Champ Eddie Alvarez reportedly out of next week's Bellator 120 PPV headliner
WW CANT BELIEVE NOBODY POSTED THIS YET!
Next week’s Bellator 120 event, which marks the organization’s debut on pay-per-view, has reportedly taken a big hit.
Reigning lightweight titleholder Eddie Alvarez (25-3 MMA, 9-1 BMMA) has reportedly suffered an injury and been forced out of his planned headliner and trilogy fight with ex-champ Michael Chandler (12-1 MMA, 9-1 BMMA). Sherdog first reported the scratch, and MMAFighting.com subsequently confirmed Alvarez suffered a concussion during training.
According to Sherdog, Bellator 9 lightweight tournament winner Will Brooks (13-1 MMA, 5-1 BMMA) will step in as a replacement.
MMAjunkie could not reach Bellator officials for confirmation, and as of this morning, the organization hadn’t made a formal announcement about any changes. However, in Friday’s post-Bellator 119 press conference, Bellator Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney said the fight was still on, though today’s reports contradict those comments.
Bellator 120 takes place next Saturday, May 17, at the Landers Center in Southaven, Miss., just outside of Memphis. After prelims on Spike TV and Spike.com, Bellator hosts its first PPV main card.
The organization planned its first PPV event, Bellator 106, back in November, but after Tito Ortiz was forced out of a scheduled headliner with Quinton Jackson, the event shifted to Spike TV. In the co-headliner of that event, Alvarez reclaimed his title from Chandler in one of 2013′s best fights.
For now, though, it appears the trilogy – and the standout lightweights’ opportunity to headline a PPV event – will have to wait.
Chandler fights for the first since that November title loss, which came via split decision. After submitting Alvarez and taking the title in 2011, the 28-year-old scored stoppage wins over Akihiro Gono, Rick Hawn and David Rickels before the rematch-loss to Alvarez six months ago.
Brooks, meanwhile, is riding a four-fight winning streak that included tourney wins over John Alessio, Saad Awad and Alexander Sarnavskiy, all via decision. The 27-year-old avenged his only career loss with the victory over Awad.
Bellator 120 to remain on PPV, Chandler meets replacement Brooks for interim title
Despite the loss of one of its planned headliners, next week’s Bellator 120 event will remain a pay-per-view offering.
Following today’s earlier news that Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez (25-3 MMA, 9-1 BMMA) suffered a head injury during a training session two weeks ago and had been forced out of the May 17 event, the organization today announced his opponent, former champ Michael Chandler (12-1 MMA, 9-1 BMMA), instead will meet Will Brooks (13-1 MMA, 5-1 BMMA).
According to Bellator CEO and Chairman Bjorn Rebney, Chandler and Brooks will fight for an interim lightweight title. The bout has been moved from the main event to the co-headliner slot.
Bellator first attempted to make its PPV debut back in November with Bellator 106, but when scheduled headliner Tito Ortiz was forced out of a fight with fellow ex-UFC champion Quinton Jackson, the event shifted to Spike TV.
However, that won’t be the case this time.
As originally planned, the event’s main card will air on PPV (with a price tag ranging from $30 to $45, depending on your local provider) following prelims on Spike TV and Spike.com. The event takes place at Landers Center in Southaven, Miss.
Brooks (13-1 MMA, 5-1 BMMA), who recently won a Bellator tournament, originally was scheduled to fight Nate Jolly (13-5 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) on Bellator 120′s main card. Brooks had earned the right to fight for a title, but with Alvarez and Chandler booked for and tied up with the trilogy fight, he was going to fight Jolly to stay busy.
Rebney said they hope to keep Jolly on the card but need to find a new opponent.
According to Rebney, Alvarez was officially ruled out of the fight just today. Although he suffered a head injury two weeks ago during a training session, Rebney said that Alvarez continued cardio training but reported he was still dizzy. Rebney said Alvarez’s camp told him they’d keep the fight executive updated on his progress, but by Friday, they reported he was still at just “70 percent” capacity. This morning, Alvarez officially pulled out of the fight, Rebney said.
A timetable hasn’t been set for the champion’s return.
While the loss of the Chandler vs. Alvarez trilogy bout certainly hurts the card, Rebney believes the new Chandler vs. Brooks title fight, as well as the heavily billed Jackson (34-11 MMA, 2-0 BMMA) vs. Muhammed Lawal (12-3 MMA, 4-2 BMMA) light-heavyweight tournament final (which was named the new headliner), will provide PPV buyers something worth buying.
“I’m obviously disappointed,” Rebney said. “But we still have a huge card ahead of us with an amazing amount of value.
” … It’s remaining on PPV because it’s a PPV-worthy card, and it’s a must-see event. We used to have an utterly spectacular show, and now we have a spectacular show.”
