Best Performance Of The Night: Chase Beebe At Bellator 43

It’s that time once again, fans and friends. Another major MMA event has come and gone, and it’s time for my unofficial “Best Performance of the Night” award. Bellator 43 featured several interesting fights and several big finishes. As a whole, it was a worthy addition to a series of shows that, for the most part, have been very enjoyable. But one fighter’s performance perfectly summed up one of the main reasons I enjoy this sport so much: nothing is impossible in MMA, and a fighter that at one time lost five fights in a row could one day possibly return to the championship status he once held. With that in mind, here’s why Chase Beebe’s first-round submission took home “Best Performance of the Night”.

Let’s begin as we always do, fans and friends, by putting the fight into context.

Chase Beebe has been fighting for over five years, and has competed all across the United States and even in Japan. Those five years have seen Beebe fight twenty-five times, and you only need to do a small bit of math to realize that Beebe remains incredibly active to this day. In 2007, Chase Beebe reached the pinnacle of his career when he captured the WEC Bantamweight Championship and then defended it successfully one time. Unfortunately, things would soon come crashing down.

Beebe’s next opponent would be Miguel Torres, who would go on to become one of the best champions in WEC history and at one time enjoyed a very sizable following that earned him a spot on many top publication’s “Pound for Pound” list. That first-round submission loss sent Beebe into a spiral that many thought he would never recover from. From February 2008 to October 2009, Chase Beebe competed five times… and lost five times. Three out of those two losses were stoppages. With his record falling to 12-6, many thought it may be time for Beebe to call it a career. But Beebe never gave up, and his losing-streak was finally broken in April 2010. Beebe would go on to lose only once in his next six fights, earning him a shot in Bellator.

His opponent, Jose Vega, held a decent and somewhat-respectable record of 9-4. Vega was considered a tough challenger because he was a finisher: he had earned himself seven wins by submission and one by TKO. And although he was coming off of a loss, it was due to Split Decision, and Vega had won two fights beforehand. In short: Vega wasn’t a massive threat, but he could have conceivably given Beebe some problems. If nothing else, this fight would have either solidified Beebe’s comeback or proven that the shadows of the past still lingered.

It took Beebe a little over four minutes to prove the former, and not the latter.

Four minutes and six seconds. That’s all it took before Beebe locked in Guillotine Choke and defeated Jose Vega. With his win at Bellator 43, Beebe extends his current win-streak to four straight fights, and improves his record to a pretty respectable 18-7.

Beebe’s finish may not have been the fastest of the night, but I dare say it was the most meaningful. In today’s MMA world, losing three fights in a row is almost perceived as a death sentence. Lose four in a row and people start thinking you should retire. Lose five in a row and people start saying that they can’t watch you anymore because it’s too sad. But Beebe stood up to that kind of pressure, to those kinds of negative thoughts, and he never lost focus. Chase Beebe is a survivor, and with his win at Bellator 43, the problems of the past are coming closer and closer to being seen as nothing but a distant memory. Everybody loves a good comeback story, and Chase Beebe is currently writing a pretty awesome one each and every time he steps into the cage. And that’s what Chase Beebe earns “Best Performance of the Night” for Bellator 43.

And what about you, fans and friends? Who took home your unofficial end-of-night accolades?