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Tonight, Bellator holds a world championship in its main event, live on MTV2. Bantamweight king Zack Makovsky will meet tournament winner Eduardo Dantas to decide the best bantamweight in Bellator.Also on the card will be tournament bouts that will pro…
Tonight, Bellator holds a world championship in its main event, live on MTV2. Bantamweight king Zack Makovsky will meet tournament winner Eduardo Dantas to decide the best bantamweight in Bellator.
Also on the card will be tournament bouts that will progress the current bantamweight and featherweight tournaments. Tonight, the landscape of Bellator will shift, despite the overshadowing of the return of the UFC tomorrow.
Who will win tonight? Let’s take a look.
Earlier this week, I defended Ben Askren’s win over Douglas Lima on my Bellator 64 report card. Askren’s win wasn’t the most exciting title fight in history—that much is certainly true—but I tried to shift perspectives and point out that th…
Earlier this week, I defended Ben Askren‘s win over Douglas Lima on my Bellator 64 report card. Askren’s win wasn’t the most exciting title fight in history—that much is certainly true—but I tried to shift perspectives and point out that the responsibility for having an exciting fight falls on Askren’s opponent, because you already know what he’s going to do when you step in the cage with him.
If you can’t get out from underneath him, well, that’s just too bad. Askren doesn’t care about pleasing the fans.
My dude Ariel Helwani, on the most recent edition of the MMA Hour, pointed out that Askren’s win at Bellator 64 was fairly boring. Ariel was actually being nice. What he should’ve said, and didn’t, is that Askren’s win was one of the most boring fights in the history of the sport. Because it was.
Regardless, Askren didn’t respond to Helwani’s criticism very well:
Hey @arielhelwani I am still waiting on your expert advice. What strategy would have helped me finish the fight?
well I invite you to go in a cage with me. When you do that I will do your show. Otherwise kiss my ass.
Yes, Ben Askren challenged Ariel—a mixed martial arts journalist and a real reporter—to a fight.
I don’t know why the “well, you’ve never fought anyone so you can’t possibly have a valid opinion” response is so much more prevalent in MMA than in any other sport.
Is it because the MMA culture is filled with dudes who put on T-shirts with skulls, crosses and wings and instantly become tough guys? There’s a troubling subculture involved with this sport that isn’t just dangerous—it’s also ludicrous and a serious damper on the UFC’s attempts to be seen as a legitimate sport.
Guys like Askren don’t help, either.
It’s rare to see athletes from other sports claiming that journalists don’t know what they’re talking about because they’ve never thrown a touchdown in a Super Bowl or scored the game-winning shot in the NCAA tournament. Kevin Iole is a fantastic boxing journalist, and to the best of my knowledge, Kevin has never been heavyweight champion of the world, or even boxed in a professional fight.
Ariel is one of the best journalists in the sport, and he doesn’t just flippantly criticize fighters on their performances. He’s measured and thoughtful, so when he says publicly that you were in a boring fight, well, the chances are pretty good that you were actually in a boring fight.
Yeah, I’m tired of this argument. If you don’t want the fans or media calling you boring, don’t fight a boring style. I figured Askren was the one guy who truly didn’t care what the fans or media thought of his style, but I guess I was wrong.
I guess he’s just as sensitive as the rest of them.
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Canadian fighter Chad Laprise (5-0) made a memorable debut with the Bellator Fighting Championships last Friday night in Windsor, with a beautiful triangle submission-win over Josh Taveirne. Laprise got the tap at 2:48 of the first round, le…
Canadian fighter Chad Laprise (5-0) made a memorable debut with the Bellator Fighting Championships last Friday night in Windsor, with a beautiful triangle submission-win over Josh Taveirne. Laprise got the tap at 2:48 of the first round, leaving his perfect record of five wins and five finishes intact.
I spoke with Laprise today as he got ready to head off to British Columbia to corner Adrenaline Training Center mate Jesse Ronson in his title fight in Trail on Saturday night.
