Over the course of its history, Bellator MMA has always excelled at bringing in exciting, inexperienced talents and giving them every opportunity to blossom into stars.
Rather than throwing their prized prospects into dangerous matchups right out of the chute, the promotion has identified the best of the bunch and brought them along incrementally, dropping them into favorable pairings designed to bolster their resumes and increase their exposure to the wider MMA audience.
As the highlight reel of performances pile up and wins get stacked, the buzz surrounding those athletes build and the interest in seeing them step into the cage continues to get greater. After a couple years of coddling and being booked into prime positions against sub-prime competition, a battle-tested veteran or two gets thrown into the mix to satisfy the calls to start testing these “promotional favorites,” but it’s a bit of a Catch-22 for the San Jose-based fight promotion.
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If the prospect loses, not only does the company lose a potential contender, who has been groomed to be a top of the marquee talent, but other athletes who are being guided down the same path also get forced under the microscope to have their own careers re-examined to no fault of their own. If one of them loses, all of them lose a little by extension because the entire approach gets called into question.
But if the winning continues, the progression up the competitive ladder had to as well, and while that’s ultimately what every competitor and fan wants to see, it’s still a tricky road to travel for Bellator.
The trouble with grooming fighters to be contenders and bringing them along a path like this is that whenever they stumble — and they will stumble — there is automatically going to be a segment of the audience ready to say they were overrated and all hype as soon as that first loss comes. It doesn’t matter if it happens against a former champion or a perennial contender — the first loss will always be an indication that these athletes couldn’t quite hack it against real competition, even if they have a quality showing or have beaten solid opponents in the past.
Perhaps the only way a loss isn’t accompanied by blowback for how the competitors were brought along is if it comes in a championship bout because no matter how safe a road these athletes traveled early in their careers, you can’t make it to a title fight without taking out some talented opposition and if the only person capable of beating them is the best fighter in the division, that’s understandable.
Two competitors who stand as prime examples of the way Bellator likes to bring along prospects are poised to step into the cage this weekend in suburban Chicago to face the toughest tests of their respective careers, as unbeaten featherweight prospect A.J. McKee takes on former champion Pat Curran, while Michael “Venom” Page squares off with two-time former titleholder Douglas Lima in the first Welterweight Grand Prix semifinal.
While there have been others who have garnered more time in the spotlight and a more accelerated push, McKee is the best example of a fighter being brought through the Bellator system.
All 13 of his professional bouts have taken place under the Bellator MMA banner and the 24-year-old second-generation fighter has won them all, but by the time he ran that winning streak to double digits, fans and media started wanting to see “The Mercenary” get tested in a more meaningful way.
After originally being scheduled to meet at Bellator 205, McKee will finally get his first true litmus test this weekend when he steps in with Curran, one of the longest tenured fighters on the roster and easily the most seasoned opponent he has faced to date. Entering on a three-fight winning streak and sporting a 23-7 record overall, the 31-year-old Curran has been a fixture at the top of the featherweight division since 2011 and is the only man on the roster to hold wins over both Patricio Freire and Daniel Straus, the other two staples in the title chase over that time.
Even though this is undeniably the biggest test of McKee’s career, it’s far from a perfect matchup in terms of showing just how good the Body Shop Fitness representative is and where he stands in the 145-pound hierarchy, as Curran has been out of action for over 18 months.
Undefeated. 80% finish rate.
— Bellator MMA (@BellatorMMA) May 6, 2019
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No matter what happens, Curran’s inactivity over the last year-and-a-half is bound to get called into question, as either McKee’s biggest win comes against a rusty ex-champion or he is handed his first professional loss by a guy who has been on the sidelines since October 2017. While there is certainly much more to it than that, examining the finer details and great context of situations isn’t exactly a hallmark of the MMA community.
Page’s co-main event showdown with Lima is an even bigger “make or break” moment as the British kickboxer has been the poster child for being showcased to the point of feeling like he’s being protected and enters this contest coming off a tepid performance in what was billed as a bitter rivalry that was going to be settled explosively inside the cage.
The 32-year-old welterweight is a prime example of how Bellator’s approach to things can go wrong when its left too long.
Page was one of the most hyped and talked-about emerging talents in the 170-pound weight class following his ridiculous knockout win over Evangelista Santos, but in the nearly three years since that viral victory, “MVP” has fought only three times, resulting in a split decision win over shopworn veteran Fernando Gonzalez and a lopsided effort against David Rickels, a Bellator mainstay who is more of a gatekeeper than a genuine contender.
He was supposed to get his first real test last time out when he finally shared the cage with Paul Daley after years of bickering and circling one another, but despite all the hype and all the tough talk about how they were going to knock each other out, the all-British affair at Bellator 216 turned into a bad grappling contest, with Page collecting 48-47 scores from all three judges to earn a unanimous decision win.
While the bout with Daley didn’t turn out to be the litmus test most were anticipating, this weekend’s semifinal fight with Lima will be a trial by fire, as the Brazilian-born, Georgia-based former titleholder is one of the top welterweights in the world and hell-bent on becoming a three-time champion. Brandishing quick hands, good power, punishing kicks and a sneaky submission game, the 31-year-old “Phenom” is 18-3 over the last decade and 12-3 inside the Bellator cage, with the majority of those bouts coming against top flight competition.
This is an even bigger fight for Page and the promotion than McKee’s matchup against Curran because while McKee is 24 and has tons of time to regroup if he catches a loss at Allstate Arena on Saturday night, “MVP” is at the point where he’s either going to prove himself to be a legitimate contender or get knocked back to the fringes of contention. And it’s difficult to discern whether fans will be all that interested or invested in watching him work his way back into the mix following five years of grooming and the anticlimactic showdown with Daley.
More than McKee, Page needs to prove he’s capable of hanging with an elite talent like Lima or else all the hype, buzz and energy that was invested into telling fans that the flamboyant, charismatic striker from London was a serious threat will get turned against the fighter and the promotion — even though losing to a standout like Lima is ultimately not that serious of a demerit.
MORE: Join DAZN and watch more than 100 fight nights a yearAfter years of stacking up victories and being brought along slowly, McKee and Page are finally getting the dangerous matchups everyone has wanted to see them receive for some time.
These are crucial contests that could serve as a referendum on how Bellator MMA brings along potential stars if things break bad for both McKee and Page, but are sure to tell fans a great deal about where each man stands in their respective divisions regardless of how things shake out on Saturday.