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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Tonight's Bellator 130 event marks the end of an era for the organization, as it's the final weekly Friday night card in their final "season" of events. Starting in 2015, the plan is to run monthly events on Friday nights, with four bigger cards staggered through the year in Saturday night timeslots.
In an interview with MMAJunkie.com earlier this week, Bellator President Scott Coker discussed what's in store with next year's schedule.
"Four times a year, we're going to put on our big tentpole events in big [arenas]," Coker said, adding that they're likely to hit a couple of old Strikeforce haunts in the process. "We'll definitely be back to St. Louis. We'll definitely be in San Jose. We'll definitely come back to San Diego or Orange County [Calif.], whatever venue is available. We'll definitely want to have a stronghold here.
"And we're definitely going to go back to the Mohegan Sun [in Uncasville, Conn.] and a have a stronghold with the Mohegan Sun casino. They have a beautiful there there, and they've been very good to us. We're happy to promote there."
Penick's Analysis: The new look Bellator will have a balancing act to figure out next year. By virtue of the fact that they're running eight or nine fewer events than they have the past few years, fighters aren't going to be fighting nearly as often as they were. That said, they're going to be able to put more relevant fights on each card so that each event on Spike TV has something meaningful. Make those four "tentpole" events stacked with even bigger fights than the monthly events, or at least more of them on one card, and it makes for more of a must-see schedule than anything they've put on the network yet.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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