Another fight weekend is in the books. In a UFC-less weekend headlined by big shows from Bellator and PFL, Bellator middleweight champion Gegard Mousasi provided the major headline, turning in a brilliant veteran performance to TKO John Salter in the third round and retain his title on Friday night. I’ll have more on Mousasi depending on what happens this week, but for now, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock this weekend:
Bellator doesn’t have a lot of depth in all but a couple divisions, but the top of the welterweight division carries some intrigue. Yaroslav Amosov, the new champion, is a perfect 26-0 in his pro career, and he’s still in his twenties. Douglas Lima, one of Bellator’s GOATs, is still around. Michael “Venom” Page is always fun and unique. Jason Jackson has recently emerged as a real problem, mostly because he’s enormous.
And adding Andrey Koreshkov back into the mix? That makes things a little more interesting. I’ll admit that I’m as guilty as a lot of people of forgetting just how dangerous the former Bellator welterweight champion is, after the 30-year-old (I honestly can’t believe he’s still that young) Russian took nearly two years in between fights in the Bellator cage. Koreshkov re-emerged on Friday night, putting together an excellent all-around display of violence in a win over Sabah Homasi.
Homasi is a tough, powerful, exciting striker whose fights are legally obligated to get super insane at some point or another, but Koreshkov never really let him in the fight. In fact, I’m kind of surprised Homasi even made it the full 15 minutes: Koreshkov nearly put his lights out with a picture-perfect flying knee in the second, the highlight of a very strong performance.
But Koreshkov put together all his tools in the blowout win. The knees were vicious – he hit a couple of them – but he pounded Homasi’s body, nuked him with great elbows on the ground, and employed his wrestling to very strong effect, including a big second-round slam that punctuated his best round of the night.
It was a terrific reminder of all Koreshkov has to offer, and a reminder that he’s consistently stood out among Bellator’s talent at 170 throughout his whole career. Koreshkov debuted in the circle cage way back in 2012, in the Bjorn Rebney era, twice winning the old Bellator season tournaments before beating Lima to win the title in 2015. Of his four career losses, three are in title fights – one against Ben Askren, two in rematches with Lima – and the fourth was a very contested split decision against Lorenz Larkin, another fighter I love, in 2019.
Although the Larkin fight was his last fight in Bellator up until this weekend, Koreshkov hadn’t been completely idle – with Bellator having taken a break for the first few months of 2021, he was allowed to take a fight in his native Russia in February, winning by first-round armbar. A pretty complete fighter with a lot of facets to his game, Koreshkov provided a great re-introduction on Friday night, and should deservedly slot back into the top 5 in the next Bellator rankings. It just wouldn’t feel like Bellator if Andrey Koreshkov wasn’t in the title hunt anyway.
Here is the list of fighters, all-time, who have ever beaten Russian grappling stud Magomed Magomedov:
- Petr Yan
- Raufeon Stots
That’s it, that’s the list. Not bad company to be in, huh? Magomedov-Stots was my feature bout of Bellator 264, a battle between two terrific ground fighters from different backgrounds: Magomedov a product of the Dagestani grapple factory, Stots a product of the American wrestling system, having won two Division II national titles in college.
The result was just as thrilling as I had hoped for. And when thinking about this fight ahead of time, I figured that Stots would probably have a good chance at outperforming Magomedov on the feet – Stots is quicker than a hiccup, and Magomedov’s striking is still somewhat suspect. But what I did not expect was how thoroughly Stots controlled the grappling on Friday night.
Stots seemed to be one step ahead of everything Magomedov had to offer. His takedown defense was absolutely brilliant, either through incredible speed and reaction time, or pure anticipation. On the few occasions Magomedov managed to really put him on the defensive in the grappling game, Stots responded with some great reversals, never letting the relentless Russian press the advantage too far.
Stots nearly finished the fight in a gripping third round, catching Magomedov in a rear-naked choke that the Russian desperately fought off, reversed, and then started hunting for submissions of his own. However, it never felt like Stots was in real danger – the 32-year-old from Houston was just on his game Friday night, in what was likely the best performance of his 18-fight pro career.
Convenient, then, that Stots looks so compelling right as new bantamweight champion Sergio Pettis is searching for his first challenger. Although not billed as such, it seemed pretty obvious going in that this was probably a title eliminator. The only fighters ranked ahead of Magomedov and Stots at 135 were former champ Juan Archuleta, who was just completely outfoxed by Pettis a few months ago, and submission specialist Patchy Mix, who already has a fight with James Gallagher booked for November.
So Sergio Pettis-Raufeon Stots, yeah? That sounds like one hell of a fight to me.
It’s very rare that I’m ever bored by a Ray Cooper fight, but one of the reasons we love the fight game is the fact that anything can happen. And facing the biggest name of his career, longtime top star and former Bellator champ Rory MacDonald, Ray Cooper had identified a path to victory. He thought he could outwrestle MacDonald and win a decision. He did just that on Friday night, and now another million-dollar prize is within reach.
Although he never quite reached the UFC mountaintop, MacDonald has been unanimously considered one of the best welterweights in the world for about a decade. And I don’t think ever, at any point, he’s ever been physically manhandled the way he was by Cooper in the PFL semifinals on Friday.
And while Cooper has found a lot of success with aggressive and entertaining striking during his acclaimed PFL career – just two out of his 11 PFL wins have gone the distance – it’s easy to forget that this is his bread and butter. Cooper has been wrestling almost his entire life, and won three Hawaii state championships in high school. We hadn’t seen many wrestling-centric gameplans in Cooper’s time in the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean he lacked the capacity to pull it off, even against a grappler with the talent of MacDonald.
And on Friday, Cooper was in control almost from the jump, taking MacDonald down repeatedly and winning with his ground pressure and top game. And just like that, two of the toughest obstacles standing between Cooper and another PFL title are gone: MacDonald, the big-name signing, was considered the preseason favorite, while No. 1 seed Joao Zeferino had to withdraw from the tournament due to injury.
That just leaves one big challenge, one that will again test Cooper’s grappling chops. Dagestani wrestler Magomed Magomedkerimov dominated Zeferino replacement Sadibou Sy on Friday night, controlling the fight with his ground game in much the same way Cooper did. It’s all Magomedkerimov has done in his PFL career: he’s a perfect 11-0 in the organization, having beaten Cooper for the 2018 title, and only being prevented from meeting Cooper again in the 2019 finals by an untimely illness.
Magomedkerimov hasn’t lost a fight in over six years, and he already has a win over Cooper on his record. And while Cooper continues to exceed expectations at every turn, he’s got arguably the biggest fight of his career next. I love a good rematch with a lot on the line.
The Big Fight 