When news came out that Julia Budd would face former Strikeforce champion Marloes Coenen for the inaugural featherweight title on the Bellator prelims, there was a fair amount of public consternation. A lot of people disagreed with Bellator’s decision to put a title fight on a digital stream, regardless of the logic behind it.
The logic behind it, of course, was to draw more attention to Bellator’s streaming presence, which in a roundabout way it did.
Yet when Budd injured herself in training, Coenen was rebooked in a non-title fight against Alexis Dufresne.