At Bellator 44 last night, there were a lot of highlight reel moments, but none more than the fifteen-minute war between Brett Cooper and Alexander Shlemenko. The two men met in a pivotal middleweight qualifying bout for the upcoming middleweight tournament, which is said to kickoff sometime this summer. Both are all too familiar with the tournament format and were hoping for an impressive showing, and thought only one man left the cage the winner, both put on memorable performances. ...

The middleweight match-up pitting Alexander Shlemenko against Brett Cooper had all the promises of being a slobber knocker of a bout. Both men are familiar with each other's styles, as they have trained together in the past. Cooper moved up to the middleweight class full time following an impressive showing against Matt Major under the Bellator banner while Alexander won the season two middleweight tournament, pocketed $100k and earned his shot at the title against champion Hector Lombard. Though he came up short in his bid to become champion, Shlemenko did much to improve his image when tonight he defeated Cooper over the course of a riveting three-round affair. ...

With all this talk of the WEC-UFC merger, new dream match ups, it looks like we almost all forgot about the "little promotion that could"--Bellator Fighting Championship's continues to impress, and once again has crowned a new champion amongst it's ranks. While a steady stream of new upstart prospects have claimed the titles from the season's past champions, specifically former featherweight champion Joe Soto relinquishing his title to current title holder Joe Warren in a come-back finish in their September tussle, and former welterweight champion Lyman Good losing to talented Olympic wrestler Ben Askren. The pressure was all on Hector Lombard, who remained one of the last original champions from Bellator's first season (Eddie Alvarez has yet to defend his title against season 2 tournament winner Pat Curran sometime in the near future). ...

Bellator's middleweight champion Hector Lombard, in his last two fights has spent a combined time of 44 seconds. When are we going to see any of his infamous Judo skills put to the test? Since his inception to the aforementioned organization, Lombard has done everything to solidify himself as contender in the discussions of being a top-10 caliber fighter, one that would make Mike Tyson proud, finishing 4 of his 5 Bellator appearances by way of knockout. ...

Heavyweight "Pee Wee" Dave Herman (12-0) TKO'd "Meat Truck" Kerry Schall (21-11) in 66 seconds Friday night in Hammond, east of Chicago. The "W" was Herman's third under the ProElite umbrella, a promotion whose heavyweight division has been stung recently with champion "Big Foot" Antonio Silva's (11-1) positive test for banned substances and poster boy "Kimbo Slice" Kevin Ferguson's (3-1) 14-second KO loss. The victory came by a combination of knees with Schall in Herman's Thai clinch and punches once Schall dropped. After his brief TUF 8 appearance, light heavyweight Jason Guida (17-18) was overwhelmed by "Cannibal" Mamed Khalidov (15-3-1) by second-round TKO at 4:53. King of the Cage Welterweight Champion Anthony Lapsley (14-3) won a majority decision over Mike Stumpf (10-2) by judges' scores of 30-27 twice and 29-29. ...