Laprise’s other teammate and friend Chris Horodecki was knocked out in his fight right before Laprise went out for his.
I wondered what type of an effect that had on Chad as he made his way out:
I didn’t actually see it, but I kinda heard it on TV. I saw the guys’ faces when they came back to get me for my fight. But it just makes you want to go out and do it even harder for him. Chris is not just a teammate he’s a friend, so you want pick it up for him.
Laprise sure did pick it up, getting his submission win in the first round with a beautiful display of ground fighting that we haven’t seen from the knockout artist.
He was a lot bigger than me. He came in on fight night about 20-pounds on me but I had trained off my back for months for this fight. I drilled getting to the cage and wall walking up so that’s exactly what I did in the fight.
Laprise then went into how he got the choke:
He’s a good wrestler and he can take you down but he had a tendency to leave his head down and lay on you a bit, so I knew if he got me to my back that I was going to go for that choke and it was right there so.
I was lucky because it’s a lot easier to get a guy early because he isn’t as slippery as the later rounds. It was there early so I took it. I had to work it a bit, but I knew I had it right away and I knew that if he didn’t tap he would go out and he pretty much did just as the ref came in.
It was a pivotal win for Laprise, as it gives him his first win in Bellator and sets him up nicely for what’s to come in the year ahead.
Luckily because of my win, I am talking to a few places right now and I would like to fight for Bellator again. They treated me just unbelievably first-class so I hope I can fight for them again. I am pretty much 100-percent healthy after that fight so I could fight in a month in Rama if the opponent was right.
I asked him who that opponent would be but he wouldn’t bite.
“I just want to build my record this year with good fighters and fights. That’s what I am looking to do. I would love for it to be for Bellator, I don’t care if I have to travel around to fight.”
Laprise is now off to British Columbia, but only for a couple of days. He is a hard man to keep out of the gym.
Dwight Wakabayashi is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report MMA, MMA Editor at CKSN.ca and guest blogger for Sportsnet.ca.
Catch him on Facebook and Twitter at wakafightermma.
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Since leaving amateur wrestling to pursue an MMA career, two-time NCAA champion and four-time All-American Ben Askren has used his wrestling background to win all 10 of his professional fights and become the Bellator welterweight champion. With a jiu-j…
Since leaving amateur wrestling to pursue an MMA career, two-time NCAA champion and four-time All-American Ben Askren has used his wrestling background to win all 10 of his professional fights and become the Bellator welterweight champion. With a jiu-jitsu brown belt, Askren has become near unbeatable when he is able to take his opponents to […]
Bellator’s welterweight champion is one nasty and funky fighter…to watch that is. Ben Askren mauled, laid on, wrestled and battered Douglas Lima for five full rounds to retain the BFC welterweight title. The title fight was a tough one to watch …
Bellator’s welterweight champion is one nasty and funky fighter…to watch that is. Ben Askren mauled, laid on, wrestled and battered Douglas Lima for five full rounds to retain the BFC welterweight title. The title fight was a tough one to watch and the headline for a very slow and frustrating night of fights from the Colosseum in the Caesars Windsor Casino.
The fighters always make the night and the Windsor fans were frustrated with the amount of ground fighting on this night. I appreciate and love it all and, admittedly, it wasn’t the most exciting fight card that I have ever seen. It wasn’t terrible either.
It is no secret what Ben Askren looks to do in his fights, as a relentless mix of diving in for the clinch, wrestling to get you down and mauling you from the top are in order all night long. Lima had a vicious uppercut waiting for him each time he waded in, but there was no other significant pushback all night.
It was a disappointing fight for the Brazilian Lima, who seemed worn out very early from trying to keep Askren off.
I love watching a fight no matter how it goes down, but the other three fights on the main card were very tough to watch as well.
