Spike executive, Bellator fighters on Bellator 149, Kimbo vs. Dada 5000

Sharing the podium with Emmanuel Sanchez following Bellator 149, Spike executive John Slusser assured the Bellator featherweight he had just been seen by a lot of people.

“We won’t know the ratings until this week, but based on social media, probably it will be our biggest (event),” Slusser said at Houston’s Toyota Center, which hosted Friday’s Spike-televised event.

Time will tell whether Slusser’s prediction is true since cable TV ratings take a little longer than those on networks. It was impossible, however, to deny the attention the event attracted. At one point, Bellator 149 was trending worldwide at the top of Twitter. From the start of former Strikeforce chief Scott Coker’s tenure with the Viacom-owned promotion, the goal was to attract new fans with old stars to showcase the sport’s next generation.

That the attention on Bellator 149 was largely not directed toward Sanchez, but at mocking
the co-headliner between Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson (6-2 MMA, 2-0 BMMA) and Dhafir “Dada 5000” Harris (2-1 MMA, 0-1 BMMA), probably wasn’t what Coker and Slusser intended when they sat cageside. But in the end, they, like anyone trying to catch eyeballs in the fickle entertainment business, gambled on the talent and had to live with the results.

“Well, we want to entertain fans and get viewers, but we let Scott and his team come up with the fights, and we broadcast them,” Slusser said when asked if Friday’s event was what Spike had in mind when they turned on the cameras. “And we do a good job broadcasting them, and we’re excited to do it, but at the end of the day, we let him put on the product, and we put it on TV.”

Strong reaction from longtime MMA fans and observers to the spectacle was to be expected, given the gap between the promotional hype and the reality of what happened. There was a lot of finger-wagging at Bellator’s attempt, and a little bit of introspection among those who partook.

In the end, Slice vs. 5000 will go down more as a punchline than a warm and fuzzy combat memory. Watching Slice, one of the biggest draws ever to walk into the cage, fight hypoxia along with Harris was, at times, hilarious. But it got even the seasoned MMA vets in the crowd to care.

“I was entertained,” said Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal (16-4 MMA, 8-3 BMMA), who attended the event’s press conference to promote his Bellator 154 headliner opposite Phil Davis (15-3 MMA, 2-0 BMMA). “I was laughing, crying sometimes, shaking my head, pumping my fist – it had everything. I went through every emotion. It was like a roller coaster.”

Josh Thomson (22-8 MMA, 2-0 BMMA), a high-profile addition to Bellator’s roster after a brush with title contention in his second UFC stint, said that whatever one thought about the action in the cage, or lack thereof, you couldn’t deny you felt something.

And wasn’t that the point, however temporary that feeling?

“I think there were a lot of expectations tonight of what it was going to be, and as you can tell, and I think lived up to the expectations more than what it was going to be,” he said. “People were saying it was going to be done in the first round. But guess what, it was probably one of the most exciting up and down fights I’ve ever seen. It’s an emotional thing, but it’s exciting as well to see these guys go out there and do it again.”

And for more on Bellator 149, check out the MMA Events section of the site.