Bjorn just said on mmajunkie Radio that Jay Hieron was offered a WW tournament slot for the upcoming tournament and Jay turned it down.
Didnt really go into why, he just said maybe Jay didnt think it was the right time to jump back into the 3 fights in 3 months schedule.
Was Jay banking on winning one tournament, being the champ and only having to fight like he would in the UFC or SF, maybe two or three times a year defending the belt and now he lost and would have to do 3 fights in 3 months again.
So what will they do with Jay now?
Eddie wont be part of LW tournament either.
Still talking about Eddie/Aoki but with loss to Chandler they arent sure if Bellator/Dream will make Eddie/aoki.
Looking at 3 fighters to fill last LW spot.
Wont say who.
Sarnavskiy is my guess.
Fridays, havent figured out start time yet.
Fridays, havent figured out start time yet.
thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
i really hope they still do alvarez vs aoki, it would be good for bellator to get a little Japanese exposure.
Maybe Jay would fight Lima/Ben winner in a non title fight.
Chris27 - Looking at 3 fighters to fill last LW spot.
Wont say who.
Sarnavskiy is my guess.
Sarnavskiy and plan B + C. Plan B is Jadamba Narantungalag? Plan C is Dave Jansen or Nazare or Horodecki or Held or Corey?
That might be wishful thinking on my part, but you can read between the lines that they are possibly holding that final spot for Sarnavskiy, and Bjorn was being pretty coy about the subject like he had an exciting secret.
The Weedman and Ambrose picks disappointed me, but, especially if they acquire Sarnavskiy or Narantungalag, that would be a strong tourney from top to middle. You'd like it to be loaded top to bottom, but the tourney format makes that difficult to justify. You can't have 3 tough fights in 90-120 days (whatever it will be now that there are 5 tourneys).
Nexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
I would suggest offering Karo the spot, but I'm sure he'll find a way to screw up that chance as well.
OnlyTheStrongSurvive -Nexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
I agree, but it's better than fighters hardly competing at all ala Konrad. He's fighting like once every 10 months. Give him 2-3 fights per year, either title or super, or release him (I'm sure he'd be scooped up by the UFC quickly). I'd like to see him fight Madsen or someone of his ilk while waiting for Big Monster to beat Prindle. Then a super fight subsequent to that unless they maybe do a HW tourney during the summer series.
OnlyTheStrongSurvive -QFTNexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
Haulport -Yeah, im not real fond of the non-title fights, but i see them as a neccesary evil.OnlyTheStrongSurvive -QFTNexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
if they didnt have them, the champ out sit around while the contender has to win 3 fights in 3 months.
Nexuscrawlers -Haulport -Yeah, im not real fond of the non-title fights, but i see them as a neccesary evil.OnlyTheStrongSurvive -QFTNexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
if they didnt have them, the champ out sit around while the contender has to win 3 fights in 3 months.
i read both your posts and you make valid points, but I would rather just make it a title fight. if they are afraid it will diminish the tournaments, they need to run 2 or 3 in each division a year. just hard to do imo. they are gonna have problems when a champ loses a non title fight and the "real" champ doesn't get the belt. it loses its significance
They're working on putting together 2 tourneys per year for every division. Accomplishing that is a matter of building depth and increasing revenue. They added an extra tournament above norm for the upcoming season. Reading between the lines they'll have more than one summer series tourney, which is above norm. Then presumably they'll have at least 5 again in the fall, if not more. Once they move to Spike in 2013 they'll have signed and justify paying 7 tourneys worth of fighters per season. In the meantime they need to hold an occasional super fight to get some of their champs like Konrad and M'Pumbu adequate work.
^^yeah, i think once they have enough fighters to do 2-3 tournaments a season they will do away with the non-title fights.
How are they gonna do this within the same schedule they've been doing, 12 weeks.
Cause some tournaemnt fights are gonna have to be on the prelims and not shown live on the main card unless they extend the time of the shows to 2 1/2 or 3 hours.
OnlyTheStrongSurvive -I called for the elimination of belts to solve this problem:Nexuscrawlers -Haulport -Yeah, im not real fond of the non-title fights, but i see them as a neccesary evil.OnlyTheStrongSurvive -QFTNexuscrawlers - thats too bad about hieron, maybe he will fight a non-title fight with ben askren?
idk about you but I freaking hate champs fighting without their belt on the line. its crap
if they didnt have them, the champ out sit around while the contender has to win 3 fights in 3 months.
i read both your posts and you make valid points, but I would rather just make it a title fight. if they are afraid it will diminish the tournaments, they need to run 2 or 3 in each division a year. just hard to do imo. they are gonna have problems when a champ loses a non title fight and the "real" champ doesn't get the belt. it loses its significance
http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum_framed.posts&forum=1&thread=1926778&page=1
Chris27 - How are they gonna do this within the same schedule they've been doing, 12 weeks.
Cause some tournaemnt fights are gonna have to be on the prelims and not shown live on the main card unless they extend the time of the shows to 2 1/2 or 3 hours.
No bye weeks, a little bit longer season than 12 weeks, 5-fight main cards, allow the weaker first round match-ups to spill onto the prelims. I don't know for sure how they're going to address the problem but there are a number of solutions as I laid out. What they should have done is start the season earlier. They had promised a special February event (or more) centered around Alvarez-Aoki but it appears to have fallen through because they can't come to an agreement w/ Dream. I'd still like to see it to get Santos-Prindle and Curran-Warren out of the way, plus get some of their non-tournament fighters some work.
ttt