Contributor: Nolan Howell
- For their innumerable faults, I absolutely love Bellator’s promos. A little formulaic and forced, they do add some depth and the production value is great. That’s something I’d like to see a little more from the UFC than the standard “fighter talking to off-camera dude in a faux dark room” bit.
- Joe Warren and Nick Kirk was an absolute joke in matchmaking. Still, Warren found a way to make Kirk look somewhat competitive, which just isn’t a good sign for him. While there is a lot of stock in Warren, he seems to only know wrestling (despite his odd submission) and someone will be able to counter that sooner or later. Bellator is milking the cow before it goes dry here.
- Alexander “Tiger” Sarnavskiy is an animal, but beating Marcus Davis doesn’t really prove it. The way he did it though was impressively violent and he is my favorite to take this lightweight tournament by leaps and bounds.
- Rich Clementi and Ricardo Triloni was a rather tepid affair wherever it went. Triloni showed some solid kickboxing though and he showed some improvement, not to mention beating Clementi is a solid feather in the cap at this level. Nothing to write home about, but good for Triloni.
- Will Brooks turned John Alessio’s face into a piggy bank. Brooks against Sarnavskiy looks like the finals of this tournament (should Awad not be able to duplicate his performance against Brooks a second time) and that will be a very interesting fight. Brooks shows more wrinkles each time out there and he is becoming a guy to watch.
- Speaking of Saad Awad, he is a violent dude and that showed against Martin Stapleton. Awad showed a decent ground game in addition to the cinderblocks he calls hands. While he will probably never be a top guy in Bellator or anywhere else, the guy is fun as hell to watch.
- Overall, decent show, but nothing really worth watching again. Bellator seems to be rather lackluster going into their PPV and we will see how that pays off in the end.
-Nolan can be reached @nolanhowell.
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