Bellator’s eighth season ended much like it began — with featherweight champion Pat Curran putting his belt on the line and emerging victorious. His opponent in the main event of last night’s Bellator 95 card in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was Shahbulat Shamhalaev, the Dagestan-bred knockout artist who clinched his title shot with his KO of Rad Martinez in February. Unlike his 25-minute squeaker against Patricio Freire in January, Curran only needed half a round to take Shamhalaev down and put him to sleep with an arm-in guillotine, earning his second successful title defense.

Depending on availability, Curran’s next opponent could be Season 6 winner Daniel Straus — who was forced to withdraw from Bellator 95 due to a broken hand — or Bellator’s latest featherweight tournament winner, Magomedrasul “Frodo” Khasbulaev, who defeated Mike Richman in a 15-minute dogfight last night. Though Richman was game through all three rounds, opening up some cuts on the Russian’s face in round two, Frodo clearly had the advantages in striking, takedowns, and overall aggression. Khasbulaev was awarded 30-27 scores from all three judges, and a $100,000 check from his employer.

In the night’s other Season 8 tournament final, middleweight Doug “The Rhino” Marshall continued his improbable career comeback by knocking out Brett Cooper in the first round. Cooper had some success early in putting Marshall on his back, but once Marshall regained his footing, it was Rhino Time. A hard right hand from Marshall sent Cooper to the canvas, and some follow-up bombs sealed the deal. The win increased Marshall’s Bellator record to 4-0, with three of those wins by first-round KO/TKO.

“Man, I hope he’s OK,” Marshall said afterwards. “I was trying to knock his beard off, but it didn’t come off. Maybe next time.”

(Full fight video of Shamhalaev’s tournament-winning performance against Rad Martinez at Bellator 90, courtesy of Wax6ynat Wamxanaeb-P3A MaptnHe3 Fuck You.) 

Another day, another injury.

At last week’s Bellator 90 event, stone-faced Russian “Assassin” (is there any other kind?) Shabulat Shamhalaev wrapped up the promotion’s 7th season featherweight tournament with a vicious knockout over fellow finalist Rad Martinez. In doing so, Shamhalaev earned a future shot at the winner of the Pat Curran/Daniel Straus featherweight title fight scheduled for April 4th. Fortunately for Shamhalaev (and unfortunately for Straus), a broken hand has forced the season six tournament winner out of the fight and has in turn opened the door for the Russian, who will now face Curran a bit earlier than expected. Bjorn Rebney broke the news via his Twitter account:

(Photo via Esther Lin/MMAFighting.com)

If we needed any more proof that Michael Chandler deserves to be mentioned among the world’s best 155′ers, we got it last night at Bellator 85 in Irvine, California, when the reigning Bellator lightweight champion made decorated judoka Rick Hawn look like it was his first time on the mats. Chandler completed his takedowns with impressive ease, and when he saw an opportunity to take Hawn’s neck during a scramble in round two, he seized on it, sinking a rear-naked choke and showcasing the killer instinct that has now become a hallmark of Chandler’s game. To be honest, it wasn’t much of a fight, and this season’s lightweight tournament field doesn’t suggest that his next challenger will make things any harder for him. On the bright side, Chandler may have just established himself as Bellator’s greatest home-grown fighter — a budding superstar for the promotion’s new Spike TV era.

While Michael Chandler made his title defense with little resistance, reigning featherweight champion Pat Curran faced a much trickier test in Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Their title fight (which led off the Spike TV broadcast) played out as a 25-minute kickboxing match, which started slow but built into an entertaining and evenly-pitched battle. Curran’s striking was just a little more active and accurate, however, and if you were judging on facial damage through the fight, Pitbull’s swollen-shut right eye and bloodied mouth didn’t exactly scream “winner.” When the scores were announced, “Judo” Gene LeBell saw it for the challenger, but the other two judges made the right call in awarding the win to the defending champ.

