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Bellator MMA NYC brings night of unexpected drama and two title belts changing hands

Bellator MMA NYC: live updates from Sonnen vs Silva
Bellator MMA NYC: live updates from Sonnen vs Silva

It was a night of drama, the narrative of the Bellator MMA event here in Manhattan bringing forth two title belt changes, a broken leg, a broken legend,  and a broken young debutant. And a long-running dispute settled. 

So runs the wheel of fortune in fight sports, and what will be looked back on as a very successful event will resonate as the moment the fight league stamped a new authority on a sport still burgeoning and developing into the mainstream television sports entertainment landscape.

The new champions at lightweight and light heavyweight, Brent Primus and Ryan Bader, will give Bellator CEO Scott Coker the opportunity to forge new match-ups.

Welterweight king Douglas Lima will meet Rory MacDonald, who was there beside the fighting arena, watching intently. That will be some match of huge technical abilities which both men exude with their fighting IQs. Mouth-watering, in fact.

The double knockdown involving Matt Mitrione and Fedor Emelianenko will live long in the memory,  but one wonders how long the beaten Russian can continue to make the walk to the cage.

Even Chael Sonnen, who ground down Wanderlei Silva by smothering him and escaping those dangerous hands, called out the great old Russian bear afterwards. Sonnen delights with his word play, but let's not go all WWE about the greatest heavyweight of all time and another era,  and  devalue and dilute his legacy. Just a thought.

Aaron Pico, the star they touted on his debut will go back and rebuild after defeat, and his conqueror, Zach Freeman, is a new star, who goes back to his day job on Tuesday. Pico will grow from this; and never forget. Freeman deserves to have a badge of honour, and a few lucrative fights.

Women's MMA fighter Heather  Hardy showed earlier in the evening that she has the heart of a champion, and killer instinct, the South Brooklynite thrilling the 12,000 crowd, while the nerveless Irishman, just 20 years old, dispatched Chinzo Machida with an ability and belief way beyond his years.

That is it for tentpole pay per view in 2017, offered Coker afterwards.  "We will come again next year, with a very big card, and that will define them. They have to be stacked, and successful," he said.

This was a success at every turn. Every turn, and in so many details. There are always bumps to iron out in fight sports. But if Bellator had not 'arrived' before tonight, on a memorable night at Madison Square Garden,  the fight league truly landed.        

  

 

       

 

5:55AM

Chael Sonnen defeats Wanderlei Silva on points - 30-27, 30-27, 30-26 

Sonnen grinds his way to victory and confirms how much he "hates New York". Calls out Fedor...

... and says he beat Tito Ortiz. False news. Sonnen lost to Ortiz, who was talking Sonnen down here outside the fighting arena. Sonnen more WWE by the event... but a verbal genius.     

5:49AM

Sonnen versus Silva 

Have Chael two rounds up as we go into the third and  final five  minute session. Silva's corner are screaming at him, the once wrecking ball's desire is there, but the body is spent and slowed. At the top level his handspeed is gone.  But the memories remain. It is a fun way to end this great night in Madison Square Garden.  The crowd loves this drama, though... and want every last drop of fight love from the event. As they commune in the fighting art on the ground, at the behest of safety for Sonnen,  Dan Henderson, a legend himself, is up and out of his seat. 

Sonnen grinds on top, the wrestler taking over... 

5:44AM

Great rendition of USA anthem by rock guitarist Dave Navarro  

 

5:34AM

Main event time...Chael Sonnen  meets arch rival Wanderlei Silva - the 5-year boiling rivalry between the two to be decided... amazing rock guitar rendition  of American anthem to get us started

Sonnen is straight in to the takedown to chants of USA... USA... This could be a 15-minute grinder if Sonnen gets his way over the brilliant old (he is 40, in fact they both are) Axe Murderer. I do fancy Wanderlei has a great chance by guillotine if he can get this done... but my pick is Chael.

