(Props: BellatorMMA)

For those of you who had better things to do on Saturday, Bellator put together this helpful video recap of their Season Five heavyweight tournament quarterfinals. And for a card full of relatively obscure big-men, the show wasn’t half bad.

Ron Sparks (8-0) continued his rise towards relevancy with an 84-second knockout of Mark Holata. Sparks also happens to be one of those dudes with his own last name tattooed on his stomach, but we won’t hold it against him. Speaking of stoppages, Blagoi Ivanov (5-0, 1 no contest) also kept his unbeaten record, smashing Zak Jensen standing then putting him to a sleep in the second round with a guillotine choke.

(Ron Sparks: All about the peace and love. / Photo via TheFightNerd.)

Bellator 52 goes down tomorrow night at the L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles, Louisiana, featuring the quarterfinals of the promotion’s second heavyweight tournament. We’ll be honest — the eight-man bracket isn’t exactly overflowing with star-power, and watching 265-pounders slug it out is always a mixed bag. But if Cruz vs. Johnson isn’t enough to satisfy your hunger for combat this weekend, you might as well DVR the MTV2 broadcast. (Do it right now, before you forget.) Here’s how the HW quarters shake out:

Neil Grove vs. Mike Hayes
Blagoi Ivanov vs. Zak Jensen
Eric Prindle vs. Abe Wagner
Mark Holata vs. Ron Sparks

Now, some fun facts:

- Blagoi Ivanov is that dude who outpointed Fedor Emelianenko in combat sambo in 2008, back when beating Fedor at anything seemed like a very big deal. He’s now 4-0 with 1 no-contest in his MMA career, and won his Bellator debut in March by TKO’ing William Penn in one round.

Remember: *this* is the guy that the middleweights are competing to fight. Hector Lombard knocked Vitale down twice with one punch. VidProps: BellatorMMA/YouTube

So anybody notice that I mentioned Bellator yesterday?  You did?   And you didn’t comment about how splendiferous Bellator is, and how much you like watching the fights, and in general how witty and good looking we are here at CagePotato?
Well that’s just rude.  I’m inclined to not even bother running down the other two tourneys planned for this season.  Really, it’s like you don’t care.

Oh, alright.  Come on in and we’ll have coffee and talk.  But no staying over.

We glanced at this poster and though M’Pumbu’s nick name was “TomTom”.  Like he hands out directions.   Also, just seeing if you notice anything odd about this…. (PicProps: Bellator.com)

Remember when Bellator inked that deal with MTV2, and it was supposed to make BFC more accessible?  Stable time slot, easy to find, no more worries about pre-emption?  Yeah.  We remember that.  It was a Tuesday, we’d finally gotten all the Christmas cards in the mail, and it just felt like this was the best MMA news we could expect in early December.  Our beloved Bellator was movin’ on up to the East Side.  Fast forward three months, and we’ve cursed at our DVR so much that it’s now started to nervously record old re-runs of ALF and anything related to the Pro Bull Riders circuit in hopes of making amends.  If you’re not manually setting, checking, and resetting your recording device of choice, catching a full episode of Bellator is an exercise in futility and frustration.  Thanks, MTV2!

That said, Bellator has been making it more than worth your while to tune in the past few weeks, and last night’s light heavyweight tourney in Tunica, Mississippi was a prime example.  Fun fact about Mississippi:  couples have to be 21 years old to get married there without parental consent.  Yes, we were shocked to hear that as well.  If you’re young and madly in love in Mississippi, you’re going to have cross the border somewhere to declare your devotion in a legal fashion.

Come on in past the jump and we’ll share even more shocking tales about things you probably wouldn’t believe, if we couldn’t prove it to you with witnesses and video.  There may possibly be cake.

(Hioki vs. Kanehara: The fight went as planned, but everything afterwards didn’t. Props to 19054771 via Bloody Elbow.)

I have to admit, I was pulling for Michihiro Omigawa to shock the world and win Sengoku’s Featherweight Grand Prix, after entering the tournament in March with a 4-7-1 record. But the way he reached the finals at today’s Sengoku Ninth Battle show in Saitama, Japan, was questionable to say the least, and he wound up losing to a guy who shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. Let’s start at the beginning…

Tournament favorite Hatsu Hioki dominated Masanori Kanehara in the tourney’s semifinals, putting Kanehara in constant danger with submission attempts and ground-and-pound. Though Kanehara was able to make a late rally, the fight went to Hioki by unanimous decision. Unfortunately, it was discovered that Hioki suffered a concussion during the match, and wouldn’t be able to continue to the finals.

Chan Sung Jung choked out Matt Jaggers later that night in the GP’s reserve bout, and should have rightfully taken Hioki’s place. But Jung, who had previously been robbed by the judges in his quarterfinal match against Masanori Kanehara in May — a decision that many fans chalked up to the fact that Jung is Korean — was insulted again today when it was quickly decided that Kanehara would fill in for Hioki. So basically, the alternate bout was absolutely meaningness, due to the fact that a Korean won it.

(Still the master of the just-woke-up-and-ready-for-murder look.)

The next stop on Aleksander Emelianenko’s “I Totally Don’t Have Hepatitis” tour is reportedly set for September 29 in South Korea, where he’ll meet Blagoi Ivanov, the Bulgarian fighter who defeated his brother Fedor in the World Combat Sambo Championships in November.  The fight is scheduled to go down in the newly-formed Fighter Mania Championship (or, if you prefer, the FMC) in Seoul, and the hook here is fairly obvious.  Aleks attempts to exact revenge on the man who embarrassed his brother in Sambo by beating him in MMA and maybe also infecting him with a blood-borne disease.  Ivanov is supposed to be making his MMA debut against Kazuyuki Fujita at Sengoku 8 on August 2, but apparently the FMC promoters are betting he’ll be fine to compete again less than two months later.

You have to give Ivanov this much, for a guy with zero professional experience in MMA he’s certainly diving into deep waters right away.  Fujita and Aleks Emelianenko may not be at the top of anyone’s heavyweight list, but they’re both experienced, dangerous opponents.  It seems we’ll find out in a hurry whether winning a Sambo tournament makes you an instantly credible MMA fighter.  Our guess is no, it probably doesn’t.

(And to think this all started with a colorful gi, some little shorts, and a dream.)

It looks like Combat Sambo tournaments might actually lead to career advancement opportunities, after all.  Blagoi Ivanov has signed a three-fight deal with Sengoku and will reportedly face former Pride fighter Kazuyuki Fujita in his first fight at Sengoku 9 in August.  Ivanov is the guy who made minor waves (more like ripples by the time they reached the U.S.) when he beat Fedor Emelianenko on points in the World Combat Sambo Championships last November.  Fujita’s claim to fame is that he once hit Fedor so hard it briefly stunned him.  Neither of these accomplishments is enough to make this a truly interesting fight, although Sengoku has got to take what they can get when it comes to heavyweights.