Bellator 70 closes out the sixth season for the promotion with a title fight, tournament final as well as the last welterweight semifinal bout. From inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana the main card was kicked off on MTV2 and Spike.com with hometown favorite and UFC veteran, Rich Clementi.
Fans of Bellator heavyweight Eric Prindle who were hoping to finally see him fight at Friday’s Brllator 65, will once again have to wait. The massive fighter tweeted out yesterday that he was now fighting on May 25th and it was later confirmed he had suffered a hand injury. For those counting this marks the third time during Bellator’s sixth season that a bout featuring Prindle has either been pushed back or scrapped.
Last Friday, Bellator returned to action with the event being headlined by defending featherweight champion Joe Warren versus tournament winner Pat Curran. The fight ended in the 3rd round when Curran put Warren away with a vicious flurry to get the knockout.
The Bellator Fighting Championships will return to Louisiana on Friday, March 16 for Bellator 61 from Bossier City at the Horseshoe Riverdome to finally crown a heavyweight tournament champion. The night will be headlined with heavyweights Eric Prindle and Thiago Santos finishing what they started last season as well as the start of the Season 6 Middleweight Tournament.
Bellator’s season five has been one of the greatest for the promotion and it will come to a close at this Saturday’s Bellator 58 event in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Coming off last weekend’s exciting lightweight championship main event that saw Michael Chandler defeat Eddie Alvarez, the guys on Saturday’s card have a tough act to follow.
When you live on the edge there always comes a time when your luck runs out. So was the case last weekend at Bellator 55 when after 13 rolls of chance, the promotion finally hit snake eyes when the light heavyweight champion Christian M’Pumbu lost to Travis Wiuff in a non-title bout.
What I’ve done in my years of writing is make a yearly list of fights between “Top Ten” fighters and lesser known or much less regarded fighters. This is a bit of fun match-making to illustrate the fruitless quest for accurate Top Ten lists and to show exactly how much styles play into combat sports.
The season 5 Bellator heavyweight tournament appears to have lost its second semifinalist this weekend, resulting in a completely new semifinal bout at Bellator 56. Following Thiago Santos stepping in for Mike Hayes after he was not medically cleared to fight, former finalist Neil Grove appears to be stepping back into the Bellator heavyweight tournament.
