(Well, well, well…)

Spike TV will become the new home for Bellator starting in 2013. According to a new USA Today report, Viacom — the parent company of MTV Networks — has purchased a majority stake in Bellator Fighting Championships, signaling the official end to their six-year relationship with the UFC.

CEO Bjorn Rebney will remain in charge of Bellator. Speaking about the Viacom deal with USA Today, he said: “It puts all of those cornerstones of ownership in place for us, which is something that’s been so seriously lacking in the MMA space with so many different companies, including Strikeforce and the IFL and Affliction and all the different failures that have occurred…It alleviates those issues…It’s a very, very good day for mixed martial arts as a whole, because now you have two groups in the space that have a very substantial presence that obviously isn’t going to go anywhere for a very, very long time.”

Bellator Fighting Championships announced today that lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez (22-2) has suffered an undisclosed injury and has been forced to pull out of an October 15 title bout with undefeated Season 4 lightweight tournament winner Michael Chandler (8-0) that was slated for Bellator 54 at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J.

In spite of the setback, Bellator chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney is optimistic that Alvarez will defend his belt in the fall, but wouldn’t say whether or not Chandler will wait for the champ to heal.

(“Publicity stunt, you say? What’s that?”)

Apparently Renato “Babalu” Sobral is a free agent. Otherwise, Bellator wouldn’t be talking to the former UFC light heavyweight contender about possibly facing its middleweight champ, Hector Lombard.

According to Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney, his promotion has been involved in talks with Sobral’s camp to sign the 36-9  submission specialist for a non-title bout with Lombard (30-2-1, 1 NC) at Bellator 58 on November 19, but nothing is set in stone. Strangely, the promoter still announced that the bout was in the works, which could simply be a tactic to pressure Babalu, who has only fought twice in the past two years, into signing on the dotted line.

“I’ve been a big ‘Babalu’ fan for a lot of years,” Rebney told MMAJunkie. “They weren’t really on our radar, but then they reached out to us and opened the door and asked for a few things. We agreed to all of them. … But now we’re siting back and waiting. We haven’t heard anything back from them in three or four days.”

Bellator is really stepping up their game with these promo videos. VidProps: BellatorMMA/YouTube

Well this is interesting: following in the pioneering steps of the UFC, Bellator is announcing that they will begin streaming the undercard fights on the series of tubes known as the internet.

That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is who they’re partnering with: Spike. Yep, those guys.

According to a press release sent to the CagePotato Desk for Serious Journalism, You Guys (not actually a real place), the undercard fights will go live on Spike.com at 7pm ET as a lead-in for the main card broadcasts on MTV2 starting at 9pm. As we reported last week, the main cards will also be broadcast in HD on EPIX, which we personally confirmed is a extant channel that wasn’t made up by some Viacom dude with a stupid-long job title.

The press release included a quote from some Viacom dude (Executive Vice President, Digital Entertainment, MTV Networks Entertainment Group), a guy by the name of Erik Flannigan:

“Fight fans have been coming to our site for years for great mixed martial arts clips and information,” said Flannigan. “Now we are thrilled to provide them with action-packed live fighting each week.”

Here’s another highlight from Karma’s Big Adventure at Bellator 48 — an 11-minute gab session with the boss himself, Bjorn Rebney. After telling us that he reads and likes CagePotato (!?), Rebney discusses the upcoming production improvements for future Bellator broadcasts, the state of women’s MMA in Bellator, the promotion’s relationship with MTV2, the ways that Bellator develops fighters, and more. Also, Jeff plugs our Proving Ground promotion, and vows to become the Bundini Brown of women’s MMA. More to come…

“…and I also understand that he always takes a penny, and never leaves one. He once killed a puppy with a kitten. He wears black all the time. He’s a malefactor, a villain. I don’t really know him from Adam, but f*ck that guy.”

Mark Pavelich, the owner/CEO/Gran High Poo-bah of Maximum Fighting Championships, is not the kind of guy who holds back his feelings. He’s an expressive, gregarious type who uses Twitter like he was getting bonuses for followers, and describing him as “outspoken” would be like saying Amy Winehouse liked to get high.* And right now, he’s feeling pretty pissed off at the Son of Winnebago Man.

It seems that recent moves by Bellator, particularly acquiring top MFC talents Douglas Lima and Ryan Ford, has worked the Pav’s nerves to the point that he had to go on Twitter to air his grievances, and then follow that up with an interview so he make sure that everyone understood the words that were coming out of his mouth. Pavelich insists that Bellator has signed unspecified fighters that are currently under contract with MFC, and Bjorn is an idiot. Furthermore, Pavelich doesn’t even know who this Bjorn guy is.

