You Want Undisputed Contenders? Take Notes From Bellator

November 12, 1993—not only was it the night that Mixed Martial Arts was introduced to the wide world of sports, but it's also the night that many MMA fighters remember as the night they found their life's true calling.

Of course, the UFC was different back when it first started.

See, back in the early days, guys like Mark Coleman, Don Frye, Royce Gracie, and others would fight in a way similar to what you and I see now—with the brutal knockout punches, the devastating kicks, and the excruciating submission holds— besides the fact that few of the fights went to a decision or a draw, one other factor about the early UFC events stands out in today's age.

Sixteen of the first seventeen UFC events in the promotion's history were in some way structured in a tournament format.

"Win and move forward, lose and you're out."

That's how the tournaments went down, and as time went on, the " superfight " would emerge as well.

The format started to fall out by UFC 18 and wasn't brought up again until UFC 23, when a four-man tournament was held to crown a UFC Japan Champion. UFC Japan would ha ve been a promotion all its own, but the idea was scrapped eventually.

I belie ve the fact that PRIDE FC and K-1 were rising in popularity at the time, as well as the criticism that MMA was a "form of human cockfighting" may ha ve had something to do with the idea of UFC Japan, and the UFC's tournament format, being scrapped altogether.

Organizations like PRIDE and K-1 had tournaments, "grand prix" events as they are known, in about the same structure as the UFC had their tournaments.

K-1 still does, and Sengoku has had a few grand prix tournaments as well.

Today, to keep things fresh in stateside MMA , you ha ve the tournaments of Bellator Fighting Championships, an underrated MMA promotion whose headquarters are housed in both Chicago and Los Angeles, and contains the likes of Roger Huerta, lightweight sensation Eddie Alvarez, middleweight knockout ace Hector " Shango " Lombard, and an undefeated 23-year-old featherweight machine named Joe Soto.

Last year's Bellator season had four tournaments— a welterweight tournament, a featherweight tournament, a middleweight tournament, and a lightweight tournament.

The purpose of the tournaments were two-pronged—t he promotion wanted to showcase the fighters on their roster, which blended up-and-comers with some established veterans, and they wanted to present a unique format for deciding legitimate contenders.

Though some decisions were seen as controversial, I say they' ve done a good job of allowing the MMA fans of the world — including the casual fans of the sport — to see a newer way of deciding contenders.

The Bellator way of putting on a solid event last season was having two-to-three quarter-final fights on a card, with the winners moving on to the semi-finals, and then the two semi-finalists met in the finals near the end of the season.

This season, the method hasn't changed too notably, other than the fact that Bellator 16 was devoted to all four middleweight quarter-finals.

In addition to featuring at least one tournament fight in a division on a card for the quarter-finals, Bellator has managed to not only acquire Roger Huerta, but also feature three of their current champions in superfights that ha ve proven exactly why Soto, Shango , and Alvarez won the inaugural season of Bellator FC.

Lyman Good may do the same thing against the winner of the Bellator Welterweight tournament, regardless of whether the winner is Ben Askren or Dan Hornbuckle .

Again, this tournament structure provides fight fans of all degrees with a newer way of watching a fighter become a top contender, but  it also allows the fans to see the road that a fighter has taken in order to earn a shot at the champ in their division.

In turn, the path one fighter takes to the Bellator finals makes the contender status hard to dispute.

Nowadays, it seems that "dispute" is something you can do fairly easily when someone mentions some of the recent UFC title contenders, sans Frank Mir and possibly Frankie Edgar.

People thought Dan Hardy would gi ve Georges St-Pierre trouble at UFC 111, and while he showed heart while being caught in both a kimura and an armbar before the final seconds of round fi ve , very little of Hardy's game plan that night showed any indication of him truly deserving the fight in the first place.

Demian Maia showed the same heart as Hardy, as well as a key difference in his UFC 112 debacle that we all ha ve to call a title shot against Anderson Silva.

He withstood Silva's shots, his eye swelled up, and his nose could have broken if Silva has pinpointed one more strike, but Maia still managed to bring it to Silva in round fi ve .

In the end, Demian's fifth-round comeback was the only argument one could make to say that he was, at the very least, a decent replacement for Vitor Belfort .

Throw in some past title contenders if you wish, because there are quite a few guys in the UFC who many people feel got a shot before they were ready, even if the manner in which they did it proved that they earned their shot at a belt.

Strikeforce isn't immune to the criticism of their titleholders' contenders either.

U.S. fans of MMA who ha ve yet to catch up on or hear of DREAM may ha ve looked at Strikeforce's three events prior to St. Louis — Nashville, Miami, and Evolution — as events where at least one established fighter overcame the challenge of an over-hyped opponent.

Not to discredit Shinya Aoki, but I think he should have taken a fight or two against the best Strikeforce can offer at lightweight before gunning right for Gilbert Melendez.

Same with Marius Zaromskis against Nick Diaz — Zaromskis hadn't been introduced to hardcore Strikeforce -only fans until he fought Diaz .

UFC and Strikeforce officials involved in the matchmaking behind each respective   company are often criticized for the contendership fights they make, either because the fight didn't li ve up to the hype or because the fans feel that one or neither fighter has done anything of consequence to warrant a title shot.

