Bellator is in the home stretch of it’s eighth season and first season on Spike TV. The organization will not have a live fight card this week, but plenty of news and notes came out of the California based organization this week. 
Bellator 92 took place this past Thursday night in California, as it was the second Bellator fight card to take place in Californa during this season.
The card featured the semifinals in this season’s featherweight and middleweight tournaments.
Mike Richman and Frodo Khasbulaev advance to the featherweight final and Doug Marshall and Brett Cooper punched their ticket in the middleweight fight. Richman and Marshall both won split decision and Khasbualev and Cooper won by TKO/KO.
At the post fight press conference, Bellator MMA Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney announced that the featherweight and middleweight tournament finals will take place at the season eight finale on April 4th in Atlantic City. That card will come from the Revel Casino and will be headlined by Pat Curran defending the Bellator featherweight title against season seven tournament winner Shahbulat Shamhalaev.
Along with the title fight and tournament finals, the card will also have season six lightweight tournament winner Rick Hawn stepping into the cage for the first time since losing to Michael Chandler at Bellator 85 and he will meet Karo Parisyan in a welterweight bout.
Josh Appelt wins back to back fights in Bellator
One of the fights that took place on the Bellator 92 preliminary card was a heavyweight bout between Josh Appelt and Manny Lara. Why did this preliminary fight make it into this week’s Bellator notebook? Is it because Appelt has now won six in a row and three of those wins coming in Bellator? Appelt potentially secured a spot in the next Bellator heavyweight tournament?
The reason Appelt made it into this week’s column is because he won in back to back weeks in Bellator. He defeated Josh Lanier at Bellator 91 in New Mexico and then defeated Manny Lara at Bellator 92. It’s very odd to see a fighter in a promotion like Bellator fight in back to back weeks.
Prior to Bellator 92, I reached out to the New Mexico State Athletic Commission about the medical suspensions for Bellator 91. However, I was unable to obtain the suspension from the card that took place at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho.
I would imagine that the California State Athletic Commission knew that Appelt had competed the previous week and he did not receive a medical suspension from New Mexico.
Many fans complain that certain information is not released about Bellator events, such as medical suspensions, drug testing and fighter salaries.
As a member of the media, I can request the information but there is no guarantee that that information will be given out. I have requested the medical suspensions for several of the events so far during this season of Bellator and the only commissions that have sent me that information has been Georgia and California.
Bellator has issues with live stream of Bellator 91 Weigh-Ins
Last Wednesday, Bellator held the weigh-ins for Bellator 91 and they were supposed to be streamed live on Bellator.com. However, the stream did not work and Bellator could have done a better job communicating with fans on social media that there was an issue with the live stream.
When it was obvious that the stream was not working, Bellator did not acknowledge that the stream was not working on social media and sent out a tweet telling fans to watch the weigh-ins on their website.
Tune in to bellator.com for LIVE weigh ins! twitter.com/BellatorMMA/st…
— Bellator (@BellatorMMA) March 7, 2013
Of course, it could be very possible that the person who sent out the above tweet did not know that the stream was not working. However, there were tweets being sent to Bellator that the stream was not live. Bellator never addressed the situation on social media, which is something they should have done.
If this happened with the UFC prior to the weigh-ins being on FUEL TV, the UFC and UFC President Dana White would have apologized on Twitter. Along with apologizing, the UFC would have sent live results of the weigh-ins on Twitter.
Bellator did post the weigh-in video on You Tube after the conclusion of the event, which they do deserve credit for. This is the first time that they have posted the weigh-ins on You Tube and it’s something they should do for every weigh-in. Not every fan can watch the weigh-ins live as they happen and the Bellator 91 weigh-in video on You Tube is now approaching 5,000 views.
Bellator does not have the staff that the UFC has. The UFC has staff members that their job is to monitor social media. Those staff members monitor what people are saying about the UFC on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and may address any issues that fans have.
In the past, I have had fans complain to me that Bellator does not respond to fans on Twitter. While I was in Utah covering Bellator 90, I had a fan come up to me after the fight card and asked why Bellator did not offer a military discount for tickets. I did not have an answer for the fan, but offering a military discount is something that Bellator should look into.
This fan also told me that he wrote tweets to Bellator on several occasions and never received a message back. If you go through Bellator’s tweets, they rarely respond to fans questions on Twitter, which is something they need to do. If you ignore fans questions on Twitter, will that cause them to ignore the Bellator product?
After what happened last Wednesday night, this should be a lesson learned for Rebney, Viacom, Spike TV and the rest of the staff with Bellator. They have to do a better job on social media going forward to become a legitimate competitor against the UFC.