In addition to the two title fights, Bellator 85′s main card also featured a pair of light-heavyweight tournament quarterfinals. Unfortunately, those UFC castoffs we mentioned yesterday are well on their way to becoming Bellator castoffs as well, as Renato “Babalu” Sobral and Seth Petruzelli were steamrolled by their lesser-known competitors. Russian M-1 Challenge vet Mikhail Zayats stunned Sobral with a spinning-backfist near the end of the first round of their fight, then swarmed him to the canvas and fired down punches until the fight was stopped. (Eddie Alvarez’s wife called that shit, you guys.)

(Pat Curran, King Mo, and Michael Chandler — co-nominees in the “Best Kiss” category. / Photo via Getty Images)

Bellator’s eighth season kicks off tonight on Spike TV (10/9c), and now that the promotion has left Friday nights, you might even be thinking about watching the show. Here’s why that’s a good idea…

1. Michael Chandler is the second-greatest undefeated fighter in the world. Since winning Bellator’s lightweight title from Eddie Alvarez in November 2011, Chandler has competed exactly once — a 56-second TKO of Akihiro Gono in a non-title mismatch last May. Now carrying a perfect record of 10-0, Chandler is once again facing a legit challenge in the form of Rick Hawn, the former Olympic judoka and Bellator mainstay who dropped down from welterweight last year and swept the Season 6 Lightweight Tournament.

2. Pat Curran is also an entertaining son-of-a-bitch. Undefeated at 145 pounds, Curran also competed just once last year, when he very nearly ended Joe Warren’s life to win Bellator’s featherweight title. We’ve been itching to see him back in the game, and he’ll be leading off tonight’s Spike broadcast with a belt-defense against Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Speaking of guys who have been sidelined for a while, Pitbull hasn’t been in the cage since he won the Season Four Featherweight Tournament in 2011, partly due to a broken hand suffered in training last year.

Bellator’s first event on Spike TV will take place Thursday, January 17th, at the University of California’s Bren Center in Irvine, California, and will be headlined by a pair of title fights. The promotion confirmed the news today, revealing that undefeated phenom Michael Chandler will make his first official lightweight title defense at the event (aka Bellator 85) against Rick Hawn, the 14-1 Olympic judoka who won the Season 5 lightweight tournament earlier this year.

Also on the card, featherweight champion Pat Curran — who’s 4-0 since dropping to 145 and is coming off his near-murder of Joe Warren — will be putting his belt on the line against explosive contender Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Though Freire won all three of his fights in 2011, winning the Season 4 featherweight tournament, he wasn’t able to compete in 2012, partly due to injuries.

And that’s not all. During a Bellator/Spike TV conference call held earlier today, many more details about Bellator 85 and the promotion’s upcoming eighth season were announced. For instance…

(It’s safe to say that it can’t end any worse than the first time.) 

Over the past two years, Joe Warren has gone from a tough-nosed underdog to an unexpected/abrasively arrogant champion to the poster child for what not to do if you ever become an MMA champion. His strategy of trying to win two belts before he could defend one (also known as Hendo-ing) backfired in epic fashion to say the least, resulting in a pair of brutal knockout losses to Alexis Villa and Pat Curran,  the latter of which cost him the title he had actually earned. Not only were these losses thoroughly embarrassing for his “Baddest Man on the Planet” shtick, but the damage resulting from them will likely challenge his mental stability down the line if you know what we are saying. The fact that he obtained the featherweight title in the fashion he did — getting absolutely dominated only to score a flukish comeback thereafter — only led people to further question his decision to drop down a weight class in hindsight.

Unfortunately for Joe, his combination of bad decision making and bad luck left him with nowhere to go other than back down to bantamweight for his next fight at Bellator 80, which goes down on November 9th. Fortunately for Joe, the matchmakers at Bellator or going to give him a much easier opponent this time around…

(Turns out, Pat Curran received a nickel for every unnecessary shot he was able to deliver to Warren’s dome. He used the proceeds to buy his mother a house in Brazil.) 

