Bjorn Rebney on the death of Strikeforce and the competition with the UFC “We’re a pure sports competition and they’re a matchmaking format.”

tombstone_medium_display_imageThe WFA, King of the Cage, Pride, WEC, Elite XC (twice), Affliction, Strikeforce, DREAM (for all intents and purposes). What do all of the aforementioned organizations have in common? Winner, winner chicken dinner – they’re all dead in the ground. Wasted by Dana White and the UFC. What’s the point of even trying to promote a national, let alone global MMA show? It would be easier finding an oasis in an ocean of sand than successfully surviving the MMA promotion business. But yet, they try. Some are smarter than the others, some have novel ideas or twists on the sport. Teams, tournaments, rings, cages, we’ve seen it all.

And they all fall.

Bjorn Rebney knows this. He’s been in the fight business for a long, long time. Stoically, he stood up in the face of these long odds and created Bellator. Now he has Viacom behind him, Spike in the trenches with him, and they plan on making it to the top of the MMA mountain where they will use a Ben Askren takedown to clear up some space for a fortress they can call their own.

We spoke to Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney to discuss the all too familiar fate of MMA organizations, and he brought up the perfect analogy of the WCW/WWF competition in the late 90’s and goes on to tell us his thoughts on the death of Strikeforce.

“I’ve got to think that from a competition perspective that if you’ve got at least two, it gives you an option. Especially when you’ve got two (organizations) that are so different in the terms of their format. We’re a pure sports competition and they’re a matchmaking format. And I’m not going to stand here and I’m not going to stand here and talk about why one is better or one is good but they are very distinct.”