November 2nd would have been the date of Bellator’s first PPV which would have featured Rampage Jackson facing Tito Ortiz in the main event. However, due to an injury to Ortiz, he was a late scratch for the event. As a result, Bellator cancelled its pay per view and placed the event on Spike TV.
In the end, Bellator 106 on Spike TV pulled 1.1 million viewers with Michael Chandler facing the returning Eddie Alvarez in a 5 round bout. In the end, the event went over 3 hours and 30 minutes which would have been close to the likely PPV time limit.
The cancellation made the months of promotion between Ortiz and Rampage at Bellator events and on TNA Wrestling shows worthless. It also showed that Bellator did not believe Chandler-Alvarez II would be a main event that viewers would pay $35-$45 nor did it have a supporting undercard to promote that would support a PPV-worthy show. What the cancellation inferred was that Bellator was hanging its hopes on PPV buys on Rampage and Tito and hoping that names alone would sell the product. As we can see, it was a risky play.
Certainly the fact that Bellator attempted to get in front of the story with a decisive move to take it off of PPV and move it to Spike TV provided some damage control. It could have kept the event on PPV and suffered very low PPV buys.
Will Bellator do a PPV in 2014? It does not really have to based on its current business model, yet Bjorn Rebney left the PPV option open for an event featuring the Chandler-Alvarez trilogy.
I’m behind posting my top 13 for 2013. Bellator is involved in 2 of them, but this isn’t either. Failed PPV on the first time effort, not that big a story. To me.