Whether you love or hate former Bellator featherweight champion Joe Warren, you were likely up in arms over the ridiculously late stoppage that marred his Bellator 60 title fight with Pat Curran. In fact, you were likely curled up in the fetal position when forced to re-watch that travesty while writing for a MMA website some ten days later. You weren’t? Well, neither was I, but this guy I know…

In either case, you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Joe Warren vomited backstage in the wake of that loss, which basically wrote home the general consensus that he had suffered a concussion that night. Thankfully, Warren has undergone several tests since then that have cleared him of any permanent brain damage, but the idea that he could receive a scant 90 day suspension for his injuries has earned the ire of MMAJunkie.com medical columnist Dr. Johnny Benjamin, who feels Warren should take closer to a year to fully recover from that ungodly beating:

He needs a year off for his brain to heal and then reassess his life and say, ‘Is this what I want to continue to do? Two vicious knockouts in a row? You don’t even want to begin to think what that’s doing to your brain. The man really needs a year off from taking blows to the head.

Given that Gary Goodridge was recent diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy as a result of similarly acquired punishment, perhaps this is something Warren should consider.

Join us after the jump for more from Dr. Benjamin’s interview.

(Props: Amazon.com, via CP reader “joe sons balls,” who claims that he randomly came upon one of Phil Baroni‘s old fetish-modeling gigs while searching for XTC t-shirts. Sure, buddy. Your secret’s safe with us.)

Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere…

- Sean Sherk Planning UFC Return in 2012, But Won’t Fight ‘Some Chump Who Needs Some Fame’ (MMA Mania)

- Report: UFC Beginning to Target Consumers in Online Piracy War (MMA Convert)

- Pat Curran Talks Title Win Over Joe Warren at Bellator 60 (The Fight Nerd)

- Trouble Already Brewing on Set of TUF 15 (Five Ounces of Pain)

- Nick Diaz Might Be Retired From MMA, But His Career as a Ninja Has Just Begun (MiddleEasy)

- Jon Jones Wants Anderson Silva as a “Mentor,” Not an Opponent (Lowkick.Blitzcorner.com)

- Odds Stacked Against Frank Mir at UFC 146 (5th Round)

- Cesar Gracie Wants Penn or Pettis for Gilbert Melendez’s Next Fight (FightLine)

- Tim Sylvia Deserves Another Shot in the UFC (BleacherReport.com/MMA)

- UFC Threatens Lawsuit Against Oklahoma (MMA Payout)

- Testosterone Capitulation: The UFC, Rampage, & Fighters Only (Fight Opinion)

Say what you want about how bitter SPIKE is acting towards the UFC ever since acquiring rights to Bellator. But after watching Bellator 60 last night in Hammond, Indiana on MTV2, it’s not hard to understand what SPIKE sees in the promotion. Season Six kicked off with a bang, with a new featherweight champion and four men advancing in the season’s featherweight tournament.

Even without considering Joe Warren’s Greco-Roman background, it’s no surprise that Warren’s gameplan would consist of attempting takedowns early and often after the brutal knockout loss to Alexis Vila he suffered in his last fight at Bellator 51. And while Warren found success with his takedowns, he was completely unable to keep Pat Curran on the mat. Curran landed some hard shots throughout the fight, but a hard right knee in the third round put Warren out on his feet. But since the referee didn’t stop the fight, Curran then landed a flurry of punches and knees that caused Joe Warren to turn his back to the challenger. And when the referee still didn’t stop the fight, Pat Curran landed two huge uppercuts that floored Warren, finally ending the fight one minute and twenty five seconds into the third round. With the victory, Curran improves to 17-4 in his MMA career, including a 7-1 run in Bellator.

Video After the jump.

(Props: BellatorMMA)

So while we’re waiting on KarmaAteMyCat to deliver some videos from last night’s Bellator 48, let’s talk about the action, shall we? With all of the excitement from last night’s event, it only makes sense to start with Cole Konrad vs. Paul Buentello. Yes, they fought. Yes, Cole Konrad won in unspectacular fashion. Yes, we can now stop talking about this fight.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was Pat Curran’s dramatic head kick knockout of former Sengoku champion Marlon Sandro. Despite being in trouble early on, Pat Curran kept his composure and unleashed a brutal roundhouse kick. With his victory, Pat Curran becomes the first fighter to win a Bellator tournament in two different weight classes. I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to more: Pat Curran’s inevitable clash with Joe Warren, or the confused look on his banker’s face when he tries to cash that oversized check.

