The inaugural Bellator PPV finally took place Saturday night in Mississippi with Rampage Jackson taking on King Mo Lawal in the main event. Trust me, I’ll get to that fight in just a second, but I just wanted to give some general feedback regarding the PPV main card after having about 12 hours to digest it.
The pacing of the PPV portion of the card was ridiculously slow, and I wasn’t the only one that felt that way as it was a running joke on social media. It was their first PPV event, not their first show ever, so that was entirely unacceptable in my opinion. Also, I didn’t mind the dressing room interviews with Frank Shamrock too much, but they sort of went overboard with them. At that point, the PPV had been ordered and there was no longer a need of trying to push storylines, etc. The judging was atrocious, but what’s new in the world of MMA? That’s not really Bellator’s fault as they are supplied by the commission, but man, some of those scores were just plain wrong. Jimmy Smith should stick to commentating fights and not trying to be a judge. He is terrible in that department.
On to the fights:
- Page/Rainey: Rainey is a local product here in NC that I’m fond of and I thought he’d at least put up a better fight if not pull off the upset. However, he looked like he was in slow motion against Page. Is Page that fast or did Rainey have an adrenaline dump appearing on the first PPV of his career? I don’t know, but Page showed up and delivered a spectacular knockout. Props to him.
- Volkov/Ivanov: Man, big upset as I had Ivanov winning this fight on paper. Props to Volkov for taking advantage of a mistake by Ivanov and sinking in that choke to get the win.
- Ortiz/Shlemenko: I had Tito a chance of winning the fight by stealing the first two rounds and then surviving the final round to eek out a decision. However, he never let it get that far as he got the submission win in the first round. Ortiz has always had an underrated submission game, but man, I have no idea how Shlemenko didn’t see that arm triangle coming? Was Ortiz just that much bigger than him and he had no answer for it? I don’t know…that was weird. However, props to Ortiz for overcoming all of those surgeries AND a two year layoff to get the victory. He turned in a vintage Ortiz performance like he used to in his prime…beating up a smaller guy!
- Chandler/Brooks: Firstly, I had the fight scored as a draw. I thought Chandler got the first two rounds, scored round three 10-8 for Brooks, Brooks got round 4, and Chandler stole the final frame with his flurry in the final 30 seconds. It was a robbery, but was an entertaining fight nonetheless. Is it me or has Michael Chandler NOT looked like a top tier lightweight in his last two outings? He made a TON of mistakes against Brooks. I mean, he was getting his back taken at WILL. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with him and Alvarez moving forward since it appears that Brooks was injured in the fight.
- Rampage/Lawal: Lawal won that fight, period. He easily won the first and the third rounds. There’s no way Rampage won that fight. It’s ridiculous that the judges awarded that fight to Rampage unanimously.
Over all, it was a decent event. The most memorable thing was King Mo Lawal dropping ETHER on Bjorn Rebney in the cage. The event put Bellator in some interesting positions match up wise. So it’ll be cool to see where they go from here.
What were your thoughts on the PPV? Who did you have winning the Rampage vs. King Mo fight?
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