Author: Michael David Smith

With Bellator getting its sixth season underway, and Pat Curran beating Joe Warren to become the promotion’s featherweight champion, take a minute to consider just how much Curran’s profile has risen in the mixed martial arts world since he signed with Bellator two years ago.

Curran originally entered the promotion for its Season 2 lightweight tournament, and at the time he was a little-known fighter whom people figured was just a throw-in for a tournament that was expected to anoint Roger Huerta as the No. 1 contender for champion Eddie Alvarez. Instead, Curran beat Huerta on the way to winning the tournament.

Although Curran lost his title fight against Alvarez, he then moved down to featherweight for last summer’s Bellator tournament, and he was even more impressive at 145 pounds. His brutal knockouts of Marlon Sandro and Joe Warren in his last two fights have been extraordinary, and he has now firmly established himself as one of the truly elite featherweights in MMA.

So where does he rank? Find out below.

Top 10 Featherweights in Mixed Martial Arts

(Number in parentheses is the fighter’s previous ranking.)

1. Jose Aldo (1): The champion is so far ahead of the pack that the UFC isn’t quite sure what to do with him: UFC President Dana White wanted Frankie Edgar to move down to featherweight and challenge Aldo, but Edgar didn’t want to do it. It’s still not clear who Aldo will face next, but it is clear that he’ll be heavily favored.

2. Hatsu Hioki (2): Hioki left Japan as Sengoku’s champion and has now improved to 2-0 in the UFC. He’s the most likely challenger for Aldo, although the UFC’s hesitance to put that fight together suggests they question whether Hioki is ready.

3. Pat Curran (4): One of the many reasons to love Curran is that he is still only 24 years old — younger than Aldo. He’s only going to get better, and he may some day be the best featherweight in the world, period.

4. Chad Mendes (3): Mendes suffered a tough loss to Aldo in January, but with his wrestling prowess he can take down and control almost anyone else at 145 pounds. I could see him winning a whole lot of decisions and becoming the Jon Fitch of the featherweight division.

5. Erik Koch (5): Koch is still on the shelf with an injury after dropping out of his planned fight with Dustin Poirier at UFC 143, and there’s no word when he’ll be back.

6. Dustin Poirier (8): Poirier’s May 15 main event against Chan Sung Jung could give the UFC its next featherweight title contender. Poirier is now 4-0 since moving into the UFC featherweight division and coming off a great submission win over Max Holloway in February.

10. Charles Oliveira (NR): Dropping down to featherweight was a great move for Oliveira. His calf slicer submission of Eric Wisely was one of the best submissions of the year so far, and with his height and at age 22 he has a great future in the featherweight division.

The new, revamped, FX version of The Ultimate Fighter on Friday night mixed some of the old — reality show fodder from 16 mixed martial artists living together — and a lot of the new — the show had a fresh feel aided by its quick turnaround time, and the fight at the end of the episode was live, as every fight will be in this, the show’s 15th season.

The fight, James Vick vs Daron Cruickshank, was a good one. Cruickshank was the aggressor from the outset, hitting Vick with a wide array of strikes. But when Cruickshank ducked down to go for a takedown, Vick landed a perfectly timed knee to Cruickshank’s chin, knocking Cruickshank cold and ending the fight by first-round knockout.

“I went for the kick, I saw him shoot and I hit him with the knee,” Vick said of his lucky knockout after the fight. “I went for the kick but the knee landed so it was all good.”

UFC President Dana White gushed about Vick’s “great fight” and was clearly pleased with how the new, live show played out.

There’s no doubt that the live format was a success: It was an exciting fight made more exciting by the fact that it was live. The live fights are this year’s major innovation on The Ultimate Fighter, but the show also felt fresher because everything on it was new — all of the action in the house and the gym came from the last week.

The episode’s most compelling moment came inside the house, when Mike Chiesa found out that his father died. The UFC and FX did a great job of taking the viewers inside every moment as Chiesa sobbed when he got the news, then made the decision to leave the house briefly to attend to his family but come back after a couple of days. UFC President Dana White, who usually strictly forbids fighters from leaving during the taping of The Ultimate Fighter, made an exception to give Chiesa a few days off for the funeral. Chiesa said his dad would want him to come back and win the show, and that’s what he hopes to do.

We might not see something that emotional every week, but the FX makeover of The Ultimate Fighter promises to give us a new and improved version of the UFC’s longtime reality show.

Maiquel Falcao, Brian Rogers, Bruno Santos and Vyacheslav Vasilevsky advanced to the semifinals of the Season 6 middleweight tournament with victories at Bellator 61 on Friday night.

In the main event, Falcao beat Norman Paraisy by unanimous decision, 30-27 on all three judges’ scorecards. It was an easy win for Falcao, who clearly had Paraisy outclassed, but it was also a frustrating fight: At times Falcao showed flashes of the powerful striking that has been his hallmark, but too often after a flurry of punches he’d back off or start taunting Paraisy rather than going for the finish.

Rogers had a brilliant first-round knockout victory over Vitor Vianna in the first televised fight. Rogers knew he had to avoid going to the ground with Vianna, a world-class Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner, and he was smart about keeping the fight standing and getting quickly back to his feet when it went to the ground. Rogers hurt Vianna with a combination and then sprang forward with a flying knee to the chin that knocked Vianna cold.

Santos earned a workmanlike unanimous decision over Giva Santana. The judges scored it 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28 in a fight in which Santos was careful to maintain the upper hand while never putting himself in danger of getting submitted by Santana on the ground. In the final seconds of the third round, Santana attempted to submit Santos with a knee bar, but Santos was able to ride it out and hold on to win the fight.

