The Valley View Casino in San Diego, California hosts Bellator 131 on November 15th with their season ending event headlined by Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar‘s light heavyweight grudge match. A tentative final lineup is out there, but the card continues to be in flux and none of the sport books are carrying lines on the bouts yet despite the fact that the main card is all recognizable names and the fights have been made for awhile now.
If Bellator thought they would be ending season 10 stronger than ever under Scott Coker, they should think again, as the entire season has been filled with bizarre roster moves that have revealed Bellator as firmly a ‘B’ class player.
The whole build-up for the event started off embarrassing as Ortiz and Bonnar met in the Bellator cage to announce their match. Bonnar attempted to get under Ortiz’s skin by bringing in a former teammate Sean McCully and by insulting Ortiz and his family. Rather than create a highlight reel moment that could be played over and over in the build-up to the event, the segment fell completely flat and has not been re-shown by the company like they probably hoped.
Adding to the chaos, King ‘Mo’ Lawal was scheduled to face Tom DeBlass in a light heavyweight bout scheduled for the main card, but DeBlass has been scratched due to an injury and Mo is now scheduled without opposition with less than 2 weeks to go.
At middleweight, import Melvin Manhoef faces off against Joe Schilling in what an only be described as the organization’s second choice to face Manhoef. Former champion Alexander Shlemenko was the preferred opponent, but he has had a tendency to put in less than two minutes of fighting before he has to quit due to having no clue what to do in certain ground positions.
At least what appears to be a full card is up as 12 fights are on the schedule, and the Lightweight title fight between Will Brooks and Michael Chandler should be a high quality match that should be seen, but Bellator has completely failed to put anything resembling a watchable card around the fight.
There really is not much more out there on this card from the group, we will see if they ramp it up with less than two weeks to go:
