This Day in MMA History: April 3

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Early 2009 at first glance did not appear to be a wise time to challenge the growing hegemony of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In the previous two years, the UFC had acquired and shuttered its greatest rival, Pride Fighting Championships, expanded into the sub-lightweight divisions through the annexation of World Extreme Cagefighting and gleefully watched the public implosion of upstarts like Affliction and the International Fight League.

Nonetheless, the entity we now call Bellator MMA debuted on April 3, 2009 with an 11-fight card at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. The brainchild of sports attorney and fight fan Bjorn Rebney, Bellator Fighting Championships, as it was known, made a conscious decision to pursue strategies the UFC had either rejected, neglected or struggled to execute. Matchmaking took the form of a season-long, single-elimination tournament in each weight class, with the tournament winner earning a shot at the title. The product was explicitly targeted at Spanish-speaking fight fans, including a groundbreaking broadcast deal with ESPN Deportes. Perhaps most importantly, Bellator went out of its way to make its product easily accessible; the creation of official “Bellator Moments” highlight reels on YouTube and generous attitude towards fan-created content stood in stark contrast to the UFC’s jealous guarding of its footage.

That debut card featured several budding stars who would go on to elevate their stock under the Bellator banner, including Eddie Alvarez, Jorge Masvidal, Toby Imada and a then-undefeated Joe Soto, all four of whom won by first-round finish. Bellator’s planned identity as a fast-paced highlight machine was off to a good start. Its visibility skyrocketed the next month when Imada and Masvidal combined to create the ultimate Bellator Moment, when Imada’s standing inverted triangle choke left “Gamebred” unconscious on the canvas. The highlight video went viral, breaking a million views within weeks and leading Sports Illustrated to declare Bellator 2009’s MMA success story of the year by July.

Since that historic night, Bellator has undergone some changes—the abandonment of the tournament format, acquisition by Viacom, Rebney being ousted in favor of longtime Strikeforce head honcho Scott Coker—but remains recognizably the same organization. As such, it is one of the longest-lived promotions the sport has ever seen and, by consensus, the second-most prominent MMA company in the world today, without even any obvious third-place contender. It has been quite a journey for the little promotion that could, and it all started 11 years ago today, with Rebney convincing investors that it was the perfect time to challenge MMA’s 800-pound gorilla.

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