Brian Rogers
An injury to Bellator Season Six middleweight semi-finalist Bruno ‘Carioca’ Santos (13-0) has forced the undefeated Brazilian off this Friday’s upcoming tournament bout with Brian ‘The Predator’ Rogers (9-3).
Rogers will instead face Andreas ‘Sweet Swede’ Spang (7-1) on the main card of Bellator 66, with Spang making his promotional debut at the April 20 event.
Bellator 66 is scheduled to take place at the I-X Center in Cleveland, Ohio with the main card airing live on MTX2. Meeting in the other middleweight semi-final on the card will be Russian Vyacheslav Vasilevsky and Brazilian Maiquel Falcao.
News of the change was announced Monday by Cleveland.com’s Chuck Yarborough, who confirmed that Santos had severely injured his shoulder during training.
Spang’s base is as a kickboxer and hails from Las Vegas, Nevada. His last bout took place this past November earning a first round TKO victory over Willie Parks after debuting with Strikeforce at a Challenges 20 event. It was Spang’s second straight win after submitting Cody Krahn at an MFC 30 event in Alberta, Canada.
Rogers is coming off a spectacular flying knee KO of Vitor Vianna last month at Bellator 61 in the opening quarterfinals of the Season Six middleweight tournament. The win erased a loss to Alexander Shlemenko in the semifinals of the Season Five tournament, which ended a seven fight win streak for ‘The Predator’.