Scott Coker doesn’t regret the call to cancel last week’s Bellator 241.
The Bellator president believes he ultimately made the right choice in postponing the card just hours away from the event going live amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
The card was supposed to take place this past Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. Patricio “Pitbull” Freire and Pedro Carvalho were scheduled to headline the event in a featherweight title fight that also served as a Bellator featherweight grand prix quarterfinal.
“It’s a tough call,” Coker said on a recent episode of “The Luke Thomas Show.” “All the fighters were there, they weighed in, and it was already decided it was going to be a situation with no crowd. But certain things, I started talking to my staff saying, ‘If you don’t feel comfortable and want to be with your families, please go.’ The President had an emergency announcement and a lot of people thought it was going to shut the country down, that was the speculation.
“At the end of the day, I say we made the right call. I feel really good about that, and so does the company. When this thing finally comes to an end one day hopefully soon, we’ll get back to promoting the fights.”
At the time, there was a lot of uncertainty around how badly and how soon the outbreak could affect the U.S. Coker had the option to continue the event, but behind closed doors, barring fans from attending the the fights.
Yet, Coker and his team still decided not to continue on, and he says the decision boiled down to one key factor.
“There was one thing on my mind: ‘Is my staff, my fighters, my production crew, are we putting our people in harms way?,’ and I just couldn’t come to an answer on that,” Coker explained.
“I believe we made the right call because who really knows, right? I wasn’t sure about the situation, and rumors start flying around. And at the end of the day, I just didn’t feel comfortable, some of my staff didn’t feel comfortable, some of the production crew didn’t feel comfortable. So after a while, you go, ‘This is not going to be an event that we’re going to want to promote and feel good about promoting.’
“We’re talking about hours away from the first fight, so everyone was there, and then it was a matter of scrambling and getting everyone out of there. Because if there was a ban on flights, we need to get everyone to the airport and get them back into the city. We had people from out of the country that couldn’t fly after Monday, so we just felt the need that we needed to get these guys out of here. There is a time where people should be at home with their families hunkering down and being ready for whatever it is that’s going to come next.”
Even with no event, Bellator still paid fighters, staff, and contractors that were supposed to work Bellator 241. Everyone was paid in full.
Coker is not sure to what extent coronavirus will affect MMA and sports in general. He’s not sure what the future will hold for Bellator, but at least there’s some time to address future events.
“We don’t know how long this is going to go on, how long before we can get test kits, test everyone, and create a vaccine,” Coker said. “Right now, there is so much uncertainty. I don’t want to speculate, but I don’t look at it as just the MMA industry. I look at it as a whole sports-and-entertainment sector and the talking about billions of dollars at that point.
“NBA is down, MLB is postponed, masses are canceled. I was in New York earlier in the week, and we had an amazing press conference and that to me seems like months ago now compared to when we were there announcing all of our great fights. It just seems like such great distance of time from that.
“We’re on a whole new pattern like everyone else. The only thing we can say is that on our calendar we didn’t have anything scheduled until May 9, so that gives us a couple of months window to see how it unfolds.”