In the featherweight semifinal match, Marlon Sandro scored in the first two rounds of his fight and then spent the third trying to stay away to gain a split decision victory over a sluggish Alexandre Bezerra. The fight was not fought at near the level I expected from the two, as they looked hesitant to engage in anything but an in-and-out point game.
The two bantamweight tournament matches were both a bit better, as Travis Marx and Masakatsu Ueda fought hard in tight for three rounds. While I thought Ueda won a razor-thin decision based on his kicks to the body of Marx, Marx was able to edge out the unanimous decision victory.
In the other bout, Hiroshi Nakamura overcame two low blows from Rodrigo Lima to grapple his way to victory. Masakatsu used his strength and conditioning to come out on top of every scramble and exchange on his way to victory. Lima was deducted a point after the second illegal blow, but it didn`t matter—this fight wasn’t that close.
The preliminary portion of the card was the most action-filled of the evening and at least gave the fans a couple of nice finishes to see.
Mike “The Marine” Richman violently knocked out Canadian veteran Chris Horodecki with a beautifully executed flurry combination at 1:23 of the first round. The two came out swinging right from the get-go and didn’t stop until Richman hit the mark.
Local favorite Chad Laprise showcased a very skilled ground game to go along with the knockouts on his resume by submitting Josh Taveirne with a triangle choke at 2:48 of the first round.
Detroit’s Jason Fischer stopped Taylor Soloman with a technical submission rear naked choke at 4:59 of the third round of their fight, with Soloman refusing to tap but going to sleep just before the final bell sounded.
Tristar fighter Nordine Taleb picked apart and dominated a tough Matt Secor for three rounds, using his slick boxing and power to keep Secor reeling and on his back all night.
The rest of the results:
Kyle Prepolec defeated Lance Snow via armbar submission at 2:54 of the first round.
Elias Theodorou defeated Rich Lictawa via verbal tap at 0:33 of the third round.
Attendance was at full capacity (5000).
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Here we go again, with another reminder of what MMA is all about. This time it’s courtesy of still Bellator Fighting Championships welterweight champion Ben Askren (10-0, 7-0 BFC). After getting heartily booed by the misplaced among the audience i…
Here we go again, with another reminder of what MMA is all about. This time it’s courtesy of still Bellator Fighting Championships welterweight champion Ben Askren (10-0, 7-0 BFC).
After getting heartily booed by the misplaced among the audience in his unanimous decision win over challenger Brazilian Douglas Lima (21-5, 3-1 BFC) in the Bellator 64 main event Friday at Caesars in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, the American Olympic wrestler said after the fight that, “If you don’t like the groundwork, there’s a sport they call boxing…it’s not as fun, though. I suggest you keep on coming here and watching my ass whoopin’s.”
The fans obviously preferred more standup action from the champion and for the challenger who’s coming fresh off two consecutive KO wins, with a total of seven victories by KO. But, as the rules allow it (ahem), defending champion Askren chose to take down his opponent at will and punish him from on top for five full rounds.
And, as the rules also allow, Askren rained punches, elbows and hammerfists from inside Lima’s guard after taking him down again and again. The defending champion even tried to submit his opponent with a third-round brabo choke—another legal MMA move—albeit unsuccessful.
Lima, for his part, landed a few right hands, some punches and submission attempts from the bottom, a nifty first-round sweep and not much else.
At the end of the second round, the Brazilian representing American Top Team Atlanta already appeared vanquished by the American carrying the colors of Roufusport from Milwaukee, Wis.
No one should really be surprised by the Olympic wrestler’s mode of fighting. Askren has already revealed this beforehand in his Sherdog Radio Network’s “Savage Dog Show” interview, stating that, “I really think [that whether an opponent is] dangerous or not dangerous, the best thing I can do is put somebody on his back and beat him up.”
I guess the fans who booed him last night wouldn’t want to see him fight Georges St-Pierre, his counterpart champion in the UFC, for the forecasted stylistic similarities.
Well, no rule prohibits fans from not watching—or booing.
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