Rd 1 Sonnen 10-9   

5:04AM

Great night for Matt Mitrione - beating a veritable MMA legend in Fedor 

 

4:54AM

Off the scale drama - double knockdown of Fedor and Mitrione, but American gets victory over the great Russian heavyweight - check this out...

 

4:39AM

Here's the video moment Michael Chandler had his leg broken by Brent Primus 

 

4:34AM

Respect from fellow pro Linton Vassell for courage and obduracy of Michael Chandler 

 

4:31AM

More drama ... lightweight champion Michael Chandler breaks ankle in opening round and Brent Primus the new champion

That was horrific. Literally a snapped ankle... TKO doctor stoppage...

New champion... wait for the video replay... it's not a great sight... 

4:28AM

The scoring in Davis versus Bader has divided some people... 

 

4:23AM

You gotta believe, says Zach Freeman. He did. He came. He conqurered. Picture says it all...

 

4:21AM

Scorecard for Ryan Bader versus Phil Davis fight.... 

 

4:14AM

Victorious James Gallagher comes over with the legend of MMA Royce Gracie    

 

4:07AM

Shock of the night: Zach Freeman drops and submits Aaron Pico...in 24 seconds

Unbelievable. Fall guy Zach Freeman just defeated Aaron Pico, who came into his MMA debut as the most touted prospect of all time, with a counter right punch, and guillotine finish.  Right uppercut. Pico tapped. This is fight sports. ... expect the unexpected.  

4:00AM

AND STILL ... Douglas Lima retains the Bellator welterweight crown against Lorenz Larkin 50-45, 48-47-48-47 

 

3:50AM

Lima vs Larkin: Round 5

Some real intent from Larkin, as the champion, nose broken, responds with counters of his own. That was a more intense round but the fight did not really ignite. Last round to Larkin, who loses this 48-47 in my view... let's see...   

3:43AM

Lima vs Larkin: Round 4

They are dancing with their own styles and the dance slightly favouring Lima. The Brazilian drops Larkin in the final minute. As we go into round 5, I have LL needing a 10-8  or a stoppage for victory.    

3:36AM

Lima vs Larkin: welterweight title fight... Rd 3 

Lima kicking cleverly to the body. Larkin has switched to southpaw. Left head kick blocked by the champion Lima. Very measured fight, no change in tempo. Larkin did a little more ? Tough to score, that...

Larkin 10-9   

3:29AM

Welterweight title fight: Douglas Lima (champion) vs Lorenz Larkin

Cagey opening round. Little between them. So little, both great movers and strikers. Lima's work just a little cleaner, more efficient. Rd 1,  10-9 Lima. Just.

Success for Larkin in the second stanza, and then BOOM, Lima fells LL and goes in for ground and pound, and LL survives vicious ground assault. Good round, two terrific fighters. Lima Rd 2, as well. 10-9

Lima leads 20-18 after two rounds on my card.   

 

3:21AM

AND THE NEW ... Ryan Bader takes the fight 49-46 twice and one judge 48-47 for Davis 

 

2:56AM

Davis vs  Bader Round 5

They lock like two stag beetles both throwing right hands, Davis ends up on the ground but not hurt, simply off balance. Body kick from Bader, RB lower leg kick. Big right by PD rocks Bader's head back. Then a takedown by Bader at 2.17 remaining. If this has been judged closely that could be a very significant. Both looking for in-roads in final seconds but NOT A LOT HAPPENING ...

Bader 10-9      

2:50AM

Davis vs Bader Round 4

Another slow, deliberate round. Bader making more strides but unable to take over. Bader round, just.

Bader 10-9 

2:45AM

Davis v Bader Round 3

Davis turns Superman and lands with a very nice right hand and sends spray arcing  from Bader 's jaw and hairline into this great arena. A right felt by Bader into his boots. Davis more confident in owning the space between them. Under he ducks from a shot and another right hand from Davis, now bleeding from the mouth. Lower leg kick and two jabs from Bader. Davis showing so much improvement in footwork and striking against a very good striker in Bader.

