Check out the rundown of Friday’s Bellator 242 main card, including savvy strikers Ricky Bandejas and Sergio Pettis in the main event.
Viacom’s brand of MMA is finally returning after their pandemic break with Bellator 242, live tonight (July 24th) from the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut. The card’s headliner will see the younger Pettis brother, Sergio, in his sophomore appearance for the company taking on the ever-scrappy Ricky Bandejas.
Pettis made his promotional debut this past January, rocking Alfred Khashakyan on the feet and then choking him unconscious with a guillotine in three-minutes flat. We all knew how good Sergio was coming in, having already fought elites like Joseph Benavidez, Henry Cejudo, and Jussier Formiga in the UFC — but honestly who really saw that sort of violence coming from Pettis? It was actually the first time that he finished an opponent since he was on the regional scene in 2013. Pettis is so complete and polished pretty much everywhere, so his debut was an excellent showcase of what he’s capable of when everything clicks at once. Who knows, perhaps there will be Bellator gold in the Roufusport product’s future?
Ricky Bandejas is going to try and prevent that from happening by toppling his biggest name opponent to date. Simply put, Bandejas is a scrapper. He might not have the prettiest techniques and he might not be the best athlete in the cage, but he is a fighter through and through. He is going to come right at you and he can take it just as well as he can give it. He can hurt you coming forward (see his fight with James Gallagher), or he can knock you out moving backwards (see his fight with Ahmet Kayretli). Now training at American Top Team, let’s see if Bandejas has added some polish to his game and can pull off the biggest win of his career.
Before that, the Bellator 242 co-main event will get a welterweight tilt between longtime UFC veteran, Jordan Mein, and a regular Bellator face in Jason Jackson. Mein is only 30-years-old, but he had his first amateur fight back in 2002, and his first pro bout in 2006. The current year is 2020, so you go and do the math on that and then decide if that’s something that’s good, bad, both, or neither.
Starting out in MMA at an early has its ups and downs. On the one hand, you develop your techniques at a much more rapid rate when you’re a young whippersnapper than you do later on in life. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks for a reason. But on the other hand, you tend to rack up some high mileage with a lot of life left ahead of you, which is never good, as well as run the risk of simply burning out and losing that fire. Mein seems to be a mixture of all of that. He has all of the technical prowess, and has always been a rather durable fighter. It’s really more of a mindset thing it seems, so the real question is whether or not Jordan Mein shows up.
Jason Jackson is definitely going to want to make this match as least fun a possible for Mein, in hopes of prompting the veteran to mentally check out of the fight. The TUF 21 alumni is decently athletic and has shown some solid takedown defense. He can rock you with his punches on the feet, or catch you in a triangle on the ground. He will be giving up some polish to the life-long martial artist, so Jackson is going to have to overcome that by staying where his athleticism counts the most… open space.
We’ve got a pair of featherweight fights to round out the Bellator 242 main card. Before the co-main, the ever-explosive Ty-wan Claxton will collide with undefeated finisher, Jay Jay Wilson. It should be noted that Wilson missed weight by 1.9 pounds. Opening up the main card, the constantly restarting hype-train known as Aaron Pico will dance with the 8-2 Solo Hatley Jr. The main card will start live at 10:00 PM ET and can be seen on the Paramount Network.
For an in-depth breakdown of each Bellator 242 tilt, check out The MMA Vivisection with Bloody Elbow’s own Zane Simon, Vic Rodriguez, and Eddie Mercado. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date with all of our live video content. Stay glued to Bloody Elbow for all of your event coverage including play-by-play, results, highlights, and more!
Main card:
- Ricky Bandejas vs. Sergio Pettis: Bantamweight
- Jordan Mein vs. jason Jackson: Welterweight
- Ty-wan Claxton vs. Jay Jay Wilson: Featherweight
- Aaron Pico vs. Solo Hatley Jr: Featherweight
Prelims:
- Jake Smith vs. Mark Lemminger: Welterweight
- Raufeon Stots vs. Cass Bell: Bantamweight
- Rudy Schaffroth vs. Ras Hylton: Heavyweight