Bellator 121 returns this friday, June 6th to the Winstar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma with a ‘Summer Series’ card that is headlined by a Heavyweight battle between Bellator vet Eric Prindle and Britian’s James Thompson. The expected headliner, a Featherweight title defense by Pat Curran against Patricio Freire went by the wayside due to an injury by Curran. That bout has yet to be re-scheduled.
The card really lost almost all of it’s appeal instantly without Curran and Freire. The two featherweights have been with the company for a long time, and both have established themselves as the top dogs in the weight class. Without that match, the card is all down hill from there.
Prindle returns to Bellator, but it is hard to fathom why he fits into a main event spot. Prindle is 1-4-1 in his last 6 outings under Bellator’s flag, with his one win coming via a 12 second KO. Suffice it to say had that opponent extended the fight just about 2 minutes, the whells would probably have come off for Prindle, whose most memorable career highlights come from his embarrassing performances against ‘Big Monster’ Thiago Santos. It would appear Bellator has out ties with Santos, but he may be back at a later event as well.
So for Prindle to look good, the organization is bringing in James Thompson. Thompson is 19-14 at this point in his career, and he has won 4 0f his alt 5 fights. This marks Thompson’s debut for Bellator. Despite the winning streak, Thompson has been a marginal MMA fighter at best for years now, including a horrendous 3-12 streak that exposed him as a fighter whose best moments happen on the event poster. The scary part is that Prindle is bad enough that Thompson might win the fight.
Thierry Soukoudjou makes his Bellator debut as well, taking on 10-7 Terry Davinney. Davinney made positive Bellator debut, winning by KO in under a minute against Matt Van Buren back at Bellator 82, but he quickly dropped two figghts in the first round on smaller shows. Nevertheless, Bellator has him in against Soukoudju, who is basically a 205 lb version of James Thompson. Despite Soukoudju’s strong talent for finding a way to lose, he is expected to be the favorite against Davinney, who with all due respect, is the ‘Special Delivery Jones’ of MMA.
