Bellator
Home » MMA »Bellator is a mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company. Based in Santa Monica, California and owned by ViacomCBS, Bellator is the largest MMA competitor to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the United States. The first Bellator event was held in 2009, and there have been 221 more events since that time. Much like the UFC, Bellator began with a tournament format. Originally, there was a single-elimination formatted four or eight person tournament that gave a $100,000 check to the winner as well as a fight against the current Bellator world champion. However, after Bellator was taken over by Scott Coker, the promotion has stopped with the tournament format.
Bellator had mainly aired on ESPN Deportes and MTV 2 until 2013 when it made the switch to Spike TV. After the switch to Spike, Bellator saw its viewership take on a drastic rise. Bellator has even been able to poach some UFC fighters to come over and fight for their promotion. Each Bellator fight consists of three, five-minute rounds with a one-minute rest period between rounds. All world championship fights consist of five, five-minute rounds with one-minute rest periods between each round.
Rankings:
Bantamweight:
Champion: Vacant
- Kyoji Horiguchi
- Leandro Higo
- Shawn Bunch
- Patrick Mix
- Joe Warren
- Ricky Bandejas
- James Gallagher
- Dominic Mazzotta
- Frans Mlambo
- Brian Moore
Featherweight:
Champion: Patricio Freire
- AJ McKee Jr.
- Emmanuel Sanchez
- Darrion Caldwell
- Pedro Carvalho
- Daniel Weichel
- Derek Campos
- Henry Corrales
- Juan Archuleta
- Adam borics
- Georgi Karakhanyan
Lightweight:
Champion: Patricio Freire
- Patricky Freire
- Benson Henderson
- Michael Chandler
- Brent Primus
- Goiti Yamauchi
- Adam Piccolotti
- Brandon Girtz
- Derek Anderson
- Sidney Outlaw
- Tim Wild
Welterweight:
Champion: Douglas Lima
- Jon Fitch
- Rory MacDonald
- Lorenz Larkin
- Andrey Koreshkov
- Michael Page
- Paul Daley
- Logan Storley
- Yaroslav Amosov
- Neiman Gracie
- Peter Queally
Middleweight:
Champion: Rafael Lovato Jr.
- Gregard Mousasi
- Lyoto Machida
- John Salter
- Anatoly Tokov
- Alexander Shlemenko
- Chris Honeycutt
- Costello van Steenis
- Chidi Njokuani
- Fabian Edwards
- Austin Vanderford
Light Heavyweight:
Champion: Ryan Bader
- Vadim Nemkov
- Phil Davis
- Lyoto Machida
- Liam McGeary
- Rafael Carvalho
- Melvin Manhoef
- Muhammed Lawal
- Kent Kauppinen
- Jordan Young
- Alessio Sakara
Heavyweight:
Champion: Ryan Bader
- Cheick Kongo
- Linto Vassell
- Sergei Kharitonov
- Valentin Moldavsky
- Matt Mitrione
- Fedor Emelianenko
- Vitaly Minakov
- Frank Mir
- Javy Ayala
- Roy Nelson