The main card for Bellator 122 kicked off on Spike TV with a battle between MMA vets Karo Parisyan and Phil Baroni.
After weeks of trash talk between the two, it took barely more than two minutes for Parisyan to earn his second straight TKO victory. Baroni tried a classic rush-in but was clinched and caught with a thudding uppercut that stunned him and dropped him to a knee. Parisyan took advantage of the opportunity and swarmed with punches, forcing the referee to jump in and call a halt to the action.
Here’s the finish of the fight in gif form, courtesy of Zombie Prophet:
Parisyan had not won by KO in his career before his last fight at Bellator 116 when he stopped Ron Keslar.
In the light heavyweight tournament semi-final, Liam McGeary came just short on one-upping Parisyan’s 2:06 TKO, scoring his own knockout of Egidijus Valavicius at 2:10 of the first round.
Valavicius was able to score with a hard right early in the fight, but McGeary came back with a hard knee to the face, a flurry of punches and another few knees to get the stoppage.
Again, we turn to Zombie Prophet for the finish:
Not wanting to be outdone, Brandon Halsey won the season ten welterweight tournament with an armbar in 2:09 of the first round.
Halsey got an early takedown and from there worked for the pass and took advantage of Cooper trying to catch a leg lock, taking the arm. After a battle to finish the submission, Halsey went belly down to get the tap and the tournament crown.
The main event was a more or less one-sided affair that saw Andrey Koreshkov win the middleweight tournament by doing pretty much anything he wanted to Adam McDonough.
Koreshkov’s highlight was probably this spinning back kick to the face (Zombie Prophet again):
While McDonough was able to survive to the final bell, the judges scorecards were not in doubt.
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