Bellator NYC: A Night of Prospects and Promise

Bellator's New York City pay-per-view promised a lot. There was nostalgia for the lapsed fan, new prospects for the hardcore fan, and title fights for those enjoying the blossoming of Bellator's welterweight and light heavyweight divisions. Of course, it is hard to please everyone and Bellator's ambitious card had a lot to live up to. What followed was one of the strangest nights in the company's history.

The Old Timers

The main event and the co-main event were the least compelling match ups for most heading into this pay-per-view. But as has been Bellator's motto since Tito Ortiz versus Stephan Bonnar proved a surprising success: the old men put asses in seats. Fedor Emelianenko was matched against the first top heavyweight he had fought since 2011 and it ended in a quick and ugly fashion, with The Last Emperor stiff on the mat. It did, however, provide a double knockdown. Extremely rare in boxing, they are far less rare in MMA when both fights lunge in to hit each other, each with their guarding hand down by their waist.

Chael Sonnen easily took a decision over Wanderlei Silva in the main event by way of takedowns. The first round was vintage Sonnen in his best days as he came out with an awkward kick to the lead leg, timed his shot perfectly under Silva's windmilling, and drove through to complete the takedown.

Stacking Silva's guard up against the fence, Sonnen brought the pace that he so famously demonstrated against Nate Marquardt and Anderson Silva, pounding Wanderlei Silva relentlessly. The second and third rounds were equally lopsided but consisted mainly of top control, with none of the effective hitting of the first round.

Wanderlei Silva's takedown defence looked startlingly bad, and in the second round consisted of grabbing an arm in guillotine, pulling Sonnen into closed guard, and holding it for about half the round.

In the aftermath, many fans questioned whether Silva's wrestling was always 'this bad'. This links back to a popular criticism of PRIDE FC's handling of Silva. To many fans it appeared that if you held Wanderlei Silva down you would be stood up for stalling and given a yellow card. Silva did stop the takedowns of Kazushi Sakuraba over three fights, and fought both Quinton Jackson and Dan Henderson twice, but his striking style has always been that of going forward swinging. He never learned to limit his opponent's chances with distance management and footwork as Anderson Silva and later effective strikers did. Walking straight at Sonnen in his squared stance, straight legged and making wide swings, he just in a position where he could stuff the takedowns of a wrestler of Sonnen's ability who matched up with him in size.

The Up and Comers

The real winners of the Bellator NYC and Bellator 180 cards were the up and coming talent. While Aaron Pico got off to a rough start in his MMA career, notching just twenty seconds of cage experience during his MMA debut, the card's other prospects turned heads. Accomplished professional boxer, Heather Hardy, made her MMA debut against an experienced opponent and looked good doing it. Hardy is not a slick boxer, but a scrappy one with a few good counters, which she used to take a stoppage late in the third round after two previous periods of one-way traffic. The story of the fight was Hardy's well-timed right hand. Using her head as bait she drew out jabs and utilized that king of knockout punches, the classical cross counter, arcing a right hand across the top of the jab.

Hardy mixed this in with some awkward kicks and the odd wide right to the body.

And throughout the fight side stepped to the left and right, with her hands low, attempting to draw punches from her opponent in order to wing that right hand across the top again.

Hardy didn't look like a world-beater, but she fought an experienced opponent and controlled the fight well, applying her existing expertise in a new arena.

The welterweight title fight between former UFC contender Lorenz Larkin and incumbent Bellator champion, Douglas Lima was not quite the firefight most had hoped for, but a thoughtful, technical showing from both with Lima coming out with the victory. Lima, a long serving Bellator fighter, proved himself the equal of Larkin, a world class welterweight in the UFC's division, and with the addition of Rory MacDonald to the Bellator welterweight division the holder of that belt is going to start looking like a legitimate alter rex.

One interesting look that Larkin showed throughout the fight was using his left hand to reach across and check Lima's own left hand. Lima is famous for his crisp left hook, with which he beat Paul Daley to the punch. Larkin seemed to stifle it a good amount—encouraging Lima to throw his less dexterous and often loopy right hand. Bernard Hopkins used this method from time to time in his later career, using the lead hand, wrist and forearm to check his opponent's lead, while his lead shoulder protected him from the right hand. Wlad Klitschko also showed a similar cross handed check against Anthony Joshua.

It was when Larkin opened up with strikes that he left Lima's left hand unobstructed and the best shot of the fight landed.

But the stand out performer of the night, in this writer's opinion, was Straight Blast Gym's James Gallagher. In a compelling match up of up-and-comers, Gallagher—the grappling savant with much room for improvement in his striking—met Chinzo Machida. Machida is a fighter we have covered numerous times and whose striking arsenal is one of the most interesting in MMA, despite his lacking in other areas of the game. If Gallagher had come out throwing naked right low kicks as he normally does, he probably would have eaten that famous reverse punch counter. But Gallagher used feints, pressure, and the fence to keep Chinzo from throwing anything meaningful. With his back to the cage, Machida could not commit to his kicks, and the usual exaggerated distance he prefers to work in was reduced as Gallagher calmly feinted in towards him.

When Machida first lashed out with a punch, Gallagher countered with a right straight of his own. When Machida threw his favourite front snap kick, Gallagher parried it across the karateka and shot in on him in his disadvantaged position.

From there it was all Gallagher as he effortlessly moved to his man's back and secured the choke.

Overall Bellator NYC was an entertaining night of fights which provided a few surprises and some names to keep an eye on. Whether this event will prove the watershed that many fans hoped for, marking Bellator's entrance to the main stage of MMA and into the UFC's limelight, remains to be seen.