Bellator 116 - Matyushenko, Beltran, Johnson

Date: Friday, April 11th
Preliminary Card (Spike.com): 18:00 LP.net / 4pm PST / 7pm EST Bellator 116 live stream
Main Card Time (Spike TV): 20:00 LP.net / 6pm PST / 8pm EST (10pm tape delay on West coast)
Live Streams: Live on Spike TV - http://www.vipbox.tv (All MMA events are listed under the UFC button. Press the UFC button and you'll see the event in the list.)





Main Card (Spike TV)

Blagoy Ivanov (10-0) vs. Lavar Johnson (18-8) (Heavyweight Tournament Semifinals)
Alexander Volkov (20-4) vs. Mighty Mo (6-2) (Heavyweight Tournament Semifinal)
Nathan Coy (14-4) vs. Adam Mcdonough (10-0) (Welterweight Tournament Semifinal)
Joey Beltran (14-10) vs. Vladimir Matyushenko (27-7) (Matyushenko's retirement fight)

Preliminary Card (Spike.com)

Joe Pacheco (7-1) vs. Brandon Halsey (5-0) (Middleweight Tournament Semifinal)
Joe Taimanglo vs. Rob Emerson (Bantamweight)
Ron Keslar vs. Karo Parisyan (Welterweight)
Phelipe Lins vs. Travis Clark (Light Heavyweight)
Brandon Bender vs. Mario Navarro (Featherweight)
Dave Vitkay vs. Keith Berry (Middleweight)
Carlos Eduardo vs. Virgil Zwicker (Light Heavyweight)

Other

- Vladimir Matyushenko will be retiring from MMA after this event no matter the outcome of the fight.

As you can tell by the poster, there has been a lot of changes to this card...

First thoughts:

Johnson > Ivanov (Hard fight to cap. Johnson's TDD has been improving, so that's why I'm picking him.)
Mo > Volkov (Mo has the power and wrestling to take Volkov down. However, if he can't get the take down, Volkov will end up picking Mo apart from the outside.)
Beltran vs. Matyushenko (Another hard fight to cap. If Beltran had KO power, I'd easily pick him. Matyushenko has more power and has the wrestling skills in this fight, but Beltran has the better chin and movement.)

There's actually a good amount of close + interesting fights on this card, so it's hard to give any predictions. If I were to bet this card, it would probably just be a small bet on Mighty Mo, but only after the late bets come in on Volkov, which will happen.

Prelims start in 25 minutes: http://www.spike.com/shows/bellator-mma/live