Did Dana White study voodoo from Michael Jackson or something? Because Bellator has had worse luck than than nearly any promotion in the history of MMA when it comes to launching a successful PPV.
In case the headline didn’t tip you off, Eddie Alvarez is out of Bellator 120—the promotion’s second attempt to break into the PPV market. His rubber match with Michael Chandler will have to wait.
(Well, in a way, MMA’s “greatest trilogy” did kind of end at Bellator 120…)
Did Dana White study voodoo from Michael Jackson or something? Because Bellator has had worse luck than nearly any promotion in the history of MMA when it comes to launching a successful PPV.
In case the headline didn’t tip you off, Eddie Alvarez is out of Bellator 120—the promotion’s second attempt to break into the PPV market. His rubber match with Michael Chandler will have to wait.
Sherdog’s Greg Savage broke the news on Twitter last night. Initially, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebneydenied the rumor, saying the fight was still on. Less than 24 hours later, Bellator hasn’t officially announced anything but mediaoutlets are accepting Alvarez’s withdrawal as fact.
What’ll they do now? Hopefully they convert it to a free card on Spike, like they did with their last ill-fated PPV. It’s unlikely Rampage Jackson vs. King Mo, Tito Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko, Michael Page vs. Rick Rainey [Editor’s note: They were charging money for that fight?] and Will Brooks vs. Nate Jolly will be worth the price of admission. Regarding the last fight, Brooks vs. Jolly, it’s speculated that Brooks will be bumped into the main event against Chandler but who can say for sure.
Update:
Bellator held a conference call which Bleacher Report took part in confirming Sherdog’s and MMAFighting’s reports and elaborated on their future plans. The card will remain on pay per view and will be headlined by Mo Lawal vs. Quinton Jack…
Update:
Bellator held a conference call which Bleacher Report took part in confirming Sherdog’s and MMAFighting’s reports and elaborated on their future plans. The card will remain on pay per view and will be headlined by Mo Lawal vs. Quinton Jackson. The bout between Michael Chandler and Will Brooks will be a five-round interim title fight.
Alvarez’s injury was suffered last week, and as such, it is too early to give a definite timetable for his return.
Brooks was pulled from a fight with Nate Jolly. The Season 9 Heavyweight Tournament final bout between Blagoy Ivanov and Alexander Volkov is being elevated from the Spike TV portion of the preliminary card to pay per view. Jolly may or may not receive another opponent, and it is unknown what fight will replace Ivanov vs. Volkov on Spike TV.
Original story:
Originally reported by Sherdog.com, Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez is reportedly withdrawing from his scheduled title fight with Michael Chandler next Saturday at Bellator 120. MMAFighting.com’s Guilherme Cruz confirmed the news and discovered that Alvarez had suffered a concussion in training and will be unable to compete.
The news comes a week in advance of the rubber match, which was scheduled to headline the event. Bellator has yet to address the news, and it is unknown if the card will remain a pay-per-view event or if it will make the card available on Spike TV.
According to Sherdog’s report, Chandler will remain on the card and will face off with Season 9 lightweight tournament winner “Ill” Will Brooks. It’s unknown whether Chandler vs. Brooks will remain atop the card, or whether the co-main event between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Muhammed Lawal will be featured. Additionally, it is unknown if the bout will be a three-round “feature fight” or if Brooks vs. Chandler will be dubbed an interim lightweight title fight.
This is the second time Bellator has seen a proposed pay-per-view headlining fight fall apart. Last year, at Bellator 106, a scheduled non-title fight between former UFC champions Jackson and Tito Ortiz fell apart due to a neck injury suffered by Ortiz. The bout falling through resulted in Jackson being pulled from the card and the event being moved from pay-per-view to Spike TV.
Once again, Bellator has not addressed the news, and its website still has Bellator 120 being advertised as Alvarez vs. Chandler 3. Stick with Bleacher Report for more details as they become available.
According to reports from both Sherdog and MMA Fighting, Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez will not make his planned third meeting with Michael Chandler next Saturday night at Bellator 120.
Alvarez, who won the belt from Chandler last year in…
According to reports from both Sherdog and MMA Fighting, Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez will not make his planned third meeting with Michael Chandler next Saturday night at Bellator 120.