Rebney also said a heavyweight tournament final between Blagoi Ivanov (11-0 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) and Alexander Volkov (21-4 MMA, 5-1 BMMA) has been promoted from the Spike TV prelims to the PPV main card.
The latest Bellator 120 card now includes:
MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)
•Quinton Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal – light heavyweight tournament final
•Will Brooks vs. Michael Chandler – for interim lightweight title
•Tito Ortiz vs. Alexander Shlemenko – non-title fight
•Michael Page vs. Ricky Rainey
•Blagoi Ivanov vs. Alexander Volkov – heavyweight tournament final
PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV, 8 p.m. ET)
•Cheick Kongo vs. Eric Smith
•Fabricio Guerreiro vs. Shahbulat Shamhalaev
•Mike Richman vs. Goiti Yamauchi
PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike.com, 6 p.m. ET)
•Austin Lyons vs. Zach Underwood
•Justin Frazier vs. Mike Wessel
•Ben Brewer vs. Andy Uhrich
•Anthony Lemon vs. Codie Shuffield
•Brian Hall vs. Cortez Phelia
Michael Page is not Anderson Silva. As honored as he is by the juxtaposition, Page will always be the first one to agree.
But the Brit isn't some run-of-the-mill prospect either, is he? If you scoured over weeks of regional tape, how many guys could you find a quarter-second removed from popping and locking before they smashed some poor gentleman in the face with a tornado kick or a 720 kick or a where the hell did that foot come from and why are these lights so bright kick?
"He makes you want to watch," says Page's head coach, Alexis Demetriades, who to this day remains astounded by some of the moves the fighter pulls off during gym sparring sessions.
"You either want to tune in to see him get knocked out or you want to see what he's capable of. And I think that it was sort of like letting the cat out of the bag (in his pro debut). When you look at Michael, honestly, he'll provoke a reaction. You're either going to love him or hate him."
Page's unique combination of showmanship and ferocity will return for the first time in over a year this Saturday when he meets Ricky Rainey on Bellator's inaugural pay-per-view, in what is easily the biggest stage of Page's young mixed martial arts career.
But amid all of the shimmying and styling, the dropping of hands and gyrating of hips before unleashing a maelstrom of spectacular violence, an ongoing debate persists about whether Page is actually legit or just another flash-in-the-pan can-crusher, as one glance at any "MVP" related comments section can attest to.
In that way, the hype makes sense. Fighters like Page are rare. The 27-year-old's obvious flippancy, along with his apparent disregard for the boundaries we've placed on this whole ‘fighting' thing, are, when they're at their best, a spectacle that's able to transcend the sport, making even the most uninitiated viewer cluck with joint befuddlement and amazement.
"It's weird for me," says Page. "I've always been like this since I was young. I take aspects from so many different people that I think are amazing.
"Watching some of the kids who are absolute nobodies at the moment, I find them the most creative, because again, they don't care about winning or losing. They're just there having fun. They don't [care about the rules], so they throw some crazy kicks and some crazy punches, and I'm like, ‘man, let me take that one down because that was good!' I could watch a Jackie Chan movie or anything just be, yo, I actually like that technique. I'm going to use that. Everybody who's anybody, I really appreciate them."
Before of all this, Page was known as one of the flashiest and most talented freestyle kickboxers in all of Europe. He became a world champion at the age of 12 and stuck around the circuit long enough to win nearly every kind of World Cup or one-off Prize Tourney throughout the region. On competition days he'd often fight up to 14 times across three weight classes. One day he fought around 22 times across five weight classes, including openweight, as a sort of foolish experiment. (He won all five.)
"I definitely think people don't take enough risks in this sport," he says. "I can understand why. Obviously people need to remember, this is their career. But for me, I genuinely don't know how well I'm going to be doing in this sport, so I might as well have as much fun as I can for as long as I can."
Fun, it seems, is what Page embodies.
He claims to have been nervous as all get-out before his aforementioned pro debut in early 2012. The claim seems like a bit of a stretch -- after all, men that nervous don't tend to move like water. His requisite lack of dance moves as he stalked down the red carpet and into the UCMMA cage may have been a telltale sign, although it's not like you could tell once those mesh doors swung shut and the theatrics begun.
"I like to be dancing or smiling or shouting or doing something. But that day, I was literally so nervous about what was going to happen, I just walked straight into the cage," Page says. "Then the second that the bell rang, I felt fine.
"When I first came over (to MMA), I just wanted to try something new. It wasn't a case of, let me really make a massive career out of it, and so on and so forth. But I did. So I'm not going to come over here and hold back.
"I'm just going to be myself and express myself, and that's the way I like to express myself. I think people don't take as much risks because they do care a lot more about the win or lose. But for me, even if I were to lose, I know I'm going to come back and I'm going to put on another show in my next fight."
