Dave Menne

(Image courtesy of Bellator.com)

The Bellator Fighting Championships' ongoing tournament series made a stop in Norman, Oklahoma, on Friday night, with an 11-bout card highlighted by the first round of their middleweight bracket. Fights from this event were split between two separate ESPN Deportes broadcasts, one shown two nights ago ("Bellator III") and one to be aired next Saturday ("Bellator IV"); weird, I know.

As expected, 185-pound favorite Hector Lombard advanced to the semifinals and increased his record to 19-2 with a dominant win over Virgil "The Mexican Machine" Lozano. "Shango" needed just 70 seconds to knock out Lozano from the clinch with a well-timed uppercut. Though Lombard may be the only fighter in the 185-pound bracket that most MMA fans have heard of, he has a very stiff test coming up in his semifinal fight against Damien Stelly, a U.S. Army Ranger who used slams and ground-and-pound to score a unanimous decision over Lion's Den fighter Alex "El Toro" Andrade.

Elsewhere on the card, former UFC middleweight champ Dave Menne handed ATT prospect Norman Paraisy his first career loss, as part of Bellator's welterweight tournament. Though Paraisy held an edge in the first two rounds of their match, Menne was able to take Paraisy's back during a scramble in the third frame and sink in a rear-naked choke. Menne advances to the 170-pound semifinals and will next take on Omar De La Cruz.

Following a one-week layoff, Bellator's next show will be held May 1st at the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, and will feature the semifinal match-ups for their lightweight tournament. Top-ten lightweight Eddie Alvarez will meet Eric Reynolds, while Bodog/Strikeforce/Sengoku vet Jorge Masvidal will match up with Toby Imada.

Full results from Bellator III/IV are after the jump...

(Wilson Reis vs. Henry Martinez)

If you're one of the proud, multi-lingual subscribers of ESPN Deportes, this is old news to you, but the second weekly installment of the Bellator Fighting Championships went down Friday night (and was broadcast on Saturday), with former EliteXC 140-pound champ Wilson Reis extending his record to 7-0 with a decision win over Henry Martinez, and IFL/Ring of Combat vet Lyman Good scoring his eighth consecutive win after choking out Hector Urbina. Also on the card was Jorge Ortiz (aka "The Naked Man"), who scored a decision win over Aaron Romero. You can watch the entire broadcast (in English!) starting this Wednesday on Bellator.com. Full results are below...

TOURNAMENT BOUTS
Wilson Reis def. Henry Martinez via unanimous decision (bantamweights)
Eric Reynolds def. Thomas Schulte via TKO, 4:18 of round 1 (lightweights)
Lyman Good def. Hector Urbina via submission (rear-naked choke), 3:22 of round 2 (welterweights)
Omar de la Cruz def. Victor Meza via unanimous decision (welterweights)
Jorge Ortiz def. Aaron Romero via unanimous decision (welterweights)

NON-TOURNAMENT BOUTS
Jesse Juarez def. Mikey Gomez via TKO, 4:23 of round one (welterweights)
Matt Makowksi def. Aaron Tregear via unanimous decision (lightweights)
Jimmie Rivera def. Willie Gates via submission (triangle choke), 3:17 of round 3 (bantamweights)
Josh Laberge def. Chris Simmons via unanimous decision (lightweights)

Bellator's staggered four-weight-class tournament system may seem confusing at first, but basically here's what's going to happen...

On the suggestion of reader "rheindog," here's Phil Baroni's 18-second destruction of Dave Menne at UFC 39 (9/27/02). Baroni's jackhammer-beatdown is memorable enough, but what makes this one classic is his Super-Guido celebration at the end: "I'm the best eva! I'm the man! I'm the man! I'm the man!" Unfortunately, he wasn't — Baroni's next four fights would result in losses at the hands of Matt Lindland, Evan Tanner (twice), and Pete Sell.