Alvarez, who won the belt from Chandler last year in a rematch between the two, suffered a concussion in training. The reports state that Season 9 tournament winner Will Brooks will move from a main card bout with Nate Jolly to face Chandler.
Bellator was hit with the same devastating news in 2013 when it attempted to host a pay-per-view event for the first time. Just days before the card was to go down, Tito Ortiz suffered a neck injury and could not make his planned main event fight with fellow former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
Now, it is Alvarez (25-3) who will be out of action for an unknown amount of time at the moment. The two-time Bellator champion was involved in a lengthy legal battle with the promotion after first losing the title to Chandler in 2011. He was offered a deal by the UFC, but Bellator fought to match it in the court room, and Alvarez eventually agreed to the contract.
He returned last year and earned a split decision over Chandler to become the champion. All of Bellator‘s promotional work for this pay-per-view event has centered around Alvarez-Chandler fighting for a third time, including many preview shows on Spike TV.
The card is expected to feature Jackson taking on Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal in the Season 10 light heavyweight tournament final along with Ortiz making his debut with Bellator against middleweight champion Alexander Shlemenko in a non-title fight.
Bellator officials, including chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney, have yet to make a statement regarding the Alvarez injury. When asked during the Bellator 119 post-fight press conference, Rebney stated the fight was still on, per MMA Junkie.
Michael Chandler and Alexander Shlemenko can grab the Bellator MMA torch and carry it into the future at Bellator 120 this month. Or they can tumble all the way back down the pyramid, bringing the promotion with them.
Bellator will host its first-ever …
Michael Chandler and Alexander Shlemenko can grab the Bellator MMA torch and carry it into the future at Bellator 120 this month. Or they can tumble all the way back down the pyramid, bringing the promotion with them.
Bellator will host its first-ever pay-per-view on May 17, with Chandler taking on Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title and Shlemenko meeting former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz.
If the pressure of facing two well-rounded fighters wasn’t enough, they are also the building blocks and stars to what Bjorn Rebney, Bellator and Spike TV have planned going forward.
Alvarez is the champion, and the more known of the two fighters in the main event, but he has an interesting contract worked out. Most feel he will leave Bellator after this fight, as arranged by his deal, so putting that giant logo on his back makes no sense. If Chandler fails to win the belt from him, it doesn’t look good for Rebney to lose his champ.
Ortiz is on the opposite end of the spectrum from all three fighters mentioned, as he is closer to retirement than building himself back into a contender. However, he could severely cripple Shlemenko’s status by stunning the 50-win fighter.
Again, plenty of pressure on both Chandler and Shlemenko to deliver in the spotlight.
While all of that is taken into consideration, there are plenty of reasons to believe each man will come out with their respective hand raised on that May night.
Chandler has dealt with adversity his entire life, entering the University of Missouri wrestling room as a walk-on and leaving years later with four NCAA qualifier marks and 100 wins. He was a two-time runner-up in the Big 12 and a fifth-place finisher at nationals.
After preparing himself for a career in MMA at Xtreme Couture, Chandler debuted in 2009 with a second-round TKO. A year later, he made his Bellator debut and finished Scott Stapp in the first round. Two more first-round finishes led Chandler to a tournament quarterfinal with Marcin Held that he won via first-round arm triangle choke when he left Held unconscious.
Back-to-back decisions provided Chandler with a tourney title and shot at Alvarez. At 9-0, and just a few years into his career, he submitted Alvarez in the fourth round in a bout widely considered the “Fight of the Year” in 2011.
Chandler followed that up with three straight finishes over Akihiro Gono, Rick Hawn and David Rickels to defend his title before dropping a split decision to Alvarez last year.
To say he has shown why some consider him a top lightweight is easy. In 13 career bouts, he has finished 10 of his opponents, and done so equally with five knockouts and five submissions.
The second meeting with Alvarez was a back-and-forth 25-minute grind that Chandler easily could have been declared the winner in. He converted on 10 takedowns, while stuffing all three attempts by Alvarez, held a plus-15 advantage in power strikes and was more successful on his ground strikes.
In falling, though, he set up this important and critical third meeting with Alvarez, and that only helps his stock. By coming back and scoring the win, he’ll have avenged the loss and proven to the world that he is elite.