When he first walked through the doors of London Shootfighters in 2011, Page never figured he'd be thrust into the vast unknown so soon. Demetriades warned him to expect getting two years of jiu-jitsu and wrestling under his belt before even sniffing an amateur fight, much less a professional one.
"Michael can do a lot of things, but getting away with it in MMA is a different story," Demetriades says, recalling his initial struggle to reign back Page's flash -- a struggle which persists to this day.
"The important thing with coaching Michael is he can do a lot of different things, but sometimes doing those things will get him in trouble in an MMA-sense, from a clinch point of view or from a takedown point of view. And the most important thing is coaching Michael and letting him know what he can and can't get away with."
Page danced and kicked and destroyed Dishman in an embarrassingly one-sided fight. Whispers of a British "Spider" churned across the London fog, and video of his pro debut exploded into a viral sensation seemingly overnight. Since then, Page hasn't stopped.
He says he views MMA as an art of sorts, where he can paint broad crimson strokes across a canvas in ways others see unimaginable. The philosophy has thus far worked, as the lanky welterweight continues to test the limits of his ingenuity while adding miles to his already lengthy highlight reel.
"Weirdly enough, I think the more comfortable I get with my jiu-jitsu and my wrestling, the more flashy I'm going to get," says Page. "Because I'll know, if I do something flashy and mess up, and you grab me, I'm still comfortable, so I'm going to continue to wrestle back, stand back to my feet. I think people (who say I'll have to tone it down) are seeing it the wrong way.
"Who would have told you that running across the cage and kicking someone in the face was going to work until you tried it? When I saw [Anthony Pettis' Showtime Kick], I was like, that is crazy. What would have made him do that? I'm sure he didn't train that. It's just one of those things that you kinda feel in the moment, and defending something like that is hard because it's not something you would see.
"It was an amazing way to put away such a high level fighter. That's exactly what I'm saying when people say, ‘well could you see yourself doing it when you get to that high level?' There are already people doing it at a high level! So it shouldn't even be a shock."
Ultimately, the knock on Page at this point in his remarkable career is the relatively low level of competition he's pirouetted atop while collecting his wins. Rainey is far and away the most accomplished fighter Page has challenged thus far, but Demetriades is quick to point out how unfair the criticism truly is.
"Everyone says wait until Michael meets a jiu-jitsu black belt or a wrestler or this or that. The kid has only had five fights," says Demetriades, ever the voice of reason. "He's going to meet those guys eventually, and when he does he'll be more than ready and capable.
"I've trained guys who have gone three rounds with Anderson Silva. I've had top-10 UFC guys. I've had a lot of good guys. And I absolutely think, if he's managed correctly and he keeps on training how he's doing, he's going to do something very, very special.
"Because here's the thing about Michael: his style, it's pretty ridiculous, isn't it?"
It really is.
Mixed martial arts is a curious sport. Regardless of how early a career may be, we seldom allow a fighter to exist as an in-between. Savoring the spectacle of an enjoyable new voyage is rarely enough to satiate the masses, we must also poke a few holes to see if the vessel still floats.
And so we go back to those pesky YouTube comments, where in profound moments of strangeness, a largely anonymous freestyle kickboxer continues to find himself in the center of a discussion about whether he's the next wunderkind of his new sport, or simply an arrogant wannabe who would learn a well-deserved lesson the moment he crosses paths with a wrestler, as if those are the only two options, or that question even concerns him.
"If you were to ask me before I did my first fight, I would have never seen me doing this now," Page admits. "I feel like I've jumped up quite quickly. Now I want to take over Bellator. I really want to dominate Bellator. Anytime I'm on Bellator shows I want to be the main event. I want to be the biggest name to come out of Bellator. I just want to really be a massive draw, because I believe in my style. My friends and family, they've showed their aunties, their grams, all these people who aren't interested in MMA, they've showed them my fights and they all get excited as well. It makes them care about MMA.
"So I want to bring new flesh, new eyes to the sport as well. For me, that's my goal. Obviously I'm going to have to keep progressing. Eventually go into the tournament. Eventually get a belt. Eventually defend the belt. I just want to be moving forward, step-by-step.
"But you're always going to get a show when I step in."
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Here's 1 way to welcome this Memphis native - Today is proclaimed as Rampage Jackson Day! @Rampage4real #Bellator120 pic.twitter.com/B7Fe4rz7tC
"It was funny. I went to go check out the guys. On my way to see DC, I saw Dan last night in the workout rooms. Dan's coming back and they dropped [Cormier] off a bunch of chicken...Popeye's...It was the best idea I've ever heard of. So it was like in the locker room, DC's smelling it, people keep opening the door. We had a whole team in there, a couple people keep sneaking a couple of bites. The smell permeates the room. DC's eyes just light up like golf balls."
