Bellator Fighting Championships
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Mixed martial arts promotion |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Bjorn Rebney |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
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Key people
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Bjorn Rebney President 2008–2014 Scott Coker President 2014–present Rich Chou VP Talent Relations/Matchmaker |
| Parent | Viacom |
| Website | http://www.bellator.com/ |
Bellator MMA (formerly known as Bellator Fighting Championships) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company. Bellator was founded in 2008 by Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney. Bellator features "The Toughest Tournament in Sports", which has a single-elimination format that awards the winner of each eight-person or four-person tournament a check for $100,000 and a guaranteed world title fight against the current Bellator world champion in the applicable weight class.
In December 2011, Viacom acquired a majority stake of Bellator and in January 2013, all Bellator events began airing on Spike TV. Bellator produced nearly 25 live events annually until 2015, as well as shoulder programming including fighter features, highlight shows and reality-based programming.
In May 2014, Bellator hosted the company's inaugural pay-per-view event from the Landers Center. The event featured a Bellator Light Heavyweight Tournament Final fight between Rampage Jackson and King Mo, Michael Chandler vs. Will Brooks for the Lightweight Interim World Title, Alexander Shlemenko vs. Tito Ortiz, the Bellator Season 10 Heavyweight Tournament Final between Alexander Volkov vs. Blagoi Ivanov and a feature fight between Ricky Rainey vs. Michael Page.
The word Bellator means "warrior" in Latin.
In the past, Bellator has sporadically featured tournaments, unlike several other MMA promotions. However, in 2015, Bellator President Scott Coker made the decision to drop the 8-man tournament format in favor of smaller tournaments.
Bellator included weight classes from bantamweight (135 pounds) through heavyweight (265 pounds) and tournaments in each weight class were conducted over a three-month period. Each tournament began with the opening round featuring eight fighters in that respective weight class, moved onto the semi-finals and then the finals. For four-man tournaments, only the semi-finals and finals were included. Each tournament was single elimination and there was a one-month break between opening round, semi-finals and finals.
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