When World Series of Fighting issued a “winner take all” pay-per-view challenge to Bellator, it didn’t seem that much would come of it. A battle of a B and C-tier MMA promotions isn’t likely to make much money, faces complications of revenue splitting, faces complications from both promotions having existing TV deals with rival networks…and so on.
Bellator is also clearly the “bigger” promotion at this point and has next to nothing to gain in the proposed battle. Hell, two of the four fighters WSOF has crowned as champions fought in Bellator (Steve Carl and Georgi Karakhanyan), each going 2-2 in the promotion.
So, with Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney basically dismissing WSOF’s nonsense and talking about bigger issues in MMA, like the war of words between Georges St. Pierre and the UFC, WSOF matchmaker and executive VP Ali Abdelaziz took to twitter to fire more shots in the little war that couldn’t:
Bjorn Rebney turned down our challenge. He doesn’t believe in his fighters and now he wants to distract everyone talking about GSP. CANDYASS
— Ali Abdelaziz (@AliAbdelaziz00) January 21, 2014
For the record GSP is my training partner and very great friend for 9 years. It is embarrassing how Bjorn is using his name as a scapegoat.
— Ali Abdelaziz (@AliAbdelaziz00) January 21, 2014
On yesterday’s Bellator conference call, Rebney simply stated that he isn’t interested in callouts, probably the smartest move.
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