-- Daniel Cormier is an avid Popeyes Chicken fan. In fact, "DC" loves it so much, scarfing down a few pieces of the prized poultry was the only thing that could cheer him after Rashad Evans was forced to bow out of their UFC 170 bout with an injury. After Cormier defeated "Suga's" replacement, Pat Cummins, on the Super Bowl weekend card, the fast food chain sent the former Olympian buckets of goodies to his hotel room as a congratulatory gift. Now, Dan Henderson -- Cormier's UFC 173 opponent -- followed suit by sending "DC" a bucket of the famed chicken to Cormeir's workout room ahead of this weekend's (May, 24, 2013) pivotal co-main event match. That's according to Luke Rockhold, who told MMA Fight Corner that "Hendo's" attempt to sabotage Cormier's weight cut backfired, as cooler bellies prevailed with the former Heavyweight refusing to give into temptation. Being good friends and training partners, I'm sure Cormier's entourage found a good way to dispose of the chicken. You can't blame "Hendo" for trying.
Injury forces Jake Shields out at July's WSOF 11 event
A planned WSOF 11 welterweight matchup between Jon Fitch (25-6-1) and Jake Shields (29-7-1) has been scratched.
WSOF officials today confirmed Shields suffered an injury in training and has been forced to withdraw from the contest, as was first reported by MMAFighting.
Promotion officials confirmed the search is currently underway for a replacement opponent for Fitch, who will remain on the card. Fitch vs. Shields was expected to serve as the co-main event of WSOF 11, which takes place July 5 and may potentially air on NBC. For now, a location and broadcast platform for the card have yet to be announced. WSOF lightweight champ Justin Gaethje meets Nick Newell in the headliner.
Shields signed with the Las Vegas-based WSOF after an eight-fight stint with the UFC. Officially, Shields was 3-1 in his final four fights for the promotion, earning wins over Demian Maia, Tyron Woodley and Yoshihiro Akiyama but dropping a decision to Hector Lombard in March.
A timetable for his return wasn’t immediately established.
Meanwhile, Fitch looks to fight for the third time under the WSOF banner. An 18-time UFC veteran, Fitch debuted for the promotion in June 2013 with a surprising technical submission loss to Josh Burkman in a dramatic bout that was considered one of the year’s top submissions. The longtime American Kickboxing Academy product bounced back with a hard-fought October win over Marcelo Alfaya and now fights for the first time in 2014.
MMA's Gina Carano, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate on Maxim Hot 100 List
# 58Meisha Tate
# 42Ronda Rousey
# 39Gina Carano
Gina Carano has the edge over UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey on at least one list.
The fighter-turned-actress, who hasn’t competed since an August 2009 loss to Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino, edged the UFC’s dominant 135-pound champion on this year’s Maxim Hot 100 List – the magazine’s annual list that largely ignores talent and instead focuses on the looks to rank notables, from “mind-bogglingly seductive supermodels to Hollywood’s most awe-inspiring actresses (with a bevy of beauties in between),” according to Maxim.com.
Feeling creeped out yet?
Anyway, editors have unveiled part of the list, and today’s additions come from the sports world. The print edition with the full list hits newsstands on June 3.
Carano ranked No. 39, three spots ahead of No. 42 Rousey.
Rousey rival Miesha Tate, meanwhile, clocked in at No. 58.
Past No. 1 rankings have gone to the likes of Katy Perry, Bar Refaeli, Olivia Wilde and Lindsay Lohan. Miley Cyrus topped the list in 2013.
Carano has apparently flirted with the idea of returning to the cage and fighting for the UFC, and Rousey (and UFC President Dana White, as well as Tate) seem eager to welcome here. Below, some MMA notables discuss whether Carano deserves an immediate title fight.
Matt Brown vs. Robbie Lawler
Anthony Johnson vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira
Michael Johnson vs. Josh Thomson
Daron Cruickshank vs. Jorge Masvidal
Dennis Bermudez vs. Clay Guida
Noad Lahat vs. Steven Siler
Kyle Kingsbury vs. opponent TBA
My computer is being shit right now and is taking forever to pull up the article. ANYWHO, Dana said theyre doing a UFC on Fox show (most likely 13) on Dec. 13th in Phoenix at the U.S. Airways Center!!!!(Phoenix Suns play) YEEEEEEE!! Bout Time UFC!!!!!
My computer is being shit right now and is taking forever to pull up the article. ANYWHO, Dana said theyre doing a UFC on Fox show (most likely 13) on Dec. 13th in Phoenix at the U.S. Airways Center!!!!(Phoenix Suns play) YEEEEEEE!! Bout Time UFC!!!!!
