally thought it was great and the people in attendance definitely like it. In addition, the fighters like the staging and I have hear from multiple fighters that they want to be on the “tent pole” events due to the stage.
Along with liking the production element of the beginning of the show, the fans in the Mohegan Sun liked it as well. Not sure how that played out on television, but the fans loved it. It brought a different environment to the arena following a preliminary card that saw multiple fights end due to stoppage.
Overall, I felt it was a tremendous show and I would like to see Bellator do more of these “tent pole” events. When I see Bellator do shows like last night, it makes me feel that they could be a true competitor to the UFC. They just need to keep putting on high quality, high production level shows to make everyone in the mixed martial arts community think they are a competitor to the UFC.
As former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden said many years ago, “The future is bright, I got to wear shades.” The future of Bellator seems to be bright, but let’s see how they can take the momentum of a show like Bellator 134 into the upcoming shows in Oklahoma, California, and Missouri.