Bellator championship picture comes into focus
By BOB EMANUEL JR. | Scripps Howard News Service
The championship picture in Bellator MMA received a gigantic overhaul last weekend when two titles changed hands and an interim champion was crowned.
Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler, who defeated Eddie Alvarez in 2011 to capture the title, suffered a split decision loss to Alvarez in his return to the promotion. Alvarez, who was embroiled in a contract dispute with Bellator, pulled out a dominant fifth round to pull ahead on two of the three judges’ scorecards.
Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney previously said the first meeting between Alvarez and Chandler was the best fight he had ever seen. Now, he holds the second fight in the same regard.
“If somebody had come to me and said, ‘I’ll give you 1,000-to-1 odds that Alvarez-Chandler Two is as good — if not better — than Alvarez-Chandler One,’ that’s the bet you take,” Rebney said. “Those kind of fights don’t duplicate themselves. This fight duplicated itself.”
The rematch moved away from Bellator precedent, where a title shot is earned via a tournament, and a third bout between the pair could happen in 2014 after both fighters recover from injuries sustained in the fight.
“My mindset would not jump back into ‘Lets’ see who wins the next tournament and is going to fight Ed,’” Rebney said. “Michael Chandler and Ed are just a razor’s edge apart in terms of who dominates a given fight. Ed could have easily won the last fight in the third round, and Ed ended up losing in the fourth. Ed could have gotten finished in this fight. Michael could have gotten finished in this fight. You can’t script fights like that.”
Daniel Straus defeated Pat Curran via a unanimous decision to win the Bellator featherweight championship. Like Alvarez, Straus avenged a loss from earlier in his career.
Emanuel Newton earned a decision victory over Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal to win the Bellator interim light heavyweight title. It was Newton’s second victory over Lawal this year. Newton will face champion Attila Vegh next year in a title unification bout.
QUICK JABS: A pair of former champions, Dan Henderson and Vitor Belfort, will headline Saturday night’s Ultimate Fighting Championship Fight Night 32 from the Goiania Arena in Goiania, Brazil. Henderson, a former PRIDE middleweight and welterweight champion and a former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, was in line for a title shot against UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones last year before he missed the event with a knee injury. He owns a victory over Belfort in 2006 in PRIDE. Belfort, a former UFC light heavyweight champion, is 9-2 since the loss to Henderson, although the two losses came to former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and current UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. Belfort (23-10) won his past two fights over Michael Bisping and Luke Rockhold. The main card can be seen on Fox Sports 1 at 2 p.m. HST.