Shlemenko will turn 30 just days after the event, but he already has 57 fights on his resume; he’s won 50 of them. Twenty-nine of those 50 victories have come via knockout, with another eight from various forms of submissions.
In Ortiz, the Russian will be giving up several pounds, maybe 30-plus come fight night, but he’ll have an incredible advantage in speed, strength and skill. At 39 years old and coming off of another neck surgery, the Ortiz of old isn’t going to show up inside the Bellator cage.
Bellator’s tournament-style ways of pairing fights has led some people to shy away from watching, but Chandler and Shlemenko are two reasons to make sure you catch the pay-per-view offering.
To surprisingly little reaction this weekend, Bellator announced that the lineup for Bellator 120: Alvarez vs. Chandler 3 — also known as the promotion’s first pay-per-view event — has been set. (Bellator 120 goes down Saturday, May 17th, at the Landers Center in Southaven, Mississippi.) Don’t worry, Bellator has clearly learned from their whole “plan a pay-per-view around two old guys and some fading UFC castoffs” phase. But are there enough intriguing, quality fights on this lineup to justify paying for a Bellator event? Let’s look over the fight card and determine for ourselves.
All nine of the fights for Bellator 120 — four Spike preliminaries, five main card contests — have been ranked solely by my interest in watching them. If you disagree, feel free to write some terrible things about me in the comments section. I look forward to ignoring them.
I don’t think either fighter is even capable of a boring match, much less a boring match against each other. I could type paragraph after paragraph on how their first two encounters resulted in two of the greatest fights in our sport’s history, and how…oh why am I even trying to pretend that I’m not going to insert an Al Bundy GIF and move along to the next fight:
To surprisingly little reaction this weekend, Bellator announced that the lineup for Bellator 120: Alvarez vs. Chandler 3 — also known as the promotion’s first pay-per-view event — has been set. (Bellator 120 goes down Saturday, May 17th, at the Landers Center in Southaven, Mississippi.) Don’t worry, Bellator has clearly learned from their whole “plan a pay-per-view around two old guys and some fading UFC castoffs” phase. But are there enough intriguing, quality fights on this lineup to justify paying for a Bellator event? Let’s look over the fight card and determine for ourselves.
All nine of the fights for Bellator 120 — four Spike preliminaries, five main card contests — have been ranked solely by my interest in watching them. If you disagree, feel free to write some terrible things about me in the comments section. I look forward to ignoring them.
I don’t think either fighter is even capable of a boring match, much less a boring match against each other. I could type paragraph after paragraph on how their first two encounters resulted in two of the greatest fights in our sport’s history, and how…oh why am I even trying to pretend that I’m not going to insert an Al Bundy GIF and move along to the next fight:
The go-home show before a pay-per-view is extremely influential on buy rates, which is the only reason why I’m assuming this fight isn’t on the main card. These guys have been with Bellator for ages, and always produce fun, exciting fights. I’d be more than willing to pay for this one; not that I’m complaining about getting it on cable.
This fight is such a freak show, random, “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” pairing that Ben Askren has already labeled it a work. Why wouldn’t I be looking forward to it?
(Preliminary Card) Mike Richman vs. Goiti Yamauchi
Back at Bellator 110, it appeared that these two would crush their opponents and meet up in the next round of Bellator’s featherweight tournament. It looked like such an obvious conclusion that I advised you all to bet money on both men winning. Naturally, neither guy advanced, so Bellator booked these two to kick off the preliminaries of their inaugural pay-per-view, because of course this is a thing that’s happening. As forced as this fight feels, I’m not going to act like I won’t at least watch it.
Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that Bellator’s “Sign the UFC’s leftovers” business model isn’t so much an attempt to gain viewers by trotting out guys that fight fans used to sort-of care about as it is an attempt to quell the “These guys haven’t beaten anybody!” criticisms of their roster. In other words, Cheick Kongo isn’t the guy they want, he’s the guy they want to lose to the guys they want. Because, let’s face it, Bellator Heavyweight Champion Vitaly Minakov’s victory over Cup-Cheick did more to establish him as a legitimate heavyweight to most fight fans than a victory over a stoic, doughy Russian they’ve never heard of would have. I’ll pause for you to make your own “Who is Vitaly Minakov?” jokes, I guess (I hope you feel really good about yourself for that super original joke, by the way).