Bader takedown, reversed by the champion in dying seconds.

Davis 10-9 

2:39AM

Davis vs Bader Round 2

Bader out with more head movement. Huge left hook from RB misses. Sneaky little right from Bader glances then a body kick with intent from the challenger. Right wheeling, arcing kick from the champion... good lead right plants itself clean on the chin of Bader. Battle of the jab.

Boxing match. Boos from the crowd. But the dance is interesting and Davis is winning it 8 minutes in. They clinch but these two old wrestlers won't afford the other the upper hand. Deadlock.

Left hook Bader. Glancer from him. Then left to the body of the soaking Davis. More concerted attack by Bader in the last 30 seconds but another Davis round for me.

Davis 10-9.  

2:31AM

Light heavyweight title: Phil Davis defends against Ryan Bader  

Cagey start. Good little chopping left hook by Davis. They engage. Davis with show of strength,  Bader up to it... chopping lower leg kick by the champion. Great versatility and angles from Davis, Both erudite athletes and combatants. Huge right hook from David wings over an evading Bader .

Jab, jab from Bader. Boos - but come on... they are just getting into this and they have fought three rounds in the past...

Davis 10-9.

2:23AM

Scenes from this great night at Madison Square Garden for Bellator NYC and 180

 

2:20AM

Here's James Gallagher in celebration ... and rightly so - 7 wins no losses and a real statement...

 

1:57AM

James Gallagher vs Chinzo Machida 

Here we go... Gallagher hunting, good right hand, takes Machida down. Locks up CM body, from behind and stretches him out, looking for rear naked choke. And BINGO... the Brazilian is OUT... Gallagher bows to his defeated foe... fast dramatic, a statement. 

1:49AM

Irishman James Gallagher up next... here we go...

 

1:33AM

Heather Hardy vs Alice Yauger - real scrap - South Brooklyn wins by TKO 

Smarter fighting in the second and third rounds from Hardy, her team rightly telling her to re-set,  and boss the fight from range. After all, HH was an elite boxer and kickboxer. 'Move your head, throw the cross...' yells the corner. But this is bad.  Split eyelid for HH from an accidental head butt. Minute to go. Good refereeing by big John McCarthy. Restart after doctor inspection. Then a brutal attack from HH, floors AY with a combo, and the vicious fighter surfaces. Crowd goes wild as HH finishes her foe by TKO...(technical knockout/referee stoppage).  

Real emotion from HH at the end...

 

1:20AM

Heather Hardy vs  Alice Yauger

Tough first round for Hardy,  after a good start on debut. Needs to be cleaner and strike and box from range. Scrappy fight suits Yauger. Close but probably AY round. Hard is meant to win this debut... to launch herself. Yauger having none of it.    

1:14AM

Herschel Walker USA sports legend and NFL great tells me he would have been an MMA fighter today...  

 

1:03AM

Ryan Couture is made up... victory at MSG, in front of Dad (Randy, Mr America)

 

1:02AM

Ryan Couture wins with father and MMA legend Randy Couture in his corner 

 

12:40AM

Self-indulgent but how could I not do this with the Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier scales from 1971 Fight of the Century... 

 

12:27AM

Aaron Pico - The kid raised like an ancient Spartan 

 

12:26AM

Strabanimal James Gallagher made up to be on Madisonb Square Garden event...

 

12:16AM

Irishman James Gallagher aims to follow in the footsteps of the great Conor McGregor

No wonder James Gallagher aped Conor McGregor on the weigh in scales at Madison Square Garden. The template of Irish invasion into American MMA - in this case Madison Square Garden for Bellator 180 - has been etched by 'The Notorious One.'

Gallagher, from Strabane, has grown up in the master shadow of McGregor, and unsurprisingly, wants to emulate the game-changer from his homeland.  The Telegraph can reveal, according to Bellator, that his contest will be shown live and free on YouTube in Ireland.     

