An action-packed middleweight fight took center stage inside the Bellator 218 cage as Anatoly Tokov survived an early scare to submit Gerald Harris. Harris smoked Tokov with a looping left hand early in round one. The Russian dropped like a ton of bricks but somehow surveyed the barrage of punches thrown by the American. (Via […]
An action-packed middleweight fight took center stage inside the Bellator 218 cage as Anatoly Tokov survived an early scare to submit Gerald Harris.
Harris smoked Tokov with a looping left hand early in round one. The Russian dropped like a ton of bricks but somehow surveyed the barrage of punches thrown by the American. (Via Twitter)
The win makes it four straight inside the Bellator cage for Tokov. And the Russian didn’t miss is opportunity to call for a title fight in his post fight interview with Big John.
In the main event of last night’s (Sat., April 28, 2018) Bellator 198, Fedor Emelianenko returned to run through former UFC champion Frank Mir in 48 seconds (watch highlights here) on Saturday night, igniting the Chicago crowd into a frenzy. ‘The Last Emperor’ hadn’t won a big fight like this on North American soil since knocking […]
In the main event of last night’s (Sat., April 28, 2018) Bellator 198, Fedor Emelianenko returned to run through former UFC champion Frank Mir in 48 seconds (watch highlights here) on Saturday night, igniting the Chicago crowd into a frenzy.
‘The Last Emperor’ hadn’t won a big fight like this on North American soil since knocking out Brett Rogers back in Strikeforce in late 2009, so it had been some time for Fedor fans, and this had been a long time coming.
The rest of Bellator 198’s main card featured all finishes, with the winners looking amazing and the losers looking not so great. Let’s break down the biggest winners and losers from last night’s card in Rosemont, Illinois.
Biggest Winners:
Fedor Emelianenko
Fedor turned back the clock in classic Fedor fashion on Saturday by turning Mir’s lights out in less than a minute.
The Russian shrugged off the drama of reports of the FBI tailing him and put away a former champion who had never been finished in less than a minute before.
It was a much-needed win for Emelianenko, who now will go on to face Chael Sonnen in the semifinal round of the heavyweight Grand Prix.
Fans had unfortunately gotten used to seeing ‘The Last Emperor’ getting thrashed on national television, from Fabricio Werdum baiting him into his guard for a quick submission to Dan Henderson and Matt Mitrione shutting his lights out in the first round.
But in each of those knockout losses, Emelianenko had his man hurt first if not just as badly, scoring a rare double knockdown against Mitrione and trading concussive blows with Henderson until one of them went out.
So for now, Fedor is back. And that’s good news for Bellator and MMA as a whole.
The news that Jake Shields had been axed by the UFC on Tuesday was not taken lightly by MMA fans who had referred to the former Strikeforce champion as “Jake Shieldzzzz” for years prior. Days later, we are still trying to make sense of the decision to cut Shields following his first loss in two and a half years, but it was an easy one to make in the eyes of Dana White, who basically told reporters that Shields was released because he didn’t “WAR!!” enough.
The news that Jake Shields had been axed by the UFC on Tuesday was not taken lightly by MMA fans who had referred to the former Strikeforce champion as “Jake Shieldzzzz” for years prior. Days later, we are still trying to make sense of the decision to cut Shields following his first loss in two and a half years, but it was an easy one to make in the eyes of Dana White, who basically told reporters that Shields was released because he didn’t “WAR!!” enough.
Otherwise known as the UFC firing that opened the floodgates of criticism for an entire week back in 2013, the release of perennial contender Jon Fitch was initially met with shock and outrage by fans and pundits of the sport alike, despite the fact that none of us could sit through an entire Jon Fitch fight without checking our cell phones or throwing pencils into the ceiling out of boredom if our lives depended on it.
You’re telling me that Fitch, who’s already had a better career than 90 percent of active welterweights, and who’s been with the same organization for more than seven years, has priced himself out of a job with $66,000 in show money? Seriously? Take away taxes, training expenses, his management’s cut, and all the other miscellaneous stuff that eats into a fighter’s pay, and that’s not a ton of take-home cash for a night of professional cage fighting. If that’s too much for a guy like Fitch, most other fighters should go ahead and start working on that law school application right now because the future is grim.
Yushin Okami (Who’s got two thumbs and will be out of a job come Monday? THIS GUY. Photo via Getty.)
Listed as the #6 middleweight at the time of his release, Yushin Okami had scored 3 victories in as many fights until a first round knockout loss to #4 ranked Jacare Souza at Fight Night 28 apparently signified that the times had passed him by. Said Dana White:
He’s been with us forever. He was always a tough guy and was right up there, but it’s almost like he’d become a gatekeeper. I like Okami, and you’ve heard me say this many times, that a win over Yushin Okami meant something. But he was never able to get over the hump and win one of those [significant] fights. We have a lot of guys coming in and I’ve been saying this all year: We have a full roster and there are guys who deserve opportunities. When you bring guys in, someone has to go. That’s why these fights are so meaningful.
“You know, sometimes you just have to cut a guy in the top 10 to make room for the 0-0 yoga instructors who really deserve a shot.”
Proof that one underwhelming fight can get your fired regardless of your record, TUF 7 alum Gerald Harris was let go by the UFC following his lackluster decision loss to Maiquel Falcao at UFC 123. The insanity in this decision being that the loss was Harris’ first under the UFC banner, and came following three straight TKO wins, two ‘Knockout of the Night’ awards, and an appearance on the Sportscenter Top 10. Harris has fought seven times since his departure, going a respectable 5-2 in such organizations as the WSOF, Dream, and Legacy Fighting Championships, but will likely never fight in the UFC again because he had an off night that one time back in 2010.
Meanwhile, Jared Hamman, who joined the UFC around the same time as Harris, has been smoked in his past three fights by Costas Philippou (legit), Michael Kuiper (fired) and Magnus Cedenblad (no Wiki page), and is 2-5 in the UFC overall, yet is still listed as an employee of the UFC. Politics, ladies and gentleman.
Come to think of it, you could just as easily swap Harris with Falcao, who was also fired for coasting to victory over Harris at UFC 123 (although it was later revealed that Falcao’s release stemmed from an assault case). In hindsight, it was clearly a good move on the UFC’s part, but at the time it was almost unprecedented to see a fighter booted after a win.
In the latest installment of our Street Fight Funhouse video series*, MMA fighter/comedian Gerald Harris overdubs some dialogue for a street-fight that ends with a brutal soccer kick KO from an over-protective mother. Stay tuned for more of our street-fight remixes, and follow Gerald on twitter @GHurricane.
* Ed. note:We were planning to have this up last week, but I had to figure out how to put videos into other videos and make them link to those videos, and blah blah blah Brittney Palmer, but you’ll see what I mean at the end of this one.
In the latest installment of our Street Fight Funhouse video series*, MMA fighter/comedian Gerald Harris overdubs some dialogue for a street-fight that ends with a brutal soccer kick KO from an over-protective mother. Stay tuned for more of our street-fight remixes, and follow Gerald on twitter @GHurricane.
* Ed. note:We were planning to have this up last week, but I had to figure out how to put videos into other videos and make them link to those videos, and blah blah blah Brittney Palmer, but you’ll see what I mean at the end of this one.
@GHurricane just dropped a
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