(Pat Curran’s Peruvian necktie submission of Luis Palomino at Bellator 46, 6/25/11.)

Bellator 48 goes down tonight at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, featuring the finals of Bellator’s Summer Series Featherweight Tournament — former Sengoku standout Marlon Sandro vs. former lightweight tournament winner Pat Curran — as well as the promotional debuts of Ricco Rodriguez, Seth Petruzelli, and Paul Buentello. The main card will be broadcast live on MTV2 beginning at 9 p.m. ET.

Honorary CagePotato Fight Team captain Jefferey “KarmaAteMyCat” Watts has snagged a press credential to the event, and will be representing us on press row this evening, hopefully wearing some killer tights. Assuming the Mohegan Sun has a solid Internet connection, Jeff will be sharing his observations during the show, after the jump. It’s not a “liveblog,” so much as a casual chat among friends. So follow along if you’re watching the fights, let us know your thoughts, and remember to refresh the page once in a while. Thanks for being here.

You know how sometimes you work on something for a long time, but toward the end you’re just making it worse, but you’ve already put time and energy into it so you don’t want to trash it? Yeah, that’s never happened to me before.

From Wikipedia: The Casino of the Sky has a functional planetarium utilizing fiber optics to display the sun, moon, and stars accompanying the lighting effects of the Wombi Rock, which is a three-story high crystal mountain crafted of alabaster and more than 12,000 individual plates of hand-selected onyx from quarries in Iran, Pakistan, and Mexico; which were transported to Carrara, Italy and fused into glass.

Now look, we may not be able to fully comprehend the functional value of this “Wombi Rock” but that sounds fucking BALLER. Turns out the Mohegan Sun Casino outside Uncasville, Connecticut is the second largest casino in the United States, and we have some extravagant casinos.

So when Bellator pops off for the third and last time of the summer this Saturday, don’t talk to me about “minor league” and “small potatoes”. With a talent pool that is constantly getting deeper with the excellent scouting from the BFC office, a tournament format that keeps fans coming back, and a spot waiting for them on SpikeTV (*fingers crossed*) Bellator is big time, baby.

Come on in and let’s run down the show, starting off with that Featherweight Tournament Final…

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.

Realizing that beautiful things can be accomplished in the summertime, Bellator kicked off its 8-man featherweight tournament last night on MTV 2. If you happened to miss it, we’ve got a quick recap of how things went down along with a few gifs for your viewing pleasure after the jump.

“I believe you yanks call this a mean mug?” PicProps: Bellator.com

Since we mentioned it yesterday in that blatant vanity post, we’ll go ahead and fill you in with some of the details about Bellator’s plans for the summer. As you may remember, a BFC press release announcing the deal with MTV2 made a vague mention of “a collection of special feature events” on top of two full seasons a year. Details at the time were sketchy, and we weren’t really sure what those special feature events would entail. As the season four tournaments unfolded, we heard more and more about tournament action between seasons, initially referred to as a “mini-tournament”. We’d been thinking that this meant perhaps a couple of four-man brackets, maybe some of those Super Fights that Bellator digs so much.

Man, we were way off. Bjorn Rebney, head honcho of the BFC, has put together another intriguing tournament at 145, and that, ladies and germs, will be your main course for the summer series. If you are interested in that kind of thing, we’ve prepared a short primer on the featherweight tourney, plus a preview of Bellator 46, where the four quarterfinals will kick off in that other Hollywood.

Although we suppose you could come in and just throw poop at the new guy. Whatever.

Despite making a name for himself in Bellator as a lightweight, Bellator announced yesterday that Season Two Lightweight Tournament winner Pat Curran will drop to featherweight to enter the upcoming Summer Series Featherweight Tournament. The tournament is scheduled to kick off June 25 at Bellator 46 at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. The winner will receive a shot at Joe Warren for the Bellator Featherweight title.