You know how you go on a date with someone, and they talk for two hours about their ex?  Yeah, it’s like that.

Well this is interesting.  MMAJunkie is reporting that Bjorn Rebney has confirmed talks with Marquardt and his management, but that there is no deal in place.  With all the speculation and assumptions and begging and threats and promises and retorts that have been going around, it seemed like Nate the Great was headed to the BFC to lock horns with at least one of their champions.

So what happened?  Let’s hear it from the man in black himself:

“Nate’s situation was pretty unique. It’s an anomaly for a guy like that to become available, so we had discussions. But it just became pretty clear it wasn’t the right fit.”

Wait, so, a week ago, Bellator was interested, but now, it’s just doesn’t feel right?

Very interesting, indeed.  Let us read in between the lines for a bit, if we may.

“So then I said to Dana, I said, ‘Look, big guy, you take that check, and you roll it up real tight…’”

With the UFC’s current deal with BFF network Spike set to run out at the end of the year, Zuffa has been looking at other options on television, including buying a stake in cable network G4. It’s been fertile ground for all manner of rumors, but one piece of speculation that kept popping up was that Zuffa may be looking at buying Bellator Fighting Championships. This is not really a new idea, and it’s understandable given Zuffa’s demonstrated willingness to swallow its competition, but it ain’t happening.

Sure, Zuffa has pockets deep enough to write a check for the young up and coming promotion, but would they actually be interested in doing so? What would such an acquisition do for the UFC? Could they convert Bellator’s circular steel to Zuffa’s angular cage? Do they need Bjorn Rebney to come up and teach the finer points of running tournaments? Are guys like Eddie Alvarez, Ben Askren, Joe Warren, and Hector Lombard valuable enough to justify a takeover?

Well, short answer: no. Everyone knows that you can’t octagon a circle, so Zuffa would likely have a handful of round cages with nothing to do with them. Who wants a cage that doesn’t reflect your company’s logo? Come on, people, that’s just elementary.

Come on in past the jump and we’ll lay out our case, woefully uninformed though it may be, as to why Zuffa will not be buying Bellator anytime in the near future. We’ll even open up the floor for comments, if you jerks think you know better than we do. Just remember, if you make us look silly, we’re completely capable of doing humorous things to your log-ins, like adding links to diaper fetish sites and penis pump vendors. You’ve been warned.

(“Yes, I want to be a f*cking fighter.” PicProps MMAMania)

Bellator Fighting Championships announced today that on June 18 it will be holding open tryouts for undiscovered professional fighters who want to earn a slot on one of the Chicago, Illinois-based promotions’s future cards.

The tryouts will take place at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida on Saturday, June 18th. Registration begins at 1:00 p.m.ET and tryouts begin at 2:00 p.m. ET.

According to the release, Bellator is planning on putting fighters who make it through the tryouts on its future local regional cards starting with Bellator 50, which takes place on September 17 at the same venue as the tryouts. Extra consideration will be given to Florida-based fighters for that card. Non-Florida-based fighters are still encouraged to try out and will be scouted for other potential future roster openings.

(“Give me your fired, your poor, your troubled Diazes yearning for THC, blacklisted fighters you don’t want any more…”)

When the news dropped last month that the UFC had bought Strikeforce, one of the least talked about stories was where would the move leave Strikeforce’s contracted female fighters, should Zuffa decide to cease promoting women’s MMA. UFC president Dana White has long been a vocal opponent of having women fight for him as there aren’t, in his opinion, enough top female fighters to make it a worthwhile endeavor.

In spite of White’s proclamation that both companies would be running “business as usual,” after the purchase, there have already been a significant number of changes to the company that have fans, fighters and pundits are left wondering if Strikeforce’s fighting females have a secure future with their new employer.

Propelled by the impressive viewership of his promotion’s first three events of season four on MTV2, Bellator Fighting Championships CEO Bjorn Rebney revealed to CagePotato.com yesterday that plans are currently underway to take his show on the road to Canada some time before the end of 2011.

“Earlier today I had a 45-minute conversation with the group that we work with who distribute Bellator programming up in Canada, The Score, about a collection of different venues, sites and dates that we’re going after to try to bring Bellator Fighting Championships to some time in the near future,” Rebney says.

(Rebney’s thinning patience with Coker showed in this recent Twitter posting.)