Still, considering that some of those divisions are ruled by a dominant "pound-for-pound" fighter, there's nothing anyone can do about it, right?

Wrong.

Nine times out of ten, the common fight fan—unless hearing or reading about it ahead of time—won't know a fight is for a shot at a title until someone says out loud before the fight that the winner will face the champion.

Even then, the fighters involved can sometimes stake little claim of note to the contendership.

In short, some fights to decide the next challenger to a champ are thrown together because the division is low on credible contenders.

So what can you do from there?

It’s a not-so-complicated answer to a seemingly easy question.

Typically, the right response would be to look at two fighters in a division, and if they can put on x amount of impressive performances, the matchmaker should line them up to fight against one another.

The problem, is that sometimes the fighters get pitted against one another when either both men need a win to get back in the hunt or when people start to say that the champ has cleared out the division.

I’ve had an annoying tendency to cite Dan Hardy vs. Mike Swick at UFC 105 as an example of the latter.

For the former, the contendership fight that’s made because both fighters need to impress to save their jobs and get a shot, I’ll cite Mauricio “Shogun” Rua’s fight with Chuck Liddell at UFC 97.

Not to take anything from the UFC light heavyweight champ, but back when Rashad Evans held the belt, people had the submission loss to Griffin and the third-round KO win over Mark Coleman as arguments that Shogun, despite his youth, was done as a fighter.

Chuck needed this victory in order to reestablish himself as a top dog in a division he helped make famous.

A loss to Rashad Evans isn’t exactly easy to shoo off.

What started out as a fight to regain all relevancy ended with a flying knee and a ticket to the front of the UFC light heavyweight contender’s line.

Did Shogun prove that he deserved the shot with that knee and in his first fight with Lyoto Machida?

Absolutely.

In my mind, though, if Shogun was going to face and beat Machida anyway, it would have been nice if we’d seen Rashad vs. Shogun for a shot at Machida.

Oh well, I guess.

Something tells me Rashad was bound to face Rua anyway.

Still, if Shane Carwin had to more-or-less defend his claim to Brock Lesnar’s belt against Frank Mir, then what would have stopped Shogun from facing Rashad?

It was the same thing with the fight between BJ Penn and Diego Sanchez.

I’m openly one of the people that hoped Diego Sanchez would get a shot at BJ Penn after the fight with Clay Guida, but by my logic of contenders having to defend their claim at another shot at the belt, Diego should have probably faced Kenny Florian in a rematch of their Ultimate Finale 1 encounter before a contender to Penn was signed.

Contrast it with Bellator’s structure. Toby Imada lost his lightweight final to Eddie Alvarez, but even as he was defeated last season, part of Imada had to have been thinking— “That’s my belt you’ve got there, Alvarez”

In the mind of Toby Imada, Toby Imada was the champ, but claims weren’t going to get him to where he was last Thursday when he faced Pat Curran.

Imada had to fight for his right to say that he deserves another go at Alvarez.

He lost in a split decision that may be disputed, but nonetheless, Eddie Alvarez has a definite contender for his belt in Pat Curran.

Now, if a former contender gets beaten by a younger or newer fighter, that’s when you can put him against another fighter who has done the same.

Case in point— Jared Hess.

Hess went four rounds with Hector Lombard in last year’s middleweight final, but ultimately lost due to a Doctor Stoppage.

Like Imada, Hess had to have thought that if the doctors didn’t stop the fight, he could have possibly came back against “Shango."

Why else would he be back in season two?

Hess advanced in the Bellator middleweight tourney to face current finalist Alexander Shlemenko after a second-round guillotine submission on Ryan McGivern. He tried his best to fight off Shlemenko, but after catching Shlemenko’s knee in his face, the knee of Hess very nastily dislocated.

Since Bellator won’t be having another middleweight tournament in season three, and as long as there are four champions in the promotion already, why not have Hess’ first fight back be against possibly a former middleweight contender— or maybe even the guy that comes out on the short end of the stick in the middleweight final?

That way, you’re giving a former title contender a chance to prove that he deserves another crack at the gold— or at least another crack at perhaps another contendership tournament.

It seems like a reasonable plan of action to me that an organization would at least consider something like this for their own structure of determining title contenders while not totally taking Bellator’s idea and claiming it as their own.

No one’s saying they have to totally re-structure their format and do it like Bellator’s done it. With the UFC, it’s a “been there, done that” deal, and with Strikeforce, it’s just not the best thing for the promotion right now.

What I am suggesting, though, is that they look at what Bellator has done to define a certain contender— and if it means re-watching a fight to see how a contender was defined when the majority consensus states that another should be a contender, then so be it.

They see how a fighter became an undisputed contender in Bellator, and then they go to their matchmaker and try to somehow pattern their fights after the tournament structure without actually going by the tournament structure.

All I’m asking is that the brass from the UFC and the brass in Strikeforce take a look at this idea, consider it for a moment, and then just give it a try.

They can put matches together based according to this plan, and there’s a chance that some decisions and some contenders will face some dispute.

But then again— what if the fight provides some undisputed contenders for a belt?

If you want undisputed contenders, I think you know where to look.

I just hope Dana White and Scott Coker find out where that spot is, but I don’t think it’ll be hard to find.

It’s the only spot in the MMA world that’s in the palms of a genius named Bjorn Rebney.