Following Bellator 252 weigh-ins, the athletes came face to face for traditional pre-fight staredowns.
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Bellator returns this week and so does the promotion’s featherweight grand prix.
Bellator 252 takes place Thursday at Mohegan Sun Arena. The main card airs on CBS Sports Network following prelims streamed on MMA Junkie.
Following Wednesday’s official Bellator 252 weigh-ins, the athletes came face to face for some traditional pre-fight faceoffs.
Check out faceoffs below, including headliners Bellator featherweight and lightweight champion [autotag]Patricio Freire[/autotag] and [autotag]Pedro Carvalho[/autotag], as well as fellow quarterfinalists [autotag]Emmanuel Sanchez[/autotag] and [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag].
Ahead of Belaltor 252, Scott Coker talks various topics with MMA Junkie.
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – As November progresses, Bellator continues its stretch of weekly events with another Thursday card.
Bellator 252 takes place at Mohegan Sun Arena and is headlined by a featherweight title fight between champion [autotag]Patricio Freire[/autotag] and challenger [autotag]Pedro Carvalho[/autotag]. The main event doubles as a Bellator grand prix semifinal fight, with the other quarter of the bracket, [autotag]Emmanuel Sanchez[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag], kicking off the main card.
Ahead of the card, Bellator president Scott Coker spoke with MMA Junkie on a number of topics, which included the featherweight grand prix’s return, [autotag]Corey Anderson[/autotag]’s promotional debut, the light heavyweight title picture, the impending free agency of MMA legend [autotag]Anderson Silva[/autotag], and [autotag]Aaron Pico[/autotag]’s career progression.
Check out Coker’s comments on various topics below:
Check out what Daniel Weichel had to say before his Bellator featherweight grand prix quarterfinal matchup vs. Emmanuel Sanchez.
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Ahead of Bellator 252, [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag] spoke with MMA Junkie on Tuesday.
Weichel (40-11 MMA, 9-3 BMMA) discussed his featherweight grand prix quarterfinal against Emmanuel Sanchez, how the original cancellation and ensuing eight months of preparation has affected him, why his improvement will lead to another win over Sanchez in their rematch, and more.
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
Bellator 252 takes place Thursday at Mohegan Sun Arena. The main card airs on CBS Sports Network after prelims streamed on MMA Junkie.
We want your predictions for Thursday’s Bellator 252 event in Connecticut.
We want your predictions for Thursday’s Bellator 252 event in Connecticut.
Our staff picks feature includes the consensus picks from MMA Junkie readers. Simply cast your vote for each bout below, and we’ll use the official tallies that are registered by Wednesday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT).
Those MMA Junkie reader consensus picks will be part of the Bellator 252 event staff predictions we release Wednesday ahead of the event. Bellator 252 takes place Thursday at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. The main card airs on CBS Sports Network and streams on DAZN following three main card fights below.
Bellator’s featherweight grand prix resumes with Freire vs. Carvalho and Sanchez vs. Weichel on Nov. 12 and McKee vs. Caldwell on Nov. 19.
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – The Bellator featherweight grand prix finally is set to resume.
In addition, the previously reported featherweight title fight between champion [autotag]Patricio Freire[/autotag] and challenger [autotag]Pedro Carvalho[/autotag], and the other remaining quarterfinal matchup between [autotag]Emmanuel Sanchez[/autotag] and [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag] ,will take place at Bellator 252 on Nov. 12.
The promotion also will hold an event on Nov. 19, Bellator 253, which will be headlined by a semifinal fight between [autotag]A.J. McKee[/autotag] and [autotag]Darrion Caldwell[/autotag].
MMA Junkie confirmed the events and bookings with a promotion official after a report from CBS Sports on Thursday.
Both shows will take place at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., as part of a four-show, four-week stretch.
The tournament has been paused since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, forcing Bellator to cancel its remaining two quarterfinal fights the day of the scheduled event. The tournament’s restart has been delayed ever since due to three of four fighters being international and travel restrictions an issue.
Freire (30-4 MMA, 11-3 BMMA) entered the tournament as champion and successfully defended his belt against now-Bellator bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta. Carvalho (11-3 MMA, 4-0 BMMA) defeated Sam Sicilia in his opening round fight.
Weichel (40-11 MMA, 9-3 BMMA) submitted Saul Rogers and Sanchez (19-4 MMA, 11-3 BMMA) submitted Tywan Claxton. The winners of Freire-Carvalho and Weichel-Sanchez will square off an event and date to be announced.
As for Caldwell (15-3 MMA, 12-2 BMMA) and McKee (16-0 MMA, 6-0 BMMA), who are positioned on the other side of the bracket, both men have already fought – and won – twice in the tournament. In the opening round, McKee defeated Georgi Karakhanyan by eight-second knockout, then submitted Derek Campos in the semifinals.