By CagePotato contributor S.C. Michaelson

CHICAGO — With the recent announcement from Strikeforce that it will put on a 2011 heavyweight grand prix tournament, the MMA community has been abuzz with excitement and intrigue. Many analysts predict that a successful tournament could be the catalyst to Strikeforce becoming more of a major player in today’s market. However, not everyone is as excited about the prospect of the proposed tournament — enter Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney.

"Tournament schmurnament," spat Rebney. "Hello, does anybody remember what Bellator is? Our whole company is based around tournaments. Hell, we just had a heavyweight tournament last year!"

("My biggest regret? Not springing for caller ID. Next question …" PicProps: GalsGuidetoMMA)

Over the weekend, we brought you news that Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney was pursuing the very questionable strategy of trying to publicly shame Strikeforce into a promotional partnership with his lesser-known MMA company. After Rebney went to the media with his claims that Strikeforce jefe Scott Coker was ignoring his text messages about a potential cross-brand superfight between Gilbert Melendez and Eddie Alvarez (and Coker denied it, also to the press … so, you see where this is headed …) Bellator published some gloomy, Loch Ness Monster-style photographs of four messages Rebney allegedly sent somebody he had saved in his phone as “Scot Coker Mobile.” Yeah, it was all pretty hilarious in a slapstick, will-you-lookit-what-these-idiots-are-up-to-now kind of a way and the lolz just increased exponentially when later that same day Strikeforce confirmed that Rebney had been sending his texts to Coker’s old number.

Once we were all done shouting, “Smooth fuckin’ move, Bjorn!” in unison, we began to wonder aloud: How exactly would the boss of America’s second largest MMA promotion look upon the revelation that his potential new business partners would so readily try to out him as liar to the public … and even fumble around and fuck that up? As it turns out, not favorably. Coker told Bloody Elbow this week in his ever understated way that he has “concerns” about how Bellator handled this. If we had to guess about specifics, we’d wager the major concern is that Bjorn Rebney made himself look like a backbiting no-account who texts like my mom when she’s trying guilt trip me into calling her back about Sunday dinner. But maybe it’s best if we let Coker tell it in his own words.

(Step one of trying to create a strategic partnership with another organization: Publicly claim CEO of other organization is a goddamned liar. That’s some Dale Carnegie shit, right there. PicProps: Connect.in.com)

We’ve got a classic (and totally stupid) media gambit on our hands here between Bellator honcho Bjorn Rebney and Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker. Ever since Bellator decided that one of its primary corporate strategies would be to continually repeat the dubious claim that Eddie Alvarez is the No.1 lightweight fighter in the world, it’s been publicly pushing for a co-promotional, company vs. company show with Strikeforce. Rebney took the idea to the MMA media, saying he’d “love” for the two promotions to double-up on a pay-per-view effort featuring a bevy of cross-brand championship matches, but that Coker wasn’t calling him back about it. In response, Coker – who’s always down for totally mishandling a public relations opportunity – went on Sherdog Radio this week to say he too was interested, but denied he’d ever heard from Rebney and accused Bellator of pulling a PR stunt. Naturally, Bellator’s next move was to release what it alleges are a bunch of Rebney’s text messages to Coker. Ruh-roh.

It’s pretty easy to imagine someone in the Bellator office pumping their fist and yelling out, “Checkmate, motherfucker!” as they hit “send” on this particular email, which reportedly contained four fairly low-quality snapshots of Rebney’s texts. The images are after the jump, of course. If you squint, you can even kind of read them.

(The little guy may look sweet, but he bit a toddler’s face at a birthday party later that day. Wasn’t the first time that Pavia’s done that, either.)

Prominent MMA agent Ken Pavia — whose client roster includes such well-known fighters as Martin Kampmann, Chris Lytle, Anthony Johnson, and Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos — is in serious hot water with the UFC. As first reported by Yahoo!’s Kevin Iole, Zuffa LLC has filed a suit alleging that Pavia passed along trade secrets and confidential Zuffa documents to upstart MMA promotion Bellator, which used the documents to help run its business. Bellator is named as a co-defendent in the suit, as well as other unnamed individuals and corporations that Zuffa alleges participated in breach of contract. From the Yahoo! piece:

According to the suit, filed Wednesday in Clark County District Court, Pavia delivered confidential contracts, including fighter agreements, to Bellator after being asked to do so in a July 4 email to him from Bellator founder Bjorn Rebney…

An email which Zuffa’s lawsuit alleges is from Rebney to Pavia on July 4 was attached as an exhibit to the 16-page suit. In it, Rebney writes, ” … You’ve been great about sending us ‘All’ of the seminal docs from the UFC, so that we can re-do them and implement them for Bellator.”

