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Again, a Chandler-headlined (and I'm using Chandler because I think he's the closest thing Bellator has to a homegrown star) show maybe does a 0.5 at best on primetime broadcast television (which would be disastrous).
Put Sonnen in with the right opponent in a grudge match, and you might get 2.0 - 3.0. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything Bellator can do to do Kimbo Slice numbers—even if they somehow got St-Pierre (who there's no evident grudge match for—maybe Askren if he turns it up, but he's too awkward a talker to cultivate big numbers).
MacDonald and Mousasi are not stars, and neither are half of the HWGP. Actually, you can probably select 10-15 fighters / retirees outside of the UFC who hold 99% of the North American drawing power. If I had to make an educated guess:
Notice a trend here? They're all "washed up hasbeens," but it doesn't change the fact that they have the biggest name value + drawing power on the worldwide MMA scene, because they all established their names during the boom era and have attained legendary status (regardless of current condition).
- Chael Sonnen
- Ken Shamrock
- Tito Ortiz
- Chuck Liddell
- Randy Couture
- Fedor Emelianenko
- Rampage Jackson
- Wanderlei Silva
- Matt Hughes
- Dan Henderson
- Mirko Cro Cop
- Frank Shamrock
What comes after that though?
Kimbo vs Dada and the corpses of Shamrock and Gracie might've drawn, but anybody who watched those sure as fuck wasn't excited to see what Bellator had next.
That's the problem here, ideally you'd want to use these guys to showcase a plethora of young exciting fighters, but Bellator has 90% of it's money tied up in the aging fighters. Guys who could own a smaller regional org and get by great aren't gonna sacrifice the trade-off to go make $250 and sell tickets for the slight, possible step up in competition.
Hell, Chandler's the best example of a homegrown talent, agreed. Would you say he'd eventually draw good numbers, considering where he's at in his career? I don't think so.
Bellator needs to change it's trajectory, because the idea of using 40 year olds to draw eyes is just gonna convince those eyes you're an organization of over the hill fighters.
They should've focused on throwing money at guys with a future, not guys the UFC was done using.