Bellator Kickboxing, which launched in 2016 to much fanfare and produced champions including Denise Kielholtz and Raymond Daniels, is officially defunct.
A sister promotion to Bellator MMA, the kickboxing outfit had not held an event since prior to the coronavirus pandemic, leaving its future very much up in the air. Following Bellator 274 on Saturday, which took place in the promotion’s east coast stronghold of the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, promotion President Scott Coker fielded a question about Bellator Kickboxing’s status.
“The kickboxing question is a tough one because I love it so much, I love martial arts and I love promoting,” Coker replied. “But it’s something that’s not in the schedule for right now. Since we merged with CBS and Showtime, we are an MMA company.”
Coker got his start as a combat sports promoter holding kickboxing events — and while his first outfit, Strikeforce, became best known for MMA, it started out as a kickboxing promotion in the mid 80s.
“We had a great kickboxing business,” Coker said of Bellator Kickboxing. “Once COVID hit, it kind of shut that down, and right now, we’re focusing all our energy on MMA.”
Bellator is also focused on getting back on the road this year, with a number of international dates already on the calendar, and more planned. Later this month, Gegard Mousasi vs. Austin Vanderford will top the Bellator 275 card in Ireland. It’s the first of many international dates, said Coker.
“We’re going to go to Paris, we’re going to go to London, I think that we will be back in Hawaii for sure at some point. We’ll be back in Moscow hopefully, we’re still waiting to see what happens, sometimes politics get in the way of business,” Coker revealed. “But I think we’ll have many international fights before the end of the year, including I think we’ll be back in Tokyo before the end of the year too, working with [RIZIN CEO Nobuyuki] Sakakibara.”
Watch the full Bellator 274 post-fight press conference with Bellator President Scott Coker above.
