Fight Facts: Bellator 218
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TOTAL NUMBER OF BELLATOR FIGHTS: 2,317
TOTAL NUMBER OF BELLATOR EVENTS: 219
Bellator MMA on Friday returned to the Winstar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma, and managed to put on a show with a card that was ravaged by short-notice withdrawals. Bellator 218 featured members of a prominent fight team all winning their bouts, an MMA veteran flirting with the idea of hanging up his gloves and a promising prospect who tripled his total fight time in one night.
KEEPING THE JUDGES BUSY: With eight fights reaching the scorecards, Bellator 218 is tied with Bellator 141, Bellator 181 and Bellator 206 for the third-most bouts going the distance at a single event in promotional history. Only Bellator 165 (nine) and Bellator 209 (10) had more.
FEDOR CULTURE: Three fighters -- Valentin Moldavsky, Anatoly Tokov and Vladimir Tokov -- represented the fight team helmed by MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko, and all three emerged victorious at Bellator 218.
SCORECARD SANCHEZ: In beating Georgi Karakhanyan for the second time on the scorecards, Emmanuel Sanchez picked up his seventh decision win inside the Bellator cage. He ties six other fighters for the second-most decision wins in company history, trailing only Joe Warren (nine).
THIRD TIME IS NOT THE CHARM: Karakhanyan, in his third stint under the Bellator banner, suffered his seventh defeat with the promotion. This ties him with six other fighters for the most losses in company history.
WELL-TRAVELED: After losing by submission to the elder Tokov, Gerald Harris posted on his Twitter account that it was his last bout, although he has retired before. An Ultimate Fighting Championship, World Series of Fighting, Dream and Bellator vet, Harris is one of two fighters in MMA history to ever compete for all four of those organizations. Will Brooks is the other.
CAN’T BUY A WIN: Having compiled an 0-3-1 record for Bellator, Harris is one of nine fighters in promotional history to ever compete in Bellator at least four times and never win. Most notably, heavyweight Josh Burns fought in Bellator six times and lost all six, including five by stoppage.
… AND THE BOTTLE MAKES THREE TONIGHT: After tapping out to a guillotine choke from Nation Gibrick, Nick Page has yet to win as a professional. He has now lost once by decision, once by knockout and once by submission.
GO JOHNNY GO: In remaining undefeated at 5-0 with a decision victory over Chauncey Foxworth, Johnny Eblen fought out of the first round for the first time in his career. He spent over twice as much time in the cage with Foxworth as he did in his previous four bouts combined, which accounted for 7:13 seconds of combat.
TOUR DE FOURS: Kevin Croom dropped a decision to John Teixeira da Conceicao and in doing so suffered his 12th career defeat. Across those losses, he has been knocked out four times, submitted four times and has now lost on the scorecards four times.
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into Bellator 218, Sanchez had never fought the same fighter twice (21 fights), Harris had never been finished after the first round (33 fights) and Norbert Novenyi had never competed outside of Europe (three pro fights, three amateur fights).
Contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the “Eminem Curse” in 2012 and writing for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.
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