This weekend’s Bellator pay-per-view event is still on, but not without some last-minute changes to the card. During a media conference call this past Saturday night, Bellator announced that lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez has a concussion and is out of the main event of Bellator 120, which takes place this coming in Saturday in Mississippi. Now, instead of the trilogy fight between Alvarez and Michael Chandler headlining Bellator’s first-ever PPV card, it will instead be tournament winner Will Brooks meeting Chandler in a five-round fight for the interim title. With the change from Alvarez to Brooks, Chandler has been downgraded to the co-main event and now the light heavyweight tournament final between Rampage Jackson and King Mo Lawal will be the main event of the evening, although it should be noted that five will remain at three rounds. Bellator is now working on securing a fight for Brooks’ original opponent Nate Jolly, but with just days to go until the event there is no guarantee Jolly will still be fighting on the card anymore. As far as the injury to Alvarez goes, there’s really nothing Bellator can do, and the new title bout between Chandler and Brooks is a worthy replacement bout. If a fighter has a concussion, I don’t want to see him fighting and no fan of the sport should. So kudos to Alvarez for not hiding his injury like many other fighters would do, and kudos to Bellator for standing by their champ, even though his removal from the card means their PPV is likely to take a massive hit at the box office. And that’s the part that bugs me about this: Why is Bellator still doing a PPV? After all, when Rampage vs. Tito Ortiz was scratched from their first PPV event last year, the promotion decided to put the rest of the card on Spike TV as a free television special and the fans got to see the amazing second fight between Chandler and Alvarez for free, not to mention King Mo vs. Emanuel Newton and Daniel Straus vs. Pat Curran. I’d argue that PPV was actually better than the one this weekend, which is King Mo vs. Rampage, Chandler vs. Brooks and Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko, but for whatever reason Bellator is still going ahead with the PPV and they are likely to suffer the consequences as a result. As far as buyrate predictions go, I doubt Bellator 120 breaks the 100k mark that Affliction seemed stuck at, and it’s much more likely the event sells about 50k, which would be a very low number, especially when you compare it to some of the UFC’s lesser cards. But I honestly can’t see too man fans willing to fork over $50 for Bellator’s PPV and I think a 50k buyrate really does seem like an accurate prediction. As for the line for the Chandler/Brooks fight, keep your eyes peeled to MMAOddsbreaker.com as it will be released this week.
