After determining their bantamweight champion on Friday night, Bellator may have decided the number one contender to Eduardo Dantas’ belt on Saturday. Bellator 167 saw the second of back-to-back cards from MMA’s second largest promotion. The card was headlined by a rematch between Darrion Caldwell and Joe Taimanglo, after Taimanglo secured a shocking third round submission upset in their July 2016 meeting. On the four-fight main card broadcast on Spike TV, two favorites and one underdog came through, while the opening bout on the broadcast closed as a pick ’em. Here are the full results: Favorites That Won Darrion Caldwell got his revenge. After winning the first two round against Joe Taimanglo back in July and losing the fight in the first eight seconds of the third, he made no mistake this time around. Taimanglo looked for a guillotine in the first exchange of the fight, but Caldwell quickly escaped and controlled the remainder of the round. That pattern repeated throughout the fight, as Taimanglo repeatedly looked for a variety of front chokes, but was stifled by Caldwell’s wrestling and top control. Despite the previous loss, Caldwell closed as a massive -705 favorite (bet $705 to win $100) at Several Bookmakers heading into this fight. Ilima-Lei MacFarlane extended her undefeated record to 5-0 with a unanimous decision over Emily Ducote. Ducote was most accomplished fighter Macfarlane had faced thus far in her career, and had some success in select grappling exchanges, but the Hawaiian was able to control the majority of the fight to earn the decision as a -265 favorite. Underdogs That Won After winning split decisions in his first three Bellator fights, John Teixeira finally did enough to convince the judges he clearly won a fight, taking the unanimous nod over Justin Lawrence as a +130 underdog (bet $100 to win $130). The Brazilian’s striking was impressive throughout the fight, landing several hard leg kicks and hurting Lawrence badly at one point, but in the end the full 15 minutes were needed before the judges saw it in Teixeira’s favor. Pick Em Fights Not even coming closing to needing 15 minutes was Chidi Njokuani. He landed a stiff jab on the ultra aggressive Andre Fialho that sent his foe to the ground, and followed up with several accurate ground-and-pound shots that put the Portugese fighter completely out. The referee jumped in to save Fialho at just 21 seconds of the opening round, and those who bet Njokuani at the pick em price of -105 didn’t have to wait long to cash their bets.
