Askren vs. Hieron, part one. All videos in this post via IronForgesIron.com

Bellator returned to action last night in Kansas City with action from the heavyweight tournament and a welterweight title fight between current champion Ben Askren and Season Four tournament winner Jay Hieron. Earlier this week, Ben Askren promised to “maul Jay Hieron”, as our more astute readers may remember. Well, that didn’t exactly happen. We’ll discuss that more in a minute.

The night kicked off with heavyweight tournament semifinals action. To say these fights delivered quick, exciting finishes puts it mildly- It’ll take some of you longer to read this sentence than it’ll take you to actually watch the fights. In the first matchup, Eric Prindle countered a leg kick from Ron Sparks with a brutal straight right forty seconds into their fight. Not to be outdone, Thiago Santos quickly dropped Bellator Season Three heavyweight tournament finalist Neil Grove and sunk in a rear naked choke. The total amount of time it took Santos to do this? Thirty eight seconds. Don’t blink when Eric Prindle meets Thiago Santos at Bellator 59.

(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.

Curran connects with flying knee #27.

Two of the three opening acts were short and sweet and the feature bouts went the distance, but it wasn’t hard to figure out who won any of the fights at last night’s Bellator 47. If anything, I’m more confident in the disparity of skill sets featured in the tournament semi-finals than I am the fights where someone got steamrolled. That’s not to say it was a bore to watch, and it’s not to say that the tournament finale won’t impress. It is to say if you missed the action, keep reading and I’ll clue you in.

The combined weight of the two fighters in the evening’s opening bout nearly equaled that of the four tournament competitors. Realizing that fans don’t want to see two big boys huffing and puffing at the start of round two, Zak Jensen and Neil Grove did us a solid and came out swinging in a fight that proved that the best defense is a good offense (well, at least it proved true for Grove). The heavyweights went right to work trading bombs, with Grove dropping in the first five seconds. He secured a single and the two continued to hockey-fight on the ground before Grove went for an ankle lock. Jensen countered by punching Grove in the gut, which reminded “Goliath” how fun it was to punch and he released the hold. A failed triangle attempt by Jensen ended up with Grove in his guard raining down blows and drawing the referee stoppage at 2:00 into the first round.

Like a boss. PicProps: Bellator.com

Bellator 47 pops off this weekend, continuing the featherweight tournament and bridging the gap between season four and five. Unlike some promotions that can’t seem to pronounce “tournament” without fighters getting injured or insulted (or both), Bellator’s grand prix action will roll on in Ontario, Canada, where the contestants will have to brave the bitter arctic cold and vicious penguins as they fight to advance toward a payday and a title shot with current champion (and Baddest Man on the Planet) Joe Warren.

This just in: we’re being told by someone who lives in Canada that it is summer there, and temperatures will be significantly less brutal than we normally expect. We’ll take him at his word, but if anyone can take readings in the area and report back, we’d appreciate it.

Either way, we expect the action to be hot.

For the tourney, Marlon Sandro is matched up with Nazareno Malegarie, and Pat Curran will face Ronnie Mann.

(I like how they put "Season #3 Tournament Purses" in the memo line, so that Cole doesn’t get confused when he’s going through his stack of $100,000 novelty-checks at home. PicProps: MMAFrenzy)

By ReX “Write Pride” Richardson

Bellator’s third season just came out of the seventh inning stretch, visiting the Kansas City Power & Light District with a couple of championship matches on hand and two more events on the calendar. Unfortunately, you probably missed it due to either incompetence or fuckery most foul; the event was broadcast late, if at all, by every Fox affiliate in the multiverse. On top of that, it appears that the Fox-Dish Network pissing match has gone into perpetual death overtime, so essentially I’m saying that sometimes these things happen in MMA, and I was unable to watch and then come tell you guys about it. Sorry, bro. Since I feel bad about missing the last event (Bellator XXXI.V, at Talking Pines Casino, BFE), I’ve included this drawing of a spider, plus some other stuff after the jump.

