Bellator opens it’s abbreviated Summer Series with Bellator 121 on June 6th. The show is at the Winstar Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma and was to be headlined by Pat Curran vs Patricio Freire is off due to a severe calf strain suffered by Curran.
The falling apart of the main event serves to highlight how thin Bellator is on the management level. Despite a multi billion dollar corporation who is backing them, the UFC can rest easy. The show is less than three weeks away, and the Curran versus Freire bout was the only one announced. It was a solid fight and one that would have had a very close line at the sport books, but it is hard to believe that Bellator is going to follow-up their big, inaugural PPV with a show they plan to push for less than two weeks.
Now there is word that the card has been finalized, and sitting atop as the new main event of the show is a heavyweight battle between James Thompson and Eric Prindle. Prindle is a recycled Bellator fighter whose never really broken through and had a decent win despite multiple chances. And bringing in James Thompson in 2014 is tantamount to bringing in Bob Sapp, it is so embarrassing. The card also has Rameau Thierry Sokoudju added, and there is a Light Heavyweight tournament. Oh yeah the light heavyweight tournament has only 3 fights in it, and Soukoudju rides a 2 fight losing streak and an overall maudlin 14-12 MMA record into a ‘feature fight’. Is there no oend to the unexplainabble?
Bellator also suffered a blow when Quinton Jackson, the winner over King Mo in the PPV main event, seemingly waffled and didn’t want a title shot against Emmanuel Newton. For years now, Bellator has wanted to get a gold belt around King Mo’s waist, and with Jackson as the promotion’s biggest signee was also in the mix for Bellator gold. It is why the two met in the finals of a tournament, so that under Bellator’s flawed format where a champion can actually have no opponents eligible, one of them would qualify for the shot at Emmanuel Newton. After earning the shot in a decent match where Rampage did none of the things he smacked talk about prior, Rampage no longer wants the title shot.
And right about now, Bellator is probably getting an inkling, an idea of what the PPV buys were for their May 17th event, and without tossing out an invented number, it is safe to say that the results are unlikely to leave Bjorn Rebney chortling happily.
