Bellator HW Grand Prix 2018 announced

http://mmajunkie.com/2017/11/bellator-mma-tournament-world-grand-prix-fedor-emelianenko-chael-sonnen-rampage-jackson-frank-mir

Contestants: Rampage, Fedor, Mitrione, Bader, Sonnen, Mir, Big Country, King Mo.

The Grand Prix will be contested over the whole year with one of these HW fights being booked on each card with the Title fight sometime in December.

noteable abscenses: Bobby Lashley, Kongo, Kharitonov, Ayala

* Edited at 11.10.2017, 8:57 AM ET *

@rappinpapsoda Yeah and that is sort of the problem that "tournament" started Feb 2011 and ended May of 2012. Then an alternate (Daniel Cormier) won the whole thing when Alistair Overeem was signed by the UFC mid tournament.

I know why Bellator did it like this. They hope slapping a Grand prix label on these matches will generate interest. They hope spreading it out across four shows will give then four events with Grand Prix level ratings. The alternate would be a single stacked card with massive ratings for the opening round and that's it. 2017 was a bad year ratings wise for Bellator and they need some gimmick to garner interest and they hope this Grand Prix is it and they will milk it as long as they can. They signed a bunch of High dollar high rankrd UFC level talent but the ratings haven't come with them so this they hope will work.

@bigj

Well, Bellator COULD have avoided this by bringing back the thing that made people tune into their product in the first place in the use of season wide tournaments which would constantly help in the creation of new contenders rather than always relying on UFC free agents. But alas, Coker is not willing to do that because that would actually work.  I liked Coker a lot back in the day and I still think he's does things better than Rebney overall, but my God he has turned Bellator into a giant cluster ****. I remember when Liam McGeary won that Bellator tournament and he became a fighter that had instant credibility overnight by winning that seasonal tournament.  Sure it took forever until he became a number one contender and left Emmanuel Newton waiting for a long time. However, when McGeary won the tournament his name value skyrocketed through all those televised wins and he had enough name recognition to where people would tune in to see him fight. Now I don't think reimplementing the season tournaments would solve all of the problems, as it would be a as good as a band-aid on a dead body. But it would be a starting point.

* Edited at 11.29.2017, 3:50 PM ET *

Hornet, that tournament style is what I loved about them. I miss that.

Bigj, you are correct that the SF one was sort of a failure but i am not really sure on having it in one nigbt can be done anymore. At least in some states.

You don't need it to be done in one night. But it should be only three events total.

Grand Prix Opening Round: 4 fights and two alternat matches
2-3 months later
Grand Prix Semi Finals: 2 Fights
2-3 more months
Grand Prix Finals: Championship Bout (5 Round Fight)

This way all the fighters fight the same day and have the same rest and remain active. There schedule has the winner of Rampage v Chael on the shelf for 4 months before round 1 is even over.

Hornet is right in that Bellator was building talent better with the tournament format. Which definitely had its own problems but seemed to work better than whatever Coker has been trying to do with the circus fights.