Bellator & Spike TV To Establish Their MMA Brand
Posted on 19 Jun 2012
by MMAScoops.com Staff

Bellator fighters and Spike TV executives recently spoke about the branding of their product and more. Here are the highlights…

Bellator's Michael Chandler on Explaining His Sport: "I call it fighting in the cage because that's the easiest way. I say I do MMA, and people are like, 'Huh? It kind of is our role," he said. "It's an emerging sport, so we have to do it."

Spike TV Senior Vice President of Communications David Schwarz on Spike's Focus: "Our focus moving forward is building stars. We look at the ratings in the past seven years with the UFC, and (Kevin) 'Kimbo Slice' (Ferguson) was the guy who drew the highest ratings. He was a star. That is our job at Spike in the next couple of years: to make these guys household names."

Pat Curran on Attending the MTV Movie Awards: "I'd never seen so many celebrities," Curran said. "Actually, I'd never seen celebrities at all. "We're going to get a lot more viewers," Curran said. "We've got a lot of big things in the works, and Bellator is just growing season by season. It's getting more popular, more viewers and more recognition."

King Mo on Making the Brand Recognizable: "The whole UFC thing, they just think about UFC and Dana White," Lawal said. "They don't think of anything else. It's up to the media to make that die down. If people are going to focus on the sport, you have to have a boxing model, to where our Bellator champion can get an offer from someone in India, and be like, 'We've got the Bellator champion, we've got the UFC champion, (and) we want to see if we can put money together.' Have a purse bid, and the Bellator fights the UFC champion over in India. Like boxing. The WBC champ will fight the WBA champ. (Right now) it's all about promotions, where everybody fights everybody in a small circle. And the fans have watched promotions and promoters and fighters in certain organizations, and not the whole sport."