Vasilevsky turned Victor O’Donnell’s face into a bloody mess on the way to a unanimous decision victory that all three judges scored 29-28. Vasilevsky landed vicious combinations of punches, battering O’Donnell both standing up and on the ground. The fight easily could have been stopped toward the end, as O’Donnell just had nothing left. Vasilevsky, fighting outside Eastern Europe for the first time, looked great.

Bellator returns for its second show of the year on Friday night, with its Season 6 middleweight tournament getting underway. The planned main event — Thiago Santos vs. Eric Prindle to complete Bellator’s Season 5 heavyweight tournament — has been pushed back a week, but that’s just as well: The middleweight action is going to be better than that heavyweight fight.

What: Bellator 61

When: Friday, the MTV2-televised card begins at 8 p.m. Eastern

Where: Horseshoe Riverdome, Bossier City, Louisiana

Predictions on the four middleweight tournament fights below.

Maiquel Falcao vs. Norman Paraisy

Falcao signed with the UFC in 2010, was dropped by the promotion amid questions about a prior assault charge, and is now back in the U.S. and fighting for Bellator. He’s a fearsome striker who I think has to be viewed as the favorite to win the entire tournament, and I certainly think he’ll beat Paraisy, who’s a fine fighter but not really on the same level as Falcao.

Pick: Falcao

Vitor Vianna vs. Brian Rogers

Rogers and Vianna both lost to Alexander Shlemenko in last season’s middleweight tournament, and now they draw each other in the first round of this season’s tournament. Rogers hits hard enough that he could put Vianna in some trouble standing up, but Vianna is a world-class Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner and I think he’ll make Rogers tap.

Pick: Viana

Vyacheslav Vasilevsky vs. Victor O’Donnell

O’Donnell is back after losing to Rogers in last year’s Bellator middleweight tournament, and he gets a tough draw in Vasilevsky, a very exciting prospect who is currently on a 14-fight winning streak but has never fought outside Eastern Europe. It’s possible that O’Donnell could take Vasilevsky down and submit him but I think Vasilevsky will prove to be too good a striker and win by TKO.

Pick: Vasilevsky

Giva Santana vs. Bruno Santos

I was extremely excited when Bellator signed Santana, who’s nicknamed “The Arm Collector” because he’s won 13 fights by armbar while building up a 17-1 record. The 12-0 Santos may be savvy enough to avoid falling into Santana’s trap, but I believe Santana will win even if he can’t force Santos to tap.

Pick: Santana

Speaking publicly for the first time since the UFC suspended him for testing positive for painkillers at UFC 138, Chris Leben said that the suspension forced him into rehab and forced him to turn his life around.

“I’ve battled drugs and alcohol,” Leben said on The MMA Hour. “I’ve battled with those for my entire life. I’ve had an issue with being addicted to painkillers for years now. I had some issues with my camp and it was almost a cry for help. I knew I was going to get caught and I just didn’t care at the time. I’m extremely embarrassed, I feel like I let down the UFC, but at the same time I think getting caught is probably the best thing to ever happen to me. The UFC has been unbelievable, they sent me to a rehab facility and they really took care of me.”

Leben said he knew he had the oxycodone and oxymorphone pills with him at the UFC event in England knowing he would be drug tested, and that while he hoped he could force himself off the pills just long enough to get through the fight and start taking them again afterward, as the fight approached he just couldn’t stop.

“My wife had brought them to me for after the fight, and I had tapered off them for the fight, but there were some issues, a lot of stress, and I cracked,” Leben said. “It was as simple as that. I knew they were there and I cracked. I couldn’t hold out.”

That was five months ago, and when the positive drug test came back the UFC suspended him for a year. Leben said that he’s taking that year to get his life back on track, and that he hasn’t taken a pain pill since he went to rehab. However, he did admit to “a slip” in which he “had a drink — more than one.” Since then Leben has been taking Antabuse, which will make him sick if he has a drink.

Leben said that slip, however, is not a fall.

“Right now life is actually going well for me — it’s going great, considering,” Leben said. “Life’s going really good, better than it has in a long, long time.”

If Leben can keep his life moving in the right direction, he says, “I hope to God” he’ll be back in the Octagon late this year.

Dakota Cochrane, the UFC hopeful who gained notoriety in the last month when it was revealed that he had been involved in pornography before attempting a career in mixed martial arts, was unsuccessful in his attempt to earn a spot on this season of The Ultimate Fighter.

On Friday night’s live Ultimate Fighter show on FX, Cochrane suffered a split decision loss to James Vick.

Cochrane, who entered the fight with an 11-2 professional mixed martial arts record, disclosed to the UFC in his initial application for The Ultimate Fighter that he had been involved in gay pornography. The UFC has said it doesn’t consider that an issue.

But what is an issue is that Cochrane had just one opportunity on Friday night to get a shot at making it into the UFC’s longstanding reality show, which was shown live for the first time on Friday night. On that score, Cochrane fell short, and so he’ll pack up and head home.

In other Ultimate Fighter action, Sam Sicilia needed just eight seconds to knock out Erin Beach, with his huge right hand providing one of the fastest knockouts ever seen inside the Octagon.

Also winning and moving into the Ultimate Fighter house was Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt and former Chute Box BJJ coach Cristiano Marcello, who submitted Jared Carlsten at 2:42. And Myles Jury, who is 10-0 and will surely be one of the favorites to win the whole season, beat Akbarh Arreloa by unanimous decision.

Full results are here.