Bellator 207 and 208: Heavyweight Tournament Semi-Finals

Bellator 207 and 208: Heavyweight Tournament Semi-Finals

By Dan McConnell

This weekend sees the semi-final stage of the Bellator Heavyweight Grand Prix underway with Bellator 207 on Friday 12th October inside the Mohegan Sun Arena Connecticut and Bellator 208 on Saturday night the 13th October in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Colisseum in New York.

On Saturday night Matt Mitrione (13-5) who is currently riding a five-fight win streak inside the Bellator cage will face familiar former-UFC foe in Ryan Bader (25-5) who is also unbeaten in his short time with the organisation and tipped by many as the favourite to win the tournament.

Mitrione defeated Roy Nelson in his first fight of the tournament and also took down MMA great Fedor Emelianenko at Bellator’s first appearance in MSG in New York. While ‘Darth’ Bader the current Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion defeated King Mo in his Quarter-Final stages of the competition.

By Saturday night we will know who is the first finalist in the 2018 Bellator Heavyweight Grand Prix and will find out who the other finalist will be to complete the line-up. The second semi-final will go down at Bellator 208 on Saturday featuring Fedor Emelianenko (37-5) and Chael Sonnen (31-15). Russian Fedor defeated Frank Mir in his opening round while Sonnen beat Rampage Jackson to progress. This bout should be one of intrigue where ‘The American Gangster’ will look to topple ‘The Last Emperor’ with his imposing All-American wrestling.

Other featured fights on Friday night at Bellator 207 include Roy Nelson v Sergei Kharitonov, Lorenz Larkin welcomes Ion Pascu to Bellator and Baby Slice faces Corey Browning. On the Saturday night at Bellator 208 Benson Henderson faces Saad Awad, Alexander Shlemenko faces Anatoly Tokov and Cheick Kongo squares up opposite Timothy Johnson.

This weekend is action packed inside the Bellator cage. We have just seen Bellator Welterweight Champion Rory MacDonald face Middleweight Gegard Mousasi in the promotions first ever super-fight and one that had a lot of attention. We have more monumental match-ups to look forward to this weekend. Who will be successful in booking their bouts to progress to the Bellator Heavyweight Grand Prix Final?