(Warning: Audio is very NSFW. And absolutely hilarious.)

Oh my God, you guys. MiddleEasy has confirmed that Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney is actually the son of Jack "Winnebago Man" Rebney, star of one of the first (and most beloved) viral videos of all time. In case you’ve never been introduced to the wonders of Winnebago Man, watch the above video and allow BusinessInsider to explain:

In August 1988, Winnebago Industries hired a video crew to shoot two 10-minute long sales videos. They tapped salesman Jack Rebney, a former broadcast news producer, to star in these commercials. They shot the videos in Forest City, Iowa – the headquarters of Winnebago Industries. Just like any other video shoot, outtakes and mistakes were to be expected, but no one could have anticipated Jack Rebney’s melt down. The RV salesman would constantly yell and curse at himself, his crew, and at the flies that were swarming him.

After the grueling two week shoot, Winnebago Industries got their commercial, but the video crew got so much more. They spliced together the outtakes of the shoot and circulated the video amongst themselves and their friends. Basically, the "Winnebago Man" was passed around on VHS tapes for around 15 years before being posted on YouTube for the world to see.

Jack Rebney currently lives in a cabin in a Northern California forest, and he’s now the subject of a new documentary about the Winnebago Man phenomenon. Until recently, he was completely unaware of his Internet notoriety. Anyway, we just wanted to share our surprise and excitement that Winnebago Man has a connection to the world of MMA. That’s your dad, Bjorn. That’s your dad.

Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney on the Philosophy of the Tournament St – Watch more Funny Videos

Here are some more exclusive videos shot last night in Hollywood, Florida, by our contributor Justin Fielder, who was able to get some time with all of the notable faces and names following Bellator XIII. First up, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney discusses how his league’s tournament format allows fighters to control their own destiny more than the traditional "matchmaking" format of most MMA promotions and boxing. He also tells us about the significance of Bellator’s superfights, and how they’ll fit into future shows.

Bellator 13 – Joe Warren – Post-Fight - Watch more Funny Videos

Joe Warren says he’s not happy with his performance against Eric Marriott, and runs down the scary submission attempts he had to survive en route to a unanimous decision victory. He also explains the differences between Japanese crowds and their louder, drunker American counterparts.

Lots more after the jump…

(Toby Imada’s infamous flying inverse triangle choke of Jorge Masvidal at Bellator 5.)

Bellator MMA make a dramatic arrival earlier this year with a weekly ESPN Deportes series and a memorable string of viral videos on YouTube. But the league lost some momentum during the long negotiations for a new broadcast partner, and its fighters have struggled to find work. The good news is, the wait was worth it. This morning, Bellator announced an unprecedented three-part network deal that will put their product in over 100 million homes.

Bellator’s second season will launch April 8th, 2010, with 12 weekly live events that will air Thursday nights on FOX Sports Net and its regional sports network affiliates (reach: 82 million homes). Every subsequent Saturday night, a 30-minute highlight show will be broadcast on NBC (112 million homes), and an hour-long package will air on Telemundo (62 million homes). The deal also includes a third 12-week season that is slated to begin on August 12th. Both seasons are expected to follow the multi-tournament format established in Bellator’s first season, which crowned Joe Soto, Eddie Alvarez, Lyman Good and Hector Lombard the promotion’s champions.

(238,000 views and counting.  Not bad.)

We’ll admit it, when we first heard about Bellator, a tournament-oriented MMA organization airing to a Spanish-language audience on ESPN Deportes, we were skeptical.  But two straight weeks of viral video hits thanks to some exciting finishes piqued our curiosity, and we decided to talk with Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney to try and figure out what this thing is all about.

CagePotato.com: You guys have had a couple good weeks on the internet with Toby Imada’s submission and then the spinning backfist KO.  That stuff makes for good viral video, but is it just a couple lucky outcomes or do you chalk it up to good planning and matchmaking?

I don’t think you can ever plan for what happened with Toby Imada and I don’t think you can ever plan for what happened with Yahir Reyes.  What I do think is this: the tournament structure, and the ability of our fighters to make their own way and determine what they make, with the overall amount being quite high, it generates a willingness on the fighters’ parts to take some risks that they might not otherwise take.  We may just be incredibly lucky to have found some amazing fighters who did amazing things the last couple of weeks, but it’s played out beautifully for us.