Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. This weekend may be our first in a while with no UFC card, but there’s plenty of good MMA to go around anyway – the weekend is front loaded with Bellator, PFL and ONE all running shows on Friday. There’s a Bellator title on the line and the start of the PFL playoffs, so plenty of stakes to go around.
It should be fun. And, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest this weekend:
Gegard Mousasi vs. John Salter, Bellator 264
Bellator’s biggest flaw is the way it books and promotes its champions – they don’t fight enough. I know it can be tricky to deal with sometimes, but it seems like the best matchups end up sitting and waiting for way too long. For instance, did you know Bellator has had like five lightweight title fights in the last six years? And the fact that everyone on Earth has forgotten that Gegard Mousasi exists, let alone is a world champion?
It seems like we’ve been waiting for the Mousasi-Salter matchup for a very long time – or, at least, we would be, had Bellator managed to put them in the public eye whatsoever. There’s still a decently large contingent of fans who count Mousasi, one of MMA’s most venerable and consistent competitors over the past 18 years, as still one of the very best middleweights in the world. Having regained his 185-pound title last year, he can bolster that reputation with a win over a fascinating contender.
Mousasi’s fights aren’t always that entertaining anymore, but he still wins. That’s mostly what he’s been doing for the past two decades. Mousasi is a technician in every sense of the world, a deeply skilled counter-striker with a strong judo background who continually finds his way past top competition. One of the few relevant fighters remaining who fought in Pride, the Dutchman won world titles at 205 pounds in Strikeforce and DREAM, before signing with the UFC in 2013. His run in the Octagon was quite successful, and while he always wound up taking a back seat in the middleweight title conversation, he was perennially on the cusp – and a five-fight win streak from Feb. 2016 to April 2017, the last four being knockouts of Thiago Santos, Vitor Belfort, Uriah Hall and Chris Weidman, had him breathing rarefied air.
It was at that moment that his contract came up, and he elected to sign with Bellator instead of continuing to hunt UFC gold. He won Bellator’s world title in 2018, lost it to Rafael Lovato Jr., and won it back against Douglas Lima when Lovato had to relinquish the title and retire due to a brain condition. Lovato was a multiple-time world Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion, one of the elites in that discipline fighting in MMA. Now, Mousasi will have to avoid losing gold again to another elite grappler.
36-year-old Alabaman John Salter doesn’t quite have the same chops Lovato Jr. has, but he’s got a resume of his own. Salter was an NAIA national champion wrestler at Lindenwood before pursuing BJJ, since becoming a second-degree black belt and competing on the ADCC stage. Salter had a brief UFC run in 2010, very early in his career, but fell through the cracks – he re-emerged in Bellator in 2015 and has won eight of nine in the circle, six by submission.
Salter’s one of those guys who knows what he’s good at and doesn’t mess around. While Mousasi will likely have him outgunned on the feet, when Salter gets his hands locked, you’re in danger.
It should be an interesting clash of styles, and I’m looking forward to see how Salter implements his top game against a fighter like Mousasi. History shows you can take Mousasi down, but the only guys who do it consistently are generally real elite wrestlers or grapplers: the Chris Weidmans, the Jacare Souzas, the King Mos. We’ll see if Salter is up to snuff, with a world title on the line.
Rory MacDonald vs. Ray Cooper III, PFL 7
The 2021 PFL season has been kind of a disaster from start to finish – turns out having a mainstream sports-style MMA schedule doesn’t work out that well when there’s a pandemic and guys keep getting pulled out. Combine that with the startlingly high number of upsets we’ve seen throughout the season, and the PFL playoffs, which start Friday, don’t really resemble what we thought we were going to see at the start of the season.
But anyone in the world would have guessed that at welterweight, we were going to see Rory MacDonald and Ray Cooper III cross paths at some point in the tournament. MacDonald was one of the biggest free agent captures of the PFL’s history, a former UFC title challenger and Bellator champion who’s still only 32 years old. Cooper has made the finals in each PFL welterweight tournament to date, and won the million dollars most recently in 2019. This was THE matchup in this weight class, and it’s happening Friday.
