Being the champion of a mixed martial arts organization such as Bellator comes with the responsibility of representing the organization to the fullest extent. Yet their current bantamweight champion, Eduardo Dantas, accepted a fight on a regional promotion’s show, in an attempt to stay active while he waited for Bellator to present him with a new contender. What happened next was one of the most dangerous situations that a promotion can find themselves in.
Dantas is a 23-year-old member of the highly-touted Nova Uniao team that has been taking the lighter weight classes by storm. At the time of this bout, he was riding a seven-fight win streak, in which he looked very impressive. When he elected to compete in Shooto Brazil 33 he was matched against Tyson Nam, who at 11-4 was a major underdog going into the fight. Dantas was expected to come out the victor, as he is one of the highest-ranked fighters in his weight class. Someone had forgotten to inform Nam of that matter.
Just over a minute into the bout, Dantas tried to step in and land multiple strikes, only to eat a counter strike that immediately stopped the Bellator champion, the first such defeat of Dantas’ career. Nam pushed his win streak to four, and earned his biggest victory to date. For Dantas, however, his value to his home promotion is immediately in question, as he has placed Bellator in a precarious position.
Unlike the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Bellator allows its champions to stay active by fighting in other organizations. And this is exactly why the UFC has exclusive contracts with their fighters. By defeating a Bellator champion, Nam has likely earned himself a call from Bellator executives offering him a place in their organization. He would also be a fighter in a position to almost outright demand a shot at the title, instead of fighting his way through the Bellator tournament, which would completely undermine their model.
Dantas should be focused on fighting his teammate, Marcos Galvao, who won the Bellator bantamweight tournament; he now has to worry about this loss to Nam, and how badly it hurts his stock. Young and talented fighters are important assets in the sport of MMA, especially for Bellator, who is looking for names that they can build its organization around. While this loss wasn’t televised in North America, which would have made the situation worse, many news outlets immediately covered the news post fight.
Going forward, we can expect Bellator to begin inserting exclusivity clauses into the contracts of their fighters to prevent this from happening in the future. A fighter can never predict when his or her next loss will come. However, champions need to be certain that they only lose under the banner of their home promotions, instead of smaller promotions, because their credibility, and the credibility of the titles that they hold, are severely diminished. Dantas had to learn the hard way, and now the fighters that come after him will have to share the consequences.
