This coming Friday night, April 11th, 2014, Bellator 116 comes to us from Temecula, California with a card headlined by the semi finals of the company’s season 10 Heavyweight tournament. It is the one benefit of the accelerated tournament format Bellator uses, and that is that you get to see the semi finals and finals relatively quickly. The matches feature UFC veteran Lavar Johnson taking on undefeated Russian Blagoi Ivanov, and the other semi has Mo Siliga facing former champion Alexander Volkov. Expect the odds to hit the sportbooks later this week, but let’s take a look now at the matchups.
Bellator 115 saw current Heavyweight Champion Vitaly Minakov defend his title against Cheick Kongo. With Ivanov and Volkov both in the semi finals and both likely to be favorites to win at the sportbooks when the lines comes out, the top of the weight class looks to be dominated by Russians.
Volkov is a 6’7 striker who lost his title to Minakov last year, but is very familiar and at home in Bellator and is coming off a fast wipe out in the opening round. Mo Siliga, the veteran Mighty Mo, looked flat in his opening round matchup against Peter Graham, who is tough and game but low on MMA skill, so look for Volkov to be a slight favorite at the books.
Lavar Johnson looked good in taking out Ryan Martinez, who chose to try to band with Johnson and paid the price. Ivanov worked the full fifteen minutes in getting by Richard Hale, but Johnson remains one dimensional and Ivanov should be able to exploit that. Johnson still has negligible takedown defense and once on the ground, he is no threat at all.
The amtchups should set up an all Russian final with Volkov facing Ivanov. It is kind of unclear what Bellator match makers are doing, since it makes more sense to have had the two Russians face off in the semi finals, especially with a Russian champion. At this point, what are the odds that by this time next year Bellator will even have a non Russian title contender anywhere in the mix?