(Above: ‘Ayyyyyy‘ — An expression of combat known worldwide. / Below: Matt Major shows off the design that got him eliminated on last night’s episode of Project Runway.)

By ReX “I H8 FSN” Richardson

Last night, Bellator XXIX went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin (which I believe is a Native American word meaning “Dude, I Think We’re Lost”) and put on the first nationally-televised MMA event ever in the state. Bellator seems to thrive by signing fighters hungry for wins, and has kept the energy up by focusing on the lighter weight classes, so it was a bit of a curveball when a heavyweight tournament was announced. Many questioned if Bellator could pull enough quality heavyweights with the conditioning necessary to put on entertaining fights. Heavyweight fights in the Bellator promotion to this point have been a mixed bag, but we’re starting to see the cream rise so I’m optimistic that some fun stuff happens. A couple of loser-leaves-town matches round out the televised card, featuring some guys who’ve been bounced out of tournaments previously (and want back in), plus they snagged the tubby Guida brother to test the light heavyweight waters.

Come on in and I’ll fill you in on the latest Bellator results and news. I promise I’ll lay off the fat jokes this time.

(Run and tell *that*, homeboy. Props: YouTube.com/BellatorMMA)

By DL “Friday the ReX13th” Richardson

Look, you know me, and you know what I’m going to say about the Bellator Fighting Championships: when it comes to MMA, they’re doing it right. Bellator does away with traditional ranking and matchmaking for their main events; they instead sign an eight-person field and let the fighters decide amongst themselves. It’s a format that appeals to fans and fighters alike, and it’s produced some exciting fights and amazing finishes. When some promotions go after a high-visibility free agent, they try to feed them impressive victories and pave the way toward championships. Bellator just drops them in the quarterfinals like everyone else. Upsets happen (see: Huerta, Roger). Cinderella stories happen (see: Curran, Pat). But it feels much more legitimate seeing champions develop organically like this while some promotions throw title fights to guys coming off of losses.

Never mind if injuries throw things off (Curran out versus Eddie Alvarez due to shoulder injury), or if those high visibility free agents get a shot at the champ anyway (Huerta in versus Alvarez, albeit in a non-title bout) or speculations that Bellator is on the verge of financial insolvency — they’re putting on good shows and the fighters are hungry. There’s entertainment in them there FSN channels.

If you’ve missed Bellator like I’ve missed Bellator (or if you’ve just missed me, for whatever reason), come along and I’ll tell you about the first event of Bellator’s third season. We’ll talk about the minor leagues of heavyweights, and the elite picture of the women’s featherweight field. Plus we might talk about how catchy that Bed Intruder Song is…

#8: Neil Grove vs. James Thompson @ Cage Rage 22 (7/14/07), 10 seconds

Three years after his embarrassing 11-second destruction at the hands of Fedor’s younger brother, James Thompson managed to shave one second off of his personal getting-knocked-out record during this Cage Rage match against 2-0 rookie Neil Grove. Following a very brief feeling-out process, Grove starts swinging his big meathooks around until one of them connects squarely on Thompson’s glass chin, sending the Colossus facedown onto the mat for a lil’ nap. The announcer immediately calls the stoppage “UN-BA-LAY-VA-BOWL,” but honestly, what did you expect to see in a fight between two British heavyweights — a flying gogoplata?

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO…

(Photo courtesy of SI.com)

Another UFC event is in the books, which means it’s time again to see who’s up and who’s down according to the Potato Index’s arbitrary numerical rankings system.  It’s kind of like Bob Reilly’s poll, only we admit it’s total bullshit.  And at least this particular brand of bullshit is more fun.

Diego Sanchez +123

“The Nightmare” proved he can cut almost forty pounds and still go three rounds at a steady pace.  That could be bad news for some other lightweight contenders, though it would still be interesting to see how he stacks up against one of the better wrestlers in the division.  Sean Sherk’s not too busy, is he?

Joe Stevenson -88

Another disappointing performance for Stevenson leaves us wondering where he can possibly go from here.  He just doesn’t seem to have enough in his toolbox to hang with the top fighters, and secluding himself in Victorville, which is not known for its elite training facilities, certainly isn’t helping.

