UNCASVILLE, Conn., August 21, 2011 – Were you watching Bellator 48 on MTV2 last night? If you were, you’ll probably have woken up this morning realizing a few simple things.
- Pat Curran AKA “Paddy Mike” is no longer some prospect. He’s the real deal.
- The momentum of Ricco Rodriguez’ 11-fight win streak now belongs to Seth Petruzelli.
- Cole Konrad can stand up when needed. And he looks a little bit like Frankenstein in the face.
Okay you may not have woken up thinking those things but I did, along with the usual thoughts of running out and buying homemade éclairs and some fresh coffee here in town. Mmm.
Back to the fights, it was good to see the “Summer Series” finale live up to the billing with the two top fighters from the tourney battling it out in the finale. All indications were that Marlon Sandro would come out on top. For two rounds he reinforced that notion with crisp striking until Pat Curran hit him the head with a big STOP sign shaped like right shin. Seriously, that head kick was brutal. And it showed that Curran is no longer some prospect, but rather the real deal and perhaps one of the top ten featherweights in the world. Look at the list of names he’s beaten: Marlon Sandro, Ronnie Mann, Toby Imada, and Roger Huerta amongst them. That’s nothing to shake a stick at. This kid is for real.
Elsewhere on the card, an back from a one-year layoff, BellatorHWT Champ Cole Konrad made his mark by beating our own tough West Texas “Headhunter” Paul Buentello via unanimous decision. At first, I thought it foolish that Cole to try and test his wares standing with Buentello but he was able to do so without getting caught with one of those vicious uppercuts. His takedowns and groundwork in the third more than cemented a clear decision.
“The Silverback” Seth Petruzelli came up with his own exclamation point in taking out Saul Soliz protégé and the former UFC heavyweight champ Ricco Rodriguez. Seth completely flabbergasted Rodriguez with a spinning back kick followed up with a big right hand that spelled the beginning of the end for the former champ. Petruzelli called out for a shot at the Bellator 205 title after the bout so if I were a man named Christian M’Pumbu, I’d definitely be hugging my belt pretty tight right about now.
The card was rounded out by a TKO win over Juan Bennantes courtesy of debut fighter Rene Nazare, a highly-touted submission artist and likely a participant in the next iteration of Bellator’s 155 tourney.
As a final note on this card, it’s an interesting development to hear from several sources that several SPIKE TV executives were in attendance at the card. For those that don’t know, Viacom owns both SPIKE TV and MTV2. Despite that fact, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney has been denying a move to SPIKE ever since news of the UFC’s impending move to the FOX network became public.
Well when there’s smoke, there’s usually fire and to a man, it’s starting to look like Bjorn’s denials are the equivalent of Dana and other execs saying “it’s business as usual.” That’s the way it works in the business world and SPIKE still has the end term of their UFC deal to promote, including TUF 14 – the last season of the show on the network. With that, they like don’t want to draw attention away from current programming for the sake of future plans. Be that as it may, I’d look for the most logical move to be made for the two partners (Bellator and MTV2/SPIKE/Viacom) in the near future and that means going to the network with an MMA footprint and a larger audience reach.
There will certainly be interesting times ahead in MMA. We’ll come back to that later though. For now, enjoy this violent head kick of Marlon Sandro courtesy of “Paddy Mike.”
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