I composed this article Saturday night because I didn’t want to get slapped by this daylight saving nonsense this morning. So we get an hour added to our lives for doing absolutely nothing? Is that how the universe works nowadays? Damn, it doesn’t even try anymore. Now that you suddenly have an extra hour to recover from your Saturday night hangover, enjoy this week’s edition of The Sunday Morning Rumor Mill.
- I really wish I wasn’t the bearer of bad news. Bellator has kept me thoroughly entertained since the summer of 2009. However, things with Bellator are starting to ‘hit the fan’. As of this morning, Bellator does not have a television deal to air their season four tournament scheduled for the beginning of 2011. Negotiations with G4 supposedly fell through around the time DirecTV decided to drop the channel from their lineup.
- Each Bellator show costs the organization around $400,000. A fee of $65,000 is paid to NBC (similar to what the IFL did) to broadcast regionally in hopes that NBC will pick up the program for a national time slot. They make roughly around $20,000 from sponsors per show which still leaves them in a substantial hole that gets deeper with every week of Bellator broadcasts.
- The hedge fund investing in Bellator understood they would take a loss when the organization was created, but with season three wrapping up, they are just not happy with the financial results thus far.
- Bjorn Rebney has given away a substantial portion of his share in Bellator away to investors solely for them not to ‘pull the plug’ on Bellator.
- Hence, one of the reasons why Bjorn has been pushing for an Eddie Alvarez vs. Gilbert Melendez fight is to not only garnish interest for Bellator, but if Eddie defeats Gilbert, Bjorn can then use that as leverage for his investors.
- Despite some rumors, Fedor is not fighting on New Year’s Eve. Not a chance.
- There’s a rumor going around that an MMA fighter will make the transition to the WWE in 2011, apparently this guy may be Matt Mitrione.
- Scott Coker is not only trying to assemble Shinya Aoki vs. Gilbert Melendez for Dynamite!! 2010, but Josh Thomson vs. Tatsuya Kawajiri.
- With the new WEC/UFC merger happening, ZUFFA (specifically the UFC) has dropped a lot of ‘dead weight’ on their staff.
- Now that Nick Ring has fully healed from his knee injury as of October, he is in talks with Bellator to return to the organization and is also pushing for a prelim slot on an upcoming UFC show.
- Dave Batista will make his Strikeforce debut in March 2011. Still no word on his opponent, but don’t be surprised if it’s Bobby Lashley and on CBS.
- Earlier this week in an interview with a Canadian news source, Cain Velasquez implied that Josh Koscheck will lose to GSP. A few MMA sites ran with the story and Koscheck confronted Velasquez about the statements. Cain sincerely didn’t know what happened, apologized and all potential beef between the two was squashed at AKA last week.
- Paul Daley has been training submissions for his upcoming Strikeforce fight with Scott Smith. Specifically, leg-locks.
- After the K-1 World GP, Golden Glory is pushing for Gokhan Saki to join Strikeforce and make his debut sometime in March.