In a press release sent out by Bellator, Pat Curran issued the following statement: “I’ve fought at featherweight for most of my career, so I’m really excited to get back to a weight class where I can really do some damage…I had some great results as a lightweight, but I’m really going to make some noise in this summer featherweight tournament.” Curran’s Cinderella run through the season two lightweight tournament was followed up by a decision loss to Eddie Alvarez back at Bellator 39. Despite the loss, Curran showed a lot of heart throughout the fight, avoiding Eddie’s takedowns and absorbing a lot of damage while attempting to mount his own offense.

If you watch carefully, you can see his Soul flashing a peace sign when it flies out.  (VidProps: Bellator)

If you listened to this week’s edition of the Bum Rush (you did, right?), you know that some of us were really looking forward to Bellator action this weekend, and some of us were unconvinced.  But when guys are pulling off stupid-rare submissions and handing out beatdowns on the weekly, we say those naysayers are just stupid neenerfaces.  You go ahead and contemplate how much time we’re spending with preschool kids while you click the “Read More” link below, then share your comments about just how awesome Bellator is.  Hyperbole and ridiculous analogies will win you style points, and haterific comments will probably inspire ReX13 to bestow an insulting website upon your login.  That asshole is just way too sensitive sometimes.

(“Next!” Pic: Bellator)

And then there was one. It’s been almost three weeks since the news broke that Zuffa, LLC. had purchased Strikeforce – this week Our Octagon Overlords allegedly began signing SF fighters to their own airtight contractual arrangements – and it just now dawns on us what this means for Eddie Alvarez. Put simply, the continued Dana-fication of the MMA landscape means Alvarez is the only US-based 155-pound fighter anywhere near the Top 10 (or, hell, Top 20) not currently owned in a roundabout way by Big DW and the Fertitta Bros. God, that must be lonely.

As if on cue, and just a few days before he’s set to put his Bellator title on the line against tournament winner Pat Curran at an event we all keep forgetting about, Alvarez made some fairly stock claims this week to SI.com’s Jeff Waggenheim about how a lot of UFC lightweights would be “nobodies” without the promotion’s PR muscle behind them. Boy, we’ve heard this one before, right?

(Bellator Savings and Loans? I’m not familiar with that bank, Mr. Curran. We’ll have to put a hold on that check)

By DL “Colorful Prose” Richardson

As the second season of Bellator draws to a close, we get less of the tournament battles and more of the feature bouts and tryout fights. That’s not necessarily a complaint: fighters can put on some captivating performances when there’s a lot on the line, and we’ve seen it already this season. Tonight, the main event is the final of the 155 pound tournament, but there’s considerable buzz around the stateside return of Megumi Fujii. Fujii, who came in at 19-0, is considered one of, if not the, top pound for pound women’s fighters. Bellator rounds out the live show with a heavyweight bout with a potential invitation to next season’s tournament on the line.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, and I’ll tell you what went down, what I think about it, and the secret ingredient to in El Famous Burritos.

(Props: Bellator.com)

After eight shows and a whole lot of colorful prose from ReX13, Bellator’s second season is entering its climactic Finals stage tomorrow night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Headlining Bellator 21 will be the lightweight final between grappling ace Toby Imada — who submitted James Krause and Carey Vanier (both via second-round armbar) to get to the end of the bracket — and Pat Curran, who earned his spot in the finals by knocking out Mike Ricci and scoring an upset decision over Roger Huerta. The winner of the fight will face Bellator lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez later this year.

(The end of the Alvarez/Neer fight, via YouTube.com/BellatorMMA.)

By DL “Tank Abbot” Richardson

Some of Bellator’s biggest names were on the card last night at the Citi Performing Arts Center, for the first-ever major MMA show in Boston. Two semi-final matchups for the lightweight tourney were on tap, plus a 160-pound SuperFight between Eddie Alvarez and Josh Neer, and a heavyweight exhibition featuring one of Brock Lesnar‘s training dummies partners. But not everything went as planned. A full rundown of Bellator 17 is after the jump. Prepare yourselves — some crazy shit went down…

(The gruesome end of Curran vs. Ricci. All four tournament fights from last night’s event ended in stoppages. Video courtesy of YouTube.com/BellatorMMA.)

…are waiting for you after the jump.