Demian Maia +204

If you’re going to do only one thing, you’d better do it extremely well, and Maia does.  He forces another quality opponent to fight on his terms and puts him away with impressive ease.  Is there any middleweight not named Anderson Silva who can pose a significant threat to him at this point?

(Tensions ran high at the Mr. Clean lookalike contest. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

Sounds like it was a good one, too. Spoilers after the jump…

("Hell yeah, bro, and I didn’t even have to get that colonic!" Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle. For more from this set, click here.)

Weigh-ins for UFC 95 went down earlier today at London’s Dominion Theatre, with all fighters coming in at or below their limits. The only interesting results were in the heavyweight class, where Neil Grove made his 28-pound weight advantage official, and Stefan Struve managed to pack on enough bulk onto his Mr. Fantastic-esque frame to come in three pounds heavier than his opponent, Junior Dos Santos. Full results are below:

Diego Sanchez (156) vs Joe Stevenson (155)
Rory Markham (170) vs Dan Hardy (170)
Wilson Gouveia (185) vs Nate Marquardt (185)
Chael Sonnen (185) vs Demian Maia (184)
Paulo Thiago (169) vs Josh Koscheck (170)
Brian Cobb (155) vs Terry Etim (156)
Stefan Struve (240) vs Junior Dos Santos (237)
Mike Ciesnolevicz (235) vs Neil Grove (263)
Evan Dunham (154) vs Per Eklund (155)
Troy Mandaloniz (168) vs Paul Kelly (169)

Remember, we’ll be liveblogging the Spike TV tape-delayed broadcast starting at 9 p.m. ET; check local listings to see when the event will kick off in your ‘hood.

Semi-related: Former Cage Rage welterweight champ Paul Daley missed weight for his Maximum Fighting Championship 20 match tonight against Nick "The Goat" Thompson, and will forfeit 25% of his fight purse to Thompson. It’s the second consecutive time that Daley has weighed in over his 170-pound limit; in December he came in four pounds over for a fight against John Alessio at MFC 19. HDNet will broadcast tonight’s MFC event — which will feature UFC vets David Heath, Solomon Hutcherson, Rory Singer, and a welterweight title fight between Ryan Ford and Pat Healy — live at 10 p.m. ET.

(Stefan Struve: Tall, young, and Dutch as fuck.)

From short-notice replacements, to submission specialists, to big-ass heavyweights, the UFC will be rolling the dice on a lot of new talent this Saturday at UFC 95, as six of the 20 fighters on the card have never fought in the Octagon before. So which ones will rise to the occasion and which ones are three days away from the most high-profile losses of their careers? Check out the brass-tacks briefing below and draw your own conclusions…

PAULO THIAGO (WW)
?Experience: 10-0 record (7 wins by submission) in Brazilian leagues including Jungle Fight and Storm Samurai.
Will be facing: Josh Koscheck (12-3, 10-3 UFC)
?Lowdown: Well, he’s a brave son-of-a-bitch, for one thing. Thiago is a member of BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion), a Brazilian SWAT-style unit known for fighting the heavily armed drug gangs of Rio de Janeiro. Amnesty International has repeatedly accused the outfit of excessive force in their operations — and Paulo will need some of it when he goes up against one of the UFC’s top five welterweights in his Octagon debut. Thiago is undefeated, and looks great against scrubs, but the jump in competition here is massive. Still, it’s MMA, and a Dos Santos/Werdum-caliber upset is always a possibility.

STEFAN STRUVE (HW)
?Experience: 16-2 record (12 wins by submission), fighting all over Europe. Holds submission wins over UFC vets Colin Robinson and Mario Neto, and has never gone past the second round in any fight.
Will be facing: Junior Dos Santos (7-1, 1-0 UFC)
?Lowdown: Nicknamed "The Skyscraper," Struve stands 6’8" and weighs just 220 pounds. As if his beanpole frame doesn’t make him enough of an anomaly in the UFC’s heavyweight class, he’s also a submission whiz, which will put him at odds with the division’s big wrestlers and strikers. The 21-year-old (as of today) Holland native has been competing professionally since he was 17, and now calls Team Schrijber his home. As Struve told Fighters Only: "I think I can beat most of the guys [in the UFC]. They have five or six really good heavyweights. The other guys…not so good, I think."

