Man, I love the Spike.com airings of Bellator. Absolutely love them. I gave up on cable TV years ago. I think standard television a thing of the past, just like fossil fuels and floppy disks. Give me Boxee, Roku, Xbox Live, anything but overpriced TV. My Xbox Live Netflix and HBO Go is all I really need in my life thank you very much, but all of that streaming beauty comes crashing down when Comcast decides to have a data stream the speed of Cole Konrad at a salad bar with no bleu cheese. It was my job to cover Bellator tonight, it was my responsibility, but because of their damn consistent mediocrity, this recap will literally be as spotty as my connection tonight.
And before we get started: yes, I reset my modem and completed all troubleshooting. I troubleshat.
Bad internet is the most frustrating thing outside explaining new technology to a senior citizen. Just go. Ugh. The sketchiness that was my internet started acting up during the undercard, leading to a total internet blackout through middleweights Perry Filkins and Jonas Billstein. All I have to go by on this fight is a ZombieProphet tweet of a .gif and the knowledge that Perry won via unanimous decision.
I’m not able to scan Twitter on my phone while I’m on hold with Comcast due to their lack of an ability to keep a consistent connection of high-speed internet to my apartment, which in my opinion I pay more than fairly for, and I miss Marlon Sandro’s first round win. Apparently it was a sweet rear naked choke. My stream connects and I see Marlon with his hand raised, and then my Spike.com stream freezes due to my connection and it makes a still of Marlon on my screen in victory, which is nice. I make a mental note to text Gary LaPlante once I’m off hold with Comcast and I’m through speaking to a customer service representative about their poor bandwidth.
As I’m on hold, my picture comes back just as I’m an estimated 33% through the mandatory troubleshooting some random bloke is reading off a laminated sheet in front of them. Even if I tell the customer service dude I completed the troubleshooting he still makes me do it. Meanwhile, somewhere at headquarters I think in an emergency call is made and Doc Brown showed up at the Comcast servers, kicked them with his foot, threw a banana and half a Miller in the intake valve and they were ready to give me some Bellator goodness… At least for the first round or so of the lightweight semifinal between Ricardo Tirloni and Dave Jansen… I was brash and hung up on the unhelpful rep so I could focus on the fight but that was ultimately foolish. What I saw was super exciting, with Twitter and the crowd seeming to agree. Both fighters were throwing stiff punches and both landed frequently and the pace of the fight was constantly at a maximum. In the beginning, it seemed like Ricardo was getting the best of the standup, but Jansen definitely landed, both guys got knocked around quite a bit. There were sweet scrambles chopped up by interference to my connection, and blood flowing from both of their faces by the third round. In the end, Dave Jansen defeated Ricardo Tironi via split-decision, which was especially wild considering the round I saw the most clearly was the first, were Jansen was getting tooled. A good word would be ‘thrilling’ to describe this fight.
In the main event, Marcin Held, who I hereby dub ‘Polish Palhares,’ lets it be known that he will be looking for a submission in the leglock variety. Rich Clementi isn’t impressed and it immediately goes to the floor where they would both stay for nearly the remainder of the round. Submissions are threatened and Rich Clementi’s leg is bent in all sorts of unfortunate-looking positions, but Rich looks cool, and collected. If he were a vegetable, it would be a cucumber, which are known to be the most relaxed of the vegetables. It goes into the second round and my internet starts jumping again, making Jimmy Smith and Sean Wheelock sound like the spokesaliens for the invading forces. The vid jumps to both combatants back on the ground with Marcin Held threatening the leg submission once again, then they roll and Clementi gets tapped by a slick toehold from Held. How crazy is it that a dude with eight submissions has the last name Held?
It’s now Marcin Held and Dave Jansen fighting December 14th for the right to take on the winner of Rick Hawn and Michael Chandler for the Bellator lightweight belt.
