Here's a new promotional strategy for Bellator MMA: Clone Michael Chandler.
If the smaller fight company ever means to build itself into anything besides an occasional distraction from the UFC, it could use 20 guys just like him.
Chandler reaffirmed his status as Bellator's most valuable player Saturday, getting out to a fast start and then holding off a late charge from Benson Henderson in the pair's gritty and thrilling main event bout.
The split-decision victory at Bellator 165 extended Chandler's second reign as the organization's lightweight champion. It also underscored his rare standing as both a legitimate top-10 fighter and the sort of must-see attraction who can routinely draw attention away from whatever is happening inside the Octagon.
That's significant for Bellator, which too often settles for one or the other.
With the UFC maintaining a stranglehold over MMA's top talent, Bellator typically plays the fringes.
It occasionally manages big ratings by propping up aging former champions on its spectacle-laden senior circuit. For example, take Saturday's surprise signing of 40-year-old Fedor Emelianenko, whom Bellator will pit against UFC washout Matt Mitrione on February 18.
That fight might do decent numbers on cable TV, but with the once-great former Pride champ deep into a decline, the appeal will be purely nostalgic.
Meanwhile, Bellator's actual champions—guys like Douglas Lima, Eduardo Dantas and Daniel Straus—don't do much to move the needle.
Chandler is the extraordinary exception. He serves simultaneously as one of the best fighters in the world and one of Bellator's few recognizable faces.
Since making his bones in a fight-of-the-year-caliber brawl against Eddie Alvarez in 2011, Chandler has been regarded as a must-see lightweight. It's a common lament among fans, in fact, that the 30-year-old former University of Missouri wrestler is marooned in Bellator instead of joining the shark tank of the UFC's 155-pound division.
Part of Chandler's appeal might have cooled slightly when he lost three fights in a row between November 2013-November 2014, but he has since won four in a row.
If his status as appointment viewing had been diminished by that rough stretch—which included a loss to Alvarez and back-to-back defeats by Will Brooks—Chandler's performance against Henderson should have rehabilitated it.
Running opposite the dial from the lackluster main event of UFC Fight Night 101, which saw Ryan Bader score a third-round TKO over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Chandler and Henderson put on a show. Their fight was so good it made you feel bad for those poor souls who failed to turn the channel.
Chandler came out of his corner in high gear, flooring Henderson multiple times with punches in the first round before threatening with several tight guillotine choke attempts. Somehow, Henderson weathered them all, emphasizing his own place as one of MMA's most durable and difficult outs.
While we're on the topic of Henderson's outlandish survival skills, Chandler also did this to him:
Suplex City #Bellator165 pic.twitter.com/22oyF9FYvL
— Bellator MMA (@BellatorMMA) November 20, 2016
Henderson battled back, and the pair traded the advantage through the fight's middle rounds. Henderson opened a large gash over Chandler's right eye and continually scored with his trademark hard kicks to the body.
In the fifth, it seemed like Henderson's cardio might win the day over an obviously exhausted Chandler. Somehow, though, the champion survived to the bell and scored the split verdict on the judges' scorecards (48-46, 46-48, 48-47).
"I think it came down to that first round I dominated," Chandler told Bellator color commentator Jimmy Smith in the cage when it was over. "Hey man, you can't be perfect in here, you just have to find a way to win. That's what I did."
For Henderson, the loss continued an unexpectedly rocky road since the former UFC champion crossed the aisle from the Octagon during the spring of 2016. He's now just 1-2 after three fights in Bellator, including a lopsided decision loss to then-welterweight champion Andrey Koreshkov in Henderson's promotional debut.
His only victory in the Bellator cage so far came in August, when opponent Patricio Freire suffered a second-round leg injury.
The Chandler fight marked arguably the first time since coming to Bellator that Henderson has been able to put his entire remarkable skill set on display.
During his time atop the UFC lightweight division during 2012-13, he made a name for himself as a talented but sometimes infuriating fighter who specialized in eking out close decision wins. This fight certainly followed that pattern, but it also showcased Henderson's well-rounded game, his boundless conditioning and his unwillingness to concede his opponent even the slightest advantage.
Henderson's ability to survive a nearly disastrous first round was impressive, but so was his capacity to constantly make Chandler work. Even when Chandler found himself in dominant position, Henderson never stopped moving, trying to improve his position and forcing Chandler to keep pace.
That strategy nearly turned the tide in the late stages of the fight. You got the impression if the five-round affair would've gone on any longer, Henderson might well have won it.
Because of both men's masterful performances, it would be easy now—and perhaps smart—to book Chandler and Henderson an immediate rematch. There would be nothing wrong with seeing five more rounds between this pairing, if they resembled the first 25 minutes.
But therein lies Bellator's eternal problem: It can't actually clone Michael Chandler.
There is only one Chandler—and only one Henderson—and both guys need compelling matchups to be worth anything in MMA's crowded programming landscape.
With both Alvarez and Brooks now gone to the UFC, the Bellator lightweight division offers seemingly fewer bankable options than ever. During the lead-up to this fight, even Henderson talked openly about feeling his career beginning to wind down.
After the outcome of this fight was announced, Chandler called out former Strikeforce champ and UFC veteran Josh Thomson. That was a shrewd move, but Thomson is himself 38 years old and—though he's now 2-0 since signing with Bellator in fall 2015—he's taking his career one fight at a time.
As the one guy who shows no sign of leaving and no sign of slowing, it all makes Chandler Bellator's most precious commodity.
It also might leave him in a tight spot as the last man standing in a rapidly thinning division.
At least until Bellator figures a way to have Chandler fight himself.