(It was going fine until the 1:57 mark. Then things get really uncomfortable.)

- Affliction can’t stop talking about how awesome they are. (Yahoo!)

- Thiago Silva is expecting a track meet against Lyoto Machida. (Tatame)

- Is the UFC phoning it in for UFC 93? (Fightlinker)

- Neil Grove to make UFC debut against Justin McCully. (Fighters Only)

- Tim Kennedy talks war and MMA. (Five Ounces of Pain)

- HIT Squad Dodgeball.  (Matt-Hughes.com)

- Rich Franklin trains for Dan Henderson. (MMA Mania)

- Gina Carano says she doesn’t get paid what you think. (AskMen.com)

- This is why you don’t run from the cops. (Break.com)

- 7 TV shows that really need to exist. (Screen Junkies)

- 10 things Tim Tebow should have put on his eye black. (Holy Taco)

- Skater owns bully. (Nothing Toxic)

- This is too adorable to ignore. (Hip to Code)

(Well, he seems to be better than Kimbo, at least.)

In an attempt to add another warm body to its heavyweight division — and another recognizable fighter to its UK cards — the UFC has reportedly signed heavyweight Neil "Goliath" Grove to a four-fight contract. The 6’6" South African native compiled a 6-1 record fighting in Cage Rage and the UK MMA Championship, with all his wins coming by KO/TKO. He holds notable victories over James Thompson (the 10-second beating shown above) and Robert "Buzz" Berry (twice). He also has a unique martial arts pedigree:

Judging from some of his fights, you’d think he was a third-degree black belt in Drunken British Soccer Hooligan. But it works for him, and that’s cool with us. Grove is looking to debut at UFC 95 (February 21st; London, England), and has his eye on Mustapha Al-Turk, the man who held Cage Rage’s British heavyweight title before the organization shut down. Al-Turk will first face Cheick Kongo at UFC 92 (December 27th, Las Vegas).

(Props: MMATKO. Fight starts at the 5:34 mark.)

It looks like Robert “Buzz” Berry’s beating last Saturday at the hands of Neil Grove could be his last. Berry (13-8), who suffered a second-round TKO loss at Cage Rage 27 and who has dropped three of his last four fights, announced his retirement last night via the Cage Warriors forums, writing the following:

Just to let you all know I have had to retire. After my fight with Neil Grove I was taken to the hospital and had to have surgery on my face. They have had to put two plates in, one in my cheek bone and one on my eye socket. So that is it, over for me.

Can I take this opportunity in congratulating Neil Grove on the fight and good luck in the future. Thank you to all my camp and other camps for their help over the years in getting me ready for fights. Thanks to all my fans in their support for me, it has always meant a lot. A real big thanks to John Close, he has been a diamond — we have been joined at the hip for a few years. Neil Wain has been a star for me and wish him all the best in his fight in the UFC. Thanks to the guys at Cage Rage for their part in my fighting and to anyone I have missed out: Thank you.

As you can see in the video from the Berry/Grove fight (above), Buzz was on the mat for about three minutes after the loss, in visible pain. Grove’s leg kicks were responsible for breaking Berry down during the fight, but his final flurry of punches turned out to be a career ender for the man who’d previously knocked out Ken Shamrock at Cage Rage 25 in March. With the win, Grove increased his record to 6-1; in the post-fight interview he called out Cage Rage British heavyweight champion Mustapha Al Turk, as well as (who else) Kimbo Slice.

