Bellator explains why British fans got Peppa Pig instead of Mousasi vs. MacDonald

Bellator fans in the UK that stayed up til 6AM to see Gegard Mousasi and Rory MacDonald tussle for the middleweight strap were disappointed when the event ran past 6AM and was replaced with an episode of Peppa Pig.

Peppa Pig, as any parent of a child under the age of five knows, is a heavyweight champ in children’s programming. So at least bleary eyed Brits still got to see a top name perform.

After the event, Bellator execs at the California press conference explained what happened.

“Government regulations said at 6AM, that content was not suitable,” Bellator’s David Schwartz said. “They had to switch to children’s programming ... Peppa the pig.”

“That’s a hiccup, and we will definitely fix that moving forward,” Bellator head honcho Scott Coker said. “Honestly, we thought that we would be way off the air by the three-hour mark, and that just didn’t happen. We ran over, and Peppa the pig took over. And that’s what happened.”

”Believe me, when it switched over there was a lot of texts going back and forth, and they were not friendly,” he continued. “We were trying to fix it, we thought it was technical glitch, but it wasn’t. It was a government issue. I can promise next time it’s not going to happen. We’ll keep it down to five fights instead of six like we normally do. We tried to over-deliver for the fans, and it’s just an unfortunate situation.”

By all accounts, Bellator 206 was an entertaining show. But complaints about the new DAZN streaming service buffering on various platforms and the slow pacing of the show were also numerous. Going over time was especially strange considering the number of first and second round finishes on the main card. Only the Keri Melendez vs. Dakota Zimmerman fight went to a decision, although a welterweight GP fight between Douglas Lima and Andrey Koeshkov did make it to the fifth round before Lima ended things with a submission.

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