He does not want to over-egg the narrative of his back story or upbringing, which was wild, the 20-year-old featherweight fighter unbeaten in 6 contests preferring to emphasise that has an ambition which knows no bounds.

"I'm trying to do what he (Conor) does, but a lot better. I'd be disappointed if I didn't achieve what Conor has achieved. Take nothing away from him, in my eyes he is the greatest fighter on this planet. Of all time. There is no one better. But I want to be better than that."

See ... ? But you can't deny where the fighting spirit has come from. It has a fount. It was deep, and probably dark at one time. He makes for a fascinating study and interview.

"It comes from growing up in Strabane. That's where it all started. I was running around as a kid and always fighting, always probably doing shit I shouldn't be doing," explained the fighter whose sobriquet is "The Strabanimal", and who carries a wicked glint of fun and focused mischief in his eye. 

"Then it just developed and I wanted to be productive and do something good. If I'm being 100% truthful I wouldn't have been sat here today if I'd left it much longer. I would have been down a bad road."

He explained, like so many others who have found rhyme and reason in their lives through the decathlete discipline of mixed martial arts gyms, and in this case now the same SBG Gym in Dublin which has taken McGregor to the global heights of sporting fame, how this life may have been wasted on him.

12:13AM

Heather Hardy: Another debutante with a incredible story to relate...  

At every turn, there are fascinating tales from the top to the very start of the card's line-up.

Heather Hardy, a single mother in her thirties, has a tale all of her own. Being shadowed this week by The Wall Street Journal, the striking blonde fighter has a troubled past, not of her own doing.

She took up fight sports in her twenties. Three weeks later, aged 28, Hardy won her first kickboxing match in front of a few thousand people at a venue on Long Island. To hear Hardy speak, is to be inspired into the many of the reasons why fight sports have a deeper place in our society than we often care to believe.

Born and raised in South Brooklyn, in Gerritsen Beach, a working-class community of around 5,000, and sporting Celtic tattoos, the former women's boxing and kick-boxing world champion, has turned her focus on martial arts.

Opportunity, she insists, as she makes her MMA debut, to make a living in a sport which treats women more fairly and with more equanimity than boxing has for many, many years.

And in many ways, Hardy is fighting for her salvation, perhaps. Within and without the ring. A dark black cloud entered her life in her early teens. Hardy went public with espnW in recent times about being the victim of aggregious sexual assault as a teenager. She was in with the wrong crowd at the time. Her rapist was 29. "I never breathed a word about being raped because I knew my aunt went to church with his mother, or if I go to the grocery store, I'll run into his cousin," she had told espnW.

"Women from my neighbourhood stay quiet because they're too concerned about how it will affect everyone else.

"I thought it was my fault for smoking pot and hanging out with these people, because I was the one who bought the papers," she says.

"When in reality, a 29-year-old man should not be giving a young girl drugs. As an adult, with a daughter that age, I now realize how I was raped. It was planned from the beginning of the evening. But as a girl, I thought I was the one who was to blame."

One suspects that fighting forms part of a catharsis here, fighting for pride, for a deeper sense of growing out of adversity. I asked Hardy today why she fights. "Because I'm good at it," she told me.

But there are opportunities, too.  Opportunities not afforded yet to women in the boxing world. 

"Women's boxing is going in the right direction because of girls like Claressa Shields, Marlon Esparza, Nicola Adams, but they're still not making money. Women are not making money. There's still that attitude that you should be thankful for that you've got because other girls don't have this."

"We're settling for smaller pay checks and not bigger opportunities. The idea that just because we're going to put one female on this card isn't enough. We're not just females, we're athletes. We're just like the guys. There are great female boxers and there are terrible ones. There are ones that deserve a lot more than they're getting."

Hardy hits the nail square on its head, like her crunching kicks and strikes. MMA supports women, and Bellator may have struck gold with her on the card. 

"I believe they've (the MMA industry) evolved beyond most other sports as far as treating women like athletes and not like female athletes."

