Yesterday, MMA oddsmaker Nick Kalikas opened the betting lines for the main card of Bellator’s upcoming pay-per-view card, featuring Michael Chandler and Will Brooks in an interim lightweight title bout, as well as the “freakshow” fight between Alexander Shlemenko and Tito Ortiz. However, before the organization heads over to PPV at 10pm, they have a card which rivals the quality of their weekly events on Spike TV to get fans in the mood. The Spike TV portion of the card starts at 8pm ET and features names such as Cheick Kongo and Marcin Held. There are also a pair of featherweight bouts slated which would be worthy of their own mini-tournament. Kalikas sent the out odds for the Spike TV portion of the card to Several Bookmakers today. Take a look below at the opening odds for all nine televised fights for this Satuday’s Bellator 120 card, and keep track of how they move over at Several Bookmakers. ——————– MAIN CARD (Pay-Per-View, 10pm ET) Light Heavyweight Tournament Final Quinton Jackson -190 Muhammed Lawal +150 Interim Bellator Lightweight Title Michael Chandler -705 Will Brooks +435 Alexander Shlemenko -305 Tito Ortiz +225 Blagoi Ivanov -130 Alexander Volkov -110 Michael Page -260 Ricky Rainey +180 ——————– PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV, 8pm ET) Cheick Kongo -505 Eric Smith +335 Marcin Held -1035 Nate Jolly +545 Shahbulat Shamhalaev -260 Fabricio Guerreiro +180 Mike Richman -185 Goiti Yamauchi +145 ——————– Brad’s Analysis: A pair of mismatches (perhaps the organization is hoping for some early finishes and more time to hype the PPV), and a pair of competitive bouts on this prelim card. In all honesty, if people weren’t so worries about Cheick Kongo’s chin giving out, this line would probably be closer to 7 or 8-to-1. He’s going to be massive in comparison to Smith, and will have both striking and wrestling advantages. I’m imagining that if there is a stoppage in this fight, it comes from Kongo kneeing Smith against the cage, or taking him down and using his ground-and-pound up against the cage. Either way, I expect Kongo to control the bout against a man who has only competed once in the past four years. With most fighters, I’d be a bit concerned about the late notice Marcin Held is coming in on, but two factors don’t have me concerned in the slightest. First, he doesn’t cut much weight, so his cardio shouldn’t be impacted negatively. Second, he’s the type of fighter who makes his opponents adapt to him with his unique style of grappling. If anything, this is even worse for Nate Jolly than the Will Brooks fight. Although outmatched there, he was facing a fairly traditional fighter. Now he gets a fighter you really need some time to prepare for. He doesn’t have it, and he doesn’t have much of a shot here. It’s been over a year since we last saw Shahbulat Shamhalaev (isn’t that fun to spell?) in the cage. He has been missed, because he is typically pretty fun to watch. Although at a height and reach disadvantage against most fighters in his division, he has very good timing, and I think he’ll put that to use against Fabricio Guerreiro while this fight is on the feet. The problem for Shamhalaev however is that if the fight doesn’t stay on the feet, Guerreiro will be at a big advantage. The Brazilian has looked markedly better since getting stopped by Frodo Khasbulaev, and especially impressed with his grappling against Des Green, which is something I think he can replicate here. It’s closer than the line indicates, and for that reason I lean towards the dog if I’m making a bet here. I’m a bit less confident in Richman/Yamauchi. Both guys have a tendency to underpeform, but I have to side with Richman here. Yamauchi simply isn’t the prospect he was hyped up to be — if he was, they would be giving him a far easier fight than this. Richman is very hittable and can also be overly tentative at times, but that mainly comes against opponents who present a big KO of takedown threat, neither of which Yamauchi has shown much of in his career.
