PRESS RELEASE – Bellator Fighting Championships announced today it will be traveling north of the border for the promotion’s first international event, debuting in Rama, Ontario, on July 23rd at the Casino Rama. Bellator 47, which will air LIVE on MTV2, will be brought to Canada by Orion Sports Management in conjunction with Casino Rama.
“MMA is the hottest sport in Ontario right now and we’re thrilled to be able to partner with this world leader to bring Ontario fans their first taste of Bellator action,” said Jeff Craik, Vice President of Marketing, Casino Rama. “This is going to be one of the hottest tickets of the summer and fans can bet on seeing exactly this caliber of MMA event from Casino Rama several times a year.”
The event will feature Bellator Featherweight World Champion and self-proclaimed “Baddest Man on the Planet” Joe Warren in a Bellator World Title fight against Season 4 Featherweight Tournament winner Patricio Pitbull, who punched his ticket into the Championship fight with a unanimous decision victory over Daniel Straus at Bellator 45.
“Our fans have been asking us to come to Canada since our first season,” said Bellator Chairman & CEO Bjorn Rebney. “Casino Rama is an unbelievable venue and should make for a magical night of fights at Bellator 47.”
The night will also host the semifinals of the Bellator Featherweight Summer Series Tournament, with the winners moving onto the finals at Bellator 48 in August. The eight-man competition is shaping up to be one of Bellator’s deepest tournaments to date, with Sengoku veteran and Bellator 42 winner Ronnie Mann, Brazilian knockout artist Marlon Sandro, Argentine submission finisher Nazareno Malegarie and Bellator Season 2 Lightweight Tournament Winner Pat Curran all scheduled to participate.
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If anybody in Bellator is going to beat Joe Warren, it’ll be Friere.
Otherwise Warren joins Alvarez and Lombard as titleholders who can’t move up or move out…
@jcohl
Those guys won’t be able to leave bellator and fight somewhere else once there contract is done?
@five-alive
Most of these guys presumably have a champions clause, which means as long as they keep winning, they stay in Bellator.
And as soon as one of them were to lose, their value to other orgs would be diminshed.
Sort of an unfortunate Catch-22, if you follow…
@jcohl
So I take it Jake Shields didn’t have a champions clause when his contract ran out in Srikeforce?
Strikeforce did not exercise the clause and the contract expired.
Strikeforce did not have a Champions Clause for Shields because they purchased his Elite XC contract and kept the same terms of that contract when they signed him. The “champions clause” became an industry standard just a few years ago.
I thought there was one. Wasn’t that what the 45-60 day period after the contract expired was over? Whether or not Strikeforce would invoke the champion’s clause?
The waiting period was an exclusivity to negotiation deal, basically, it was like Restricted Free Agency in other sports.