"In a boxing gym those guys are my brothers. They respect me more than some of the women do. Most of my biggest supporters come from some of the toughest, bad ass boxers in Gleasons Gym. I think it's because there are more youthful minds running these MMA organisations and they're changing with the times and realising we're not stuck."

"In boxing you have the same people who are signing the contracts when Laila Ali and Crissy Martin were fighting. They're making arguments that there's not enough competition and nobody wants to watch it but they're basing this on things that happened 25 years ago."

Hardy fights Alice Yauger (record 4-5) in the first contest in the second section of the evening.    

12:09AM

Raised like a Spartan: Aaron Pico 

Aaron Pico belongs to a bygone age: of the Spartans. The 20-year-old Californian has become the most touted mixed-martial arts debutant in the sport's history and must show what the ancient civilization once called its 'agoge', an upbringing in a warrior code.

Pico, who has studied fighting forms from the age of seven, like most children study academia, breaks out his martial arts moves on the biggest stage on Saturday night at the hallowed fight Mecca, Madison Square Garden, the first contest on a pay-per-view card underwritten by millions of dollars as Bellator MMA, owned by media giants Viacom, drive their flag firmly into the heart of Manhattan. It's an arrival moment for the fight league. But for Pico, too. 

Part wrestler, part boxer, part wunderkind. Ambitions to be a world champion in MMA -- and boxing. A genuine champion in both would be a modern first. These things have an awful habit of going wrong, yet having spent some time around Pico, the detail is there, as are the sojourns to wrestle in Dagestan (at a time where it was classified as amongst the most dangerous places on the planet), study the Noble Art of boxing in the Hollywood Wild Card Boxing Gym under esteemed trainer Freddie Roach, travel to Thailand, Ukraine, and all the time guided by the watchful, masterful eye of 'Crazy' Bob Cook, whose scouting missions in MMA are simply legendary.

Look back over Cook's resume, and 'Crazy' is a misnomer. Crazy good, more like. Ronda Rousey, Daniel Cormier, Cain Velasquez... to name but a few. No, Cook may have unearthed a gem here.             

Back to Ancient Sparta, again, for a moment, and Pico. The Spartans took their boys aged seven to become fighters, under 'agoge' or fighting pedagogy, an education instilled in many noblemen's children too, the rigorous regime compulsory for all males.  

12:08AM

This is a 'where were you when' moment...at Madison Square Garden for Bellator MMA

There are so many storylines tonight.... on this huge card in a 'where were you when' moment for Bellator MMA, and so many fighting protagonists...

Here's a flavour from the week ... Aaron Pico, Heather Hardy, James Gallagher... just making their names in the sport. 

 

11:50PM

Bellator has arrived. Big time

A phalanx of fighting names, ancient and modern legends of mixed martial arts, three title fights, the blooding of young stars, the inclusion of a local fighting woman with a compelling back story: Bellator MMA's first event at Madison Square Garden, in the heart of Manhattan, and within the heart of the American media hub here in the Big Apple has brought a real resonance to this major pay per view event for the fight organisation this week. Fighting noise. Bellator has arrived. Big time. In the great hall once renowned as 'the Mecca' for fight nights.

"Look around you," said Scott Coker, the CEO of Bellator, speaking to Telegraph Sport. "We have journalists and film crews from all over the world for this. This is the biggest fight card in the history of this company and I can feel it, man. I can feel it growing. The energy's growing."

"I think this is a fight card that from top to bottom delivers on many different levels. If you're a fight fan of Pride and Wanderlei Silva and Fedor Emelianenko, or if you're a fan of the UFC and Chael Sonnen. This is a fight that has something for everybody," added Coker.

"There's crews from all over the world here. We have a crew from Spain, one from Russia, one from Latin America, one from the Netherlands. There's people from all over the world coming in for this fight. It's a big international event. And keep in mind even though it's just on ppv here in America, it's also being distributed in 163 countries around the world."

You can follow a huge night of MMA right here with our man Gareth A Davies in New York.