Bellator 29 recap: Cole Konrad, Neil Grove advance to tournament finals
Bellator 29 occurred on Thursday night, and two major winners came out as the promotion’s heavyweight tournament comes closer to crowning a heavyweight champion.
Konrad dominates Grabowski
Cole Konrad is considered one of the best prospects in the heavyweight division of any mixed martial arts promotion, and he remained undefeated by taking a unanimous decision over Damian Grabowski. The former
NCAA division I wrestling champion improved to 6-0, while Grabowski picked up his first loss to fall to 13-1.
The fight, like most of Konrad’s, featured a slow positional wrestling attack that emphasises control of the opponent rather than inflicting damage. The first round saw Konrad take him down immediately and
throw some knees to the body from side control, but Grabowski scrambled back to half guard. Konrad looked for some submissions but failed to do much damage.
The second round was much the same. Konrad took him down, was able to do little, and the fighters got stood up until Konrad put him down again and hunted for submissions to take the second round.
In the third round, Grabowski had some very limited success, hitting Konrad with a good knee and some punches, but once again it was more of the same, eventually with Konrad winding up on top of him to take
a three-round, dominating and fairly unexciting victory to advance to the finals.
Grove scores quick TKO over Olenik
The other heavyweight battle was as short and explosive as Konrad’s victory was slow and grinding. Neil Grove needed just 45 seconds to stop Alexey Olenik. Grove, a Goju-ryu Karate black belt, started the
fight with a pair of leg kicks to slow down the veteran Olenik, who works as stunt man in his day job. His third kick though was the crucial one, as Olenik, who was perhaps expecting another leg kick, took it to the body and then crumpled onto the mat helplessly,
and Grove rushed in to finish him off with his fists.
In his two fights in the Bellator tournament Grove, now 10-2-1, has needed just 137 seconds combined to finish his opponents, after having earlier dispatched of Eddie Sanchez last month.
The final, the date of which hasn’t been announced, will feature an interesting stylistic match-up of the high-power hitting of the South African Grove against the methodical wrestling of Konrad. For Konrad
it’ll be a chance to continue his rise, and for Grove it can be a chance to pick up a big win over a highly-touted prospect.
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