Phil Baroni’s first match as a welterweight was a resounding success, as the New York Badass dominated Scott Jansen to a first-round knockout victory at Cage Rage 27 last night in London. Unexpectedly, Baroni quickly got the fight to the ground, scoring a smooth double-leg takedown shortly after the bell and effortlessly controlling Jansen from the top. After an armlock attempt didn’t pan out, Baroni moved to full mount, but both men were quickly ordered to their feet by the ref. Baroni then reverted back to his bread and butter, turning out Jansen’s lights with a perfect right hook; Baroni returned after the stoppage to shake the hand of his still-sleeping opponent.

About thirty seconds later, Baroni made the mistake of going back again to check on Jansen, and one of Jansen’s cornermen responded by headbutting him — or “nutting” him, as the commentators colorfully put it. (“Wot’a dizgrace.”) The headbutter conveniently disappeared after the confrontation, while Baroni scored big-time respect points for not chasing him down and tearing his dumb ass apart. Video of the fight and post-fight assault is above; the questionable ref standup is at 3:36, the knockout punch is at 3:58, and the headbutt is at 4:45. Baroni competes next at Icon Sport: Hard Times (August 2, Honolulu), where he’ll face 3-5 Jesus Is Lord jobber Ron Verdadero.

In other action at Cage Rage 27, Neil Grove defeated Robert Berry in their rematch, stopping “Buzz” via strikes in the second round, while Mustapha Al Turk scored a first-round ground-and-pound TKO over James McSweeney to win the Cage Rage British heavyweight title. Full results are after the jump.

Headlined by a heavyweight match between Ken Shamrock and Robert “Buzz” Berry — which may very well decide who gets the next shot at Kimbo Slice — Cage Rage 25 goes down tomorrow night at London’s Wembley Arena. Showtime will run a tape-delayed broadcast of the four top-billed fights at 10:30 p.m. ET. Those other three main card fights are:

Jean Silva vs. Masakazu Imanari (for the Cage Rage Featherweight World Title)
Neil Grove vs. Rob Broughton (heavyweights)
Pierre Guillet vs. Tom “Kong” Watson (middleweights)

Other matches on the 11-fight card include Ken’s son Ryan facing off against Georgio Andrews in a bantamweight match, a heavyweight throwdown between Mustapha al Turk and Gary Turner, and Cage Rage’s first female fight between Aisling Daly and the rather-fetching Aysen Berik. Some other things to be aware of:

— If you clicked that last link, you’d know that Aysen Berik is the sister of Cage Rage vet Sami Berik, who, despite his terrible 12-24 record, knocked Mark Smith out in 9 seconds in a Cage Rage Contenders fight in February.

— Betting odds have Ken Shamrock as a -240 favorite (encouraging for someone who’s won only one fight since 2001). Grove and Broughton are dead even at -115.

— Robert Berry is the lightest he’s ever been for a fight, but will still be coming in 20 pounds heavier than Shamrock.

— Neil Grove and Rob Broughton both hold wins over Robert Berry. Illness forced Berry to throw in the towel after the first round of his fight with Grove in December. Berry’s September 2006 match against Broughton fight ended in a first-round KO.

— If you’re interested in hearing Ryan Shamrock talk, click away.

U.K.-based MMA organization Cage Rage is putting on a thoroughly kickass show tomorrow, featuring Murilo “Ninja” Rua, Elvis Sinosic, Mark Weir, Neil Grove, and TUF3 alum Ross Pointon. Check out the full fight card here. I’d never heard of Rua’s opponent Xavier Foupa-Pokam (please keep your “fupa-poker” jokes to yourself), so I decided to search for a clip of him in action, which I’ve posted below. Rua might have his hands full, as Foupa-Pokam looks like a sharp striker who’s absolutely deadly once he falls on his ass. You should also keep an eye out for Neil Grove, a 4-0 heavyweight bruiser whose last two fights resulted in a 10-second knockout of James “The Colossus” Thompson (the video is below) and a 34-second TKO of Domagoj Ostojic. Cage Rage 24 can be seen live at ProElite.com PPV; the action kicks off at 1 p.m. ET.

(Xavier Foupa-Pokam vs. Alex Cook at Cage Rage 18, 9/30/06)

(Neil Grove vs. James Thompson at Cage Rage 22, 7/14/07)