Latest Bellator News

The No. 1 featherweight in mixed martial arts returned to the cage at UFC 142 and needed less than one round to dispatch an opponent who entered the fight undefeated and widely regarded as the No. 2 featherweight in MMA. So where does Jose Aldo go now after defeating Chad Mendes?

Aldo's camp has indicated he doesn't intend to move up to 155 pounds unless it's to fight for the UFC lightweight title. So that's probably not in the offing. And that raises the question: Are there any challengers left for Aldo at 145 pounds?

For the identity of some potential opponents for Aldo going forward, check out the latest list of the top 10 featherweights in mixed martial arts below.

Pat Curran will get his second crack at Bellator gold on March 9 at Bellator 61.

That's when the fast-rising featherweight will face off with reigning champion Joe Warren at The Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney announced on Wednesday.

Despite a shortage of talent, the interest in women's MMA seems to be stronger than ever, thanks in large part to Cris Cyborg, Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate. Still, there are other talented women making headlines out there, and they deserve some of our attention too.

Below is a roundup of news and notes from the world of women's MMA.

* ProElite has signed an intriguing 135-pound fight for its upcoming card on Jan. 21 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Sara McMann, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist who has compiled a 4-0 MMA record thus far, will meet top-ranked Hitomi Akano on the undercard of the event headlined Kendall Grove vs. Ikuhisa Minowa. The 31-year-old McMann defeated Raquel Pa'aluhi via third-round submission in the first ProElite show back in August. Akano, who famously lost to an overweight Cris Cyborg in an Aug. 2009 Strikeforce bout, enters the fight with an 18-8 record and riding a two-fight winning streak. She recently defeated Roxanne Modaferri via unanimous decision in July.

In October 2010, UFC president Dana White tried to slow down the expectations for Jon Jones. The light-heavyweight talent had just run through veteran Vladimir Matyushenko and the buzz around him had grown to the point where people were trying to project him into the title picture.

White, though, would have none of it. Jones was going to fight Ryan Bader in early 2011 and still probably have to win another 2-3 fights after that before fighting for the belt, White said. Just three months later, circumstances caused him to reconsider.

In a perfect storm of a day, Jones blitzed Bader and White discovered he needed a challenger for Mauricio "Shogun" Rua when Rashad Evans got hurt and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson declined the fight on six weeks' notice. Jones got the call and answered the challenge in historic fashion, annihilating Rua to capture the belt and become the youngest UFC champion in history.

Spike TV announced on Tuesday that beginning Friday, March 2, from 9:00 p.m. to midnight ET/PT it will air highlights from the past fourteen seasons of The Ultimate Fighter. "The Ultimate Fighter Fridays," as they are calling it, will be televised at the same time as TUF 15 live on FX, which debuts March 9.

The move comes as no surprise as Spike aired UFC programming on its network at the same time as the UFC's debut on FOX and has already announced that it will do the same during the UFC's second show on FOX on Jan. 28.

Jon "War Machine" Koppenhaver, the fighter who first gained fame on The Ultimate Fighter before his career was sidelined by legal troubles, has signed on with Bellator, fresh off his release from jail and a win in his first fight back.

Bellator confirmed the signing on Thursday.

Bellator Fighting Championships has decided that going head-to-head with the UFC is a losing battle.

The No. 2 MMA promotion in America announced that starting with its sixth season in the spring, Bellator's live fights will air on MTV2 on Friday nights. The first Bellator show of Season 6 will take place on March 2, and having the event on a Friday ensures that it won't take place simultaneously with a UFC pay-per-view, as Bellator often did this year.

However, the decision to move to Fridays may still mean going head-to-head with the UFC, as The Ultimate Fighter will move to a live format with fights on Friday nights on FX next year, and the UFC may also run some Fight Night-level shows on FX or Fuel TV on Friday nights. It's not clear yet whether Bellator and The Ultimate Fighter will air at the same time, but Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney said his promotion views its events as distinct from reality television like The Ultimate Fighter.

With season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter drawing to a close and the big finale fight between the coaches drawing near, now seemed like as good a time as any to go head-to-head with my buddy and colleague Michael David Smith over a few of the more pertinent questions of our day.

Questions like, what's up with Strikeforce? Also, what's up with Bellator? And, if you're not into this TUF Finale business, just what are you into, smart guy? All that -- only, you know, slightly more artfully rendered -- awaits you below. MDS, why don't you start us off.

1. A big part of TUF is supposed to be hyping the fight between the coaches. Has anything on The Ultimate Fighter this year made you any more interested in Michael Bisping vs. Mayhem Miller than you were three months ago?

Ronda Rousey is the next big thing in women's mixed martial arts.

The undefeated Rousey, who beat Julia Budd on the Nov. 18 Strikeforce Challengers card, has been running through her competition like few fighters, male or female, we've ever seen: Rousey is 4-0, and incredibly all four of her wins have come in less than a minute, all by armbar. Before turning pro she had three amateur fights, and she won all three of those by armbar in less than a minute, too.

And so, although she's still new to the sport and still hasn't been tested against the best women Strikeforce has to offer, Rousey makes my Top 5 as we rank the top pound-for-pound fighters in women's MMA. She looks that good.

What we don't know yet is whether Rousey is more than just a one-trick pony: If she faces an opponent who's able to keep the fight standing, will she be able to hold her own exchanging punches? And although she's not going to face anyone who's on her level as a judo player, will she be able to execute more than just her go-to arm bar if she faces an opponent who's sophisticated enough on the ground not to let Rousey get her arm?

It remains to be seen. But I think she's a future champion, and I think she deserves her place on the list of the top women in the sport, which is below.

In addition to Kurt Pellegrino's swan song, Saturday night's Bellator 59 event also featured the Season 5 tournament finals in the heavyweight and bantamweight divisions. But while the bantamweight tournament final was a solid fight that crowned a new top contender in the division, the heavyweight fight was a debacle.

That heavyweight fight, Thiago Santos vs. Eric Prindle, came to a confusing and confounding ending, with a conference including the referee, cageside doctor and athletic commission officials taking much longer than the fight itself. It was ultimately ruled a no contest.

With Prindle on the ground on his back, Santos kicked him right between the legs, and the referee called a halt to the action for an illegal low blow. After five minutes Prindle said he still couldn't continue fighting, and it was announced that the low kick was unintentional, so the fight was declared a no contest. But it's hard to see how anyone watching the kick could think it was unintentional: If Santos didn't intend to kick Prindle between his legs, what did he intend to do?