# Bellator Pushes for Lombard-Jacare, Askren-Diaz



## Fine Wine (Aug 30, 2010)

Man, these 2 fights along with Melendez V Alvarez would be absolutely brilliant to determine the best light, welter and middle outside the UFC!

http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/Bellator-Pushes-for-Lombard-Jacare-Askren-Diaz-27834

With a potential bout between Eddie Alvarez and Gilbert Melendez a hot topic in recent weeks, Bellator has begun calling out additional Strikeforce champions as well. 

Bellator middleweight champion Hector Lombard outpointed Alexander Shlemenko in the promotion’s season three finale Thursday in Hollywood, Fla. The Cuban-born judoka then challenged Strikeforce middleweight champion Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza during his postfight interview. 

“With Hector’s win tonight, I’ve said many times the opportunity for Hector to fight Jacare would be spectacular,” Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney said at the postfight news conference. “I’d love to see it.” 

Rebney also said he wants to pit his welterweight champion, Ben Askren, against Strikeforce titleholder Nick Diaz. The Bellator boss explained that co-promotional bouts with Strikeforce would likely be three-round non-title fights. 

“The difficulty in doing a championship unification under the banner of two different promotions who don’t work together on every event is then you’ve got one fighter who wins, one fighter who loses and then what happens to that champion?” Rebney said. “For example, if Eddie were to fight Gilbert and we were to do a unification and Eddie were to walk away with the Strikeforce belt and the Bellator belt, then what does Strikeforce do at that point? 

“I think three-round fights answer a lot of questions. I think five-round fights are great, but I think you can get a lot of questions answered in three-round fights in terms of the dominance and performance of fighters. In all likelihood, it would be three-round fights, but again, I’m welcome to [five-round fights]. I’m trying desperately to not say anything that would be perceived as a barrier to making those kind of fights happen.” 

Rebney continued his plea for Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker to return his calls about co-promoting. 

“In that kind of scenario, the promoter on the other side of the table has got to respond, take the calls and sit down at the table and try to make the fight happen,” Rebney said. “I’ve eliminated issues. I’ve eliminated barriers to entry. I’ve said we can do the fight in San Jose. I’ve said we can do the fight on Showtime. Without communication with Scott, it would be a difficult event to pull off.”


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## limba (Jul 21, 2009)

That is just awesome news.

There is a trend atm, i see.

Alvarez called out Melendez after beating Huerta.
Lombard called out Jacare.

Now they are trying to star a buzz arround Askren-Diaz.
I love it.
Great strategy from Bellator imo. 

Both, Bellator and SF need to co-promote some events, especially now that the UFC has become even bigger.


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## Fine Wine (Aug 30, 2010)

Yeh, Melendez also said he wants the fight, so it's all down to Scott the Strikeforce CEO. 

Hopefully Diaz and Jacare talk it up also, to put the pressure right on for him.

Would help the UFC to know exactly who they have to scalp also once the contracts are up for some of these guys.


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## the ultimate (Mar 5, 2007)

It's definitely heating up.

http://middleeasy.com/index.php?opt...ases-the-text-messages&catid=34:organizations

Coker's going to come out looking bad in this situation imo.


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## Dan0 (Aug 22, 2008)

Both match-ups are 100% main event worthy.
So awesome if they happen.


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## SM33 (Sep 22, 2009)

> Coker's going to come out looking bad in this situation imo.


I'm by no means a business/media expert but yeah he could look pretty bad - so could Bjorn.

Bjorn is making things happen and he has some awesome fighters, but by making these ideas so public before he's even met with Coker put's all the heat on Coker, I'm not sure who this is good or bad for, Coker is making it out to be a publicity stunt.

Hopefully they'll squabble for a while, then all their fighters will get fed up and go to the UFC, then Bjorn and Coker can work for the UFC in some way. There should be nothing to stop the best fighters from around the planet competing with each other, and the UFC is too far ahead to be overtaken now.


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## _RIVAL_ (Mar 7, 2008)

That was a very dumb move by Bjorn. Nothing good can come from that.


FYI If I select any name from my contacts list and type a text to that name I could take a picture of it w/out sending it and it would look the same...


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## SM33 (Sep 22, 2009)

In the pics theres a tick by Coker's name on the phone, and I think on Blackberrys that tick means message sent. I don't know if it is a Blackberry but anyway...


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## _RIVAL_ (Mar 7, 2008)

SM33 said:


> In the pics theres a tick by Coker's name on the phone, and I think on Blackberrys that tick means message sent. I don't know if it is a Blackberry but anyway...


Maybe.. but the thing is you can simply input any name onto any number...

for example I can input a number into my phone... and put Barrack Obama as the name in my contacts for that number... doesn't mean that it's Barrack Obamas number... or is it?

Well I'm sure Coker got the text now...


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## the ultimate (Mar 5, 2007)

SM33 said:


> I'm by no means a business/media expert but yeah he could look pretty bad - so could Bjorn.
> 
> Bjorn is making things happen and he has some awesome fighters, but by making these ideas so public before he's even met with Coker put's all the heat on Coker, I'm not sure who this is good or bad for, Coker is making it out to be a publicity stunt.
> 
> Hopefully they'll squabble for a while, then all their fighters will get fed up and go to the UFC, then Bjorn and Coker can work for the UFC in some way. There should be nothing to stop the best fighters from around the planet competing with each other, and the UFC is too far ahead to be overtaken now.


I agree. Bjorn is looking desperate but I think Coker will start to look like he's delaying the whole process.


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