Stephan Bonnar, Bellator deny brawl with Ortiz was scripted
At this point, if you've seen the video of Stephan Bonnar and Tito Ortiz getting into it at the conclusion of Bellator 123, you have formed an opinion on whether it was staged, embellished, or completely legitimate.
If you think it was fake, Bonnar thinks a certain way about you, as he told The MMA Hour:
"I can't believe people are this stupid. They have all these conspiracy theories. Scott Coker had a show to run. This was Scott Coker's first show as Bellator president, he had a lot of stuff going on. This was part of it. 'Hey, let's bring Bonnar and Tito out.' The way our contract works, when we go out to stuff like this, we get a plus one. 'Let's get them in the ring, ask a question to each guy.' People think that they got us all in an office together with SPIKE TV and the Bellator brass with me and Tito to plan out this elaborate plan. No."
New Bellator boss Scott Coker also denied he had any involvement with the brouhaha, swearing "on my father's grave" to Mohegan Tribe department of athletic regulation director Mike Mazzulli that the promotion and SpikeTV didn't know about it:
"No, no, no, that's totally inaccurate information. Spike didn't know, we didn't know, and after the fight, I was sitting and watching Tito, and he was pissed off and mad for a good hour after that altercation. So as fake or as pro wrestling as it might seem, there's some deep-seeded something going on over there....
"He asked me, ‘Coker, what happened?' And I'm like, ‘Mike, I swear, I did not know that was going to go down, and that's the truth, on my father's grave,' I did not know that was going to go down."
In any case, the brawl and subsequent accusations of a scripted beef have brought up debate as to the merits of pro-wrestling theatrics in the world of mixed martial arts. While some like Joe Rogan took the opportunity to put pro wrestling on blast (for shame), something tells us Bellator and SpikeTV are just happy to have so much press around the Nov. 15 fight already.