Essentially, Bellator is using Kongo as a “jobber to the stars:” a guy who can beat the not-quite-readies, but isn’t a threat to beat any of the promotion’s top heavyweights. This means that every once in a while they’ll have to book him in squash matches against 6-1-1 nobodies so fans will continue to perceive him as a threat, making his losses against the fighters Bellator actually wants to push seem that much more significant. This fight is a necessary evil, is what I’m saying.
(Main Card) Alexander Shlemenko vs. Whoever Bellator Finds to Replace Tito Ortiz at the Last Minute
(Preliminary Card) Heavyweight Tournament Final: Alexander Volkov vs. Blagoi Ivanov
Yes, Bellator’s heavyweight bouts tend to quickly reduce themselves to two guys sloppily waltzing through a “What’s cardio?” display of all things garbage-ass, but I really like the stoic Russian with an “-ov” in his last name. He’s a beast, and should be a legitimate threat to Vitaly Minakov’s unblemished record.
(Main Card) Will Brooks vs. Nate Jolly
Leave it to Bellator to put a popcorn match on the main card of their first-ever pay-per-view. Nate Jolly has never fought for Bellator, and it’s not like he’s a name that casual fans would at least recognize. If they wanted to use the regional star to entice the locals to buy tickets, there’s no reason why they couldn’t put this fight on the preliminaries and bump Mike Richman vs. Goiti Yamauchi to the main card. Likewise, if they wanted to use this fight to get Will Brooks — a 13-1 fighter who has gone 5-1 in Bellator — over with the fans, then why not book Brooks against a fighter that the average Bellator fan would actually recognize?
I’m not trying to insult either fighter/say that the fight will be boring just because I’m not heavily invested in it/deny that climate change is real/whatever it is that MMA fans automatically assume whenever someone writes that they aren’t very interested in an upcoming fight, I’m just saying that I’m really not that interested in this bout.
Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez has a bone to pick with perennial UFC contender Gilbert Melendez since he believes “El Nino” has been consciously avoiding a fight with him for years.
“The Silent Assassin” is clearly less tha…
Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez has a bone to pick with perennial UFC contender Gilbert Melendez since he believes “El Nino” has been consciously avoiding a fight with him for years.
“The Silent Assassin” is clearly less than thrilled over Melendez’s decision to re-sign with the UFC just weeks after agreeing to a deal with Bellator.
Alvarez expressed his displeasure while filming promos for his third fight with Michael Chandler in Hollywood, per MMA Fighting.
“He didn’t want come here,” Alvarez said. “Gilbert doesn’t want to come anywhere where I’m at. Gilbert don’t ever want to sign with a company where I’m at. … Wherever Gilbert goes, he wants to be the top dog, which is the same reason he’s avoided me and will for years to come. Gilbert had the opportunity in the Dream tournament; he didn’t. He had the opportunity to sign with Bellator, and go into a Bellator tournament; he didn’t. … He’s a phony. It’s a facade; it’s a mask. He says he wants to fight me; he doesn’t want to fight me.”
As far back as May 2010, when Melendez was the Strikeforce 155-pound champ, the Cesar Gracie Jiu-Jitsu fighter expressed interest in throwing down with Alvarez, per MMA Mania.
Under the Bellator banner, showdowns with Alvarez and Chandler seemed like inevitably crowd-pleasing matchups for the scrappy Mexican-American fighter.
Instead, Melendez opted for a UFC deal that earned him a coaching spot opposite champ Anthony Pettis on season 20 of The Ultimate Fighter, as well as a title shot before the end of the year, per ESPN.
Both competitors boast similar resumes: Alvarez has posted a 25-3 record overall and has avenged losses to Shinya Aoki and Chandler.
Meanwhile, Melendez has a 22-3 mark on his ledger, avenging his loss to Josh Thomson (twice).
Additionally, many believe that Melendez’s 2013 slugfest with Diego Sanchez was the “Fight of the Year,” while Alvarez’s initial encounter with Chandler in 2011 was “Fight of the Year” material for most fans.
Would Melendez actually avoid a fight with Alvarez or is the Bellator champ just trying to make some headlines?
John Heinis is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA editor for eDraft.com.
Michael Chandler and Alexander Shlemenko can grab the Bellator 