Caldwell, the former Bellator bantamweight champion first defeated Henry Corrales via unanimous decision before submitting Adam Borics in Round 1 in January.
If you’ve got nearly six hours to kill, here you go with some classic Bellator action.
Since its first event held in 2009, Bellator has given us some of the most memorable fights in MMA history.
While events remain on hold because of coronavirus pandemic, Bellator has put 20 of its greatest bouts – “fire” fights, if you will – all in one place, which you can watch in the video above.
The complete list, which goes for nearly six hours, includes:
Daniel Weichel gave Patricio “Pitbull” Freire all he could handle before “Pitbull” retained his featherweight belt via split decision.
One unique night of fights went down at Bellator 203.
The event held at Foro Italico in Rome was a combined Bellator MMA and Bellator Kickboxing card, and the MMA card unfolded at a record clip, with five consecutive fights ending in first-round knockouts. Those on the winners’ side included popular veteran slugger Alessio Sakara and former Bellator welterweight champion Andrey Koreshkov.
But it wasn’t quite a clean sweep of first round finishes, as the main event featured a 25-minute battle. The first time [autotag]Patricio Freire[/autotag] and [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag] fought, “Pitbull” earned the victory at Bellator 138 with a 38-second knockout.
The rematch was a different matter. Weichel gave Freire all he could handle in the 2018 fight, giving “Pitbull” a real run for his money in a featherweight title fight. In the end, the champ retained on the narrowest margins, earning a split decision in one of his toughest title defenses.
Freire, of course, is now Bellator champ-champ, as he also hold the lightweight belt. Both belts are on hold during the pandemic, but “Pitbull” has plenty of great fights to his name, and this is one of them.
So make sure to tune in to MMA Junkie at 6 p.m. ET to relive a night of fast and furious finishes topped by an epic title battle.
Bellator featherweight contender Daniel Weichel recalls the crazy sequence of events that led to Bellator 241 being canceled as the COVID-19 outbreak hit the United States.
With 51 professional fights to his name, Bellator featherweight contender [autotag]Daniel Weichel[/autotag] has seen plenty of crazy things over the course of his MMA career. But nothing prepared him for the rollercoaster ride of his most recent fight week.
Two-time featherweight title challenger Weichel (40-11 MMA, 9-3 BMMA) was all set to take on American Emmanuel Sanchez in the quarterfinals of the featherweight grand prix at Bellator 241 at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn. on March 12. But, as fight week evolved, the world became a very different place as the enormity of the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent across the U.S.
It meant the event went from a full arena show to a behind-closed-doors event during the course of the week. Then, on the morning of fight day itself, the event was called off.
It was an unprecedented fight week for Bellator, and one that Weichel had never seen anything like before in his seasoned career.
“This was definitely the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in a fight week,” he told MMA Junkie from his home in Frankfurt, Germany. “I was watching the news a little bit at that time and I was aware that this was possible, but I put it on the side. I had 100 percent focus on the fight. So it was fight day, my weight was good, everything was good, training camp was good, diet was good, weight cut, everything. Then we went for the workout that we do on fight day, and there were rumors that the event was going to be canceled.
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“We were like, ‘OK, no. We don’t listen to this. We will go, we will work out and we will see from there.’ And we went to the workout room, and there was one other guy on the phone and he said, ‘No way! The event is canceled.’ Then it was like, ‘Oh! It seems to be real.’ Then a load of fighters came out of the office and, yeah, we found out that it’s going to be canceled.”
Weichel had done the hard work, completed his training camp and had even made weight for the fight before eventually being told the event was off. Understandably, for a fighter who had spent months preparing to peak for an event that night, the news came as a body blow.
“Man, you’re in the middle of nowhere, and I was ready to go to war,” he recalled. “Now we are just going back to Germany without fighting. It was really strange.”
Weichel is now staying safe and staying at home in Germany as, like the rest of us, he is adapting to life in quarantine. But he said that he hopes to pick up where he left off in Uncasville and eventually meet Sanchez in their quarterfinal bout once Bellator is able to start running events again.
“I still have this fight in my mind, and I’m looking forward to going for it, but at that time, it was a really, really strange situation,” Weichel said.
To hear the full interview with Weichel, check out the video below.
Bellator featherweight contender Daniel Weichel chats to MMA Junkie’s Simon Head about his experience at Bellator 241, which ranked as the craziest fight week of his 51-fight MMA career.
Bellator featherweight contender Daniel Weichel chats to MMA Junkie’s Simon Head about his experience at Bellator 241, which ranked as the craziest fight week of his 51-fight MMA career.