Even so, it hasn’t quite come about the way we might have thought. These two men are meeting in the semifinals, rather than the finals, because MacDonald sustained a stunning split decision upset against longtime UFC vet Gleison Tibau in his last fight – MacDonald was clearly the better fighter throughout, and Tibau’s victory was one of the most ludicrous robberies in a year that’s been filled with them.
Only the fact that MacDonald rolled through Curtis Millender with a first-round submission in his first fight secured his spot in the four-man playoff. Still, while MacDonald hasn’t ever really been the same since his epic, bloody war with Robbie Lawler for the UFC title in 2015, he’s still a terrific MMA grappler with a finely rounded game, and probably the best all-around fighter on the PFL roster.
Despite the specious-at-best loss to Tibau, MacDonald should be considered the strong favorite to win the million dollars. But Ray Cooper III, a freewheeling, aggressive and very entertaining 28-year-old from Hawaii, poses the most compelling threat. Cooper had more trouble with the scale – he was over by 0.8 pounds in his second regular season fight – than with his opponents in the first few weeks, rolling past both Jason Ponet and Nikolay Aleksakhin to clinch his spot.
Cooper is one of the pound-for-pound strongest welterweights in the world at just 5-foot-7, with KO power in both hands and a knack for bullying fighters much larger than him. And at this point, does MacDonald have the same kind of killer instinct that Cooper has? That’s what makes this fight so compelling, and what makes the winner most likely a million dollars richer.
Magomed Magomedov vs. Raufeon Stots, Bellator 264
Bellator’s co-main features the return of Andrey Koreshkov, the former welterweight champion who hasn’t fought in the Bellator circle since Oct. 2019. And while I’m looking forward to that, I’ll be on the edge of my seat for the fight immediately proceeding it. Baby, it’s GRAPPLE TIME.
It’s wrestling vs. sambo, contested at the very highest level of either discipline. Russian Magomed Magomedov – noted for being the only man to beat Petr Yan by a non-disqualification finish – has quickly established himself as one of Bellator’s most dominant grapplers in his two fights in the promotion. Houston native Raufeon Stots was a two-time Division II national champion wrestler at Nebraska-Kearney, where he succeeded a little-known guy named Kamaru Usman. Combined, they have a pro record of 34-2. It should be a test of wills.
Magomedov’s only career loss came to Yan in the rematch in April 2017, a brief pit-stop in his rise to worldwide prominence. Magomedov has torn through the competition in his two Bellator fights, dominating former ACB contemporary Matheus Mattos in December, before choking out Cee Jay Hamilton in April. He’s stronger than he looks, his takedowns are relentless, and he’s a little bit mean to boot.
Magomedov is as good as anyone at that new Caucasus grappling meta – shoot the single, push him against the cage, slide to the back in the clinch, and then make the guy’s life just a living fucking hell for the entire fight. Mattos is a very good fighter whose only career losses are to Magomedov and Yan, and I just felt real bad for him all night. It’s no fun fighting Magomed Magomedov.
But it’s safe to say that Magomedov hasn’t faced many opponents with the wrestling credentials Stots has. Stots’ only career loss was also to a future UFC star on the regional scene. His L came against hellacious takedown machine Merab Dvalishvili in June 2017, but not in the way you’d think – Merab knocked him out with a spinning backfist in just 15 seconds, a bizarre set of circumstances that only appears to exist in grainy cell-phone video.
Things got better for our friend Raufeon. He’s won eight straight since, and all four of his Bellator appearances since debuting in Dec. 2019. He most recently dominated well-respected veteran Josh Hill in May, controlling the whole fight with his excellent wrestling and southpaw striking that looked notably sharp. Stots is extremely quick and his wrestling ability really shines through when he’s in the cage, and the whole package makes him a fascinating matchup for Magomedov.
Bellator has wasted little time with either of these guys in getting them up to a top contender level, and the winner will have a compelling argument to be the first challenger for bantamweight champion Sergio Pettis. And really, they couldn’t have given us a better stylistic matchup. Strength on strength. Let’s find out who’s the better man. I can’t wait for this one.
The Big Fight 