Bellator 81 adds Clementi-Held, Tirloni-Jansen lightweight tourney semifinals

Following Friday's Bellator 77 event and the opening round of the Season 7 lightweight tournament, the matchups are now set for the semifinal round.

They will take place at Bellator 81 with Clementi (45-21-1 MMA, 2-1 BFC) vs. Marcin Held (11-2 MMA, 3-1 BFC) and Ricardo Tirloni (15-2 MMA, 2-1 UFC) vs. Dave Jansen (18-2 MMA, 4-0 BFC). Bellator officials announced the matchups late Friday.

Bellator 81 takes place Nov. 16 at the Ryan Center in Kingston, R.I. As usual, that event's main card airs on MTV2 following prelims on Spike.com.

The opening round of the 155-pound tournament took place Friday in Reading, Pa. The fighters are looking for $100,000 in total pay and a guaranteed title shot by winning the eight-man tournament.

Clementi won for the third straight time and improved to 2-1 under the Bellator banner with a Friday split decision win over Alexander Sarnavskiy (20-1 MMA, 0-1 BFC). The loss was the first of Sarnavskiy's career and came in the highly touted Russian's Bellator debut.

Held survived a bit of a rough second round to outpoint Murad Machaev (9-1 MMA, 0-1 BFC) for a unanimous decision on Friday, his third straight victory. Machaev, who was making his U.S. debut, lost for the first time as a pro.

Tirloni got into a brawl with Rene Nazare (10-3 MMA, 3-3 BFC), but then submitted the New Yorker with a D'Arce choke in the second round. Nazare dropped his third straight fight.

Jansen improved to 4-0 as a Bellator fighter, submitting Magomed Saadulaev (14-2 MMA, 0-1 BFC) with an arm-in guillotine 41 seconds into the third round, spoiling the Russian fighter's promotional debut.

The latest Bellator 81 card now includes:

Rich Clementi vs. Marcin Held - lightweight tournament semifinals
Dave Jansen vs. Ricardo Tirloni - lightweight tournament semifinals

http://mmajunkie.com/news/31223/bellator-81-adds-clementi-held-tirloni-jansen-lightweight-tourney-semifinals.mma

Clementi is a veteran and should not have been underestimated. I knew a huge upset could happen and it did, that's why that fight was so exciting to catch. Everyone knows now that Clementi has a legit chance in this tourney now. Tiger will learn great things from this loss, you can tell Shlemenko is passionate for the success of his students. Hopefully they go back to Mother Russia and work hard on their BJJ and sambo games. Jansen performed a sick jump guard guillotine which impressed everyone watching in the chat because the bout had had so much technical grappling before the finish from both competitors. No doubts Jansen is really this competition as well.

Why was my post deleted?

Clementi is the dark horse of this tournament, for sure. He's not great at any one thing but he's so rugged and decent to good at everything else that it could pose problems for anyone else in this tournament stylistically. I really don't see Held having a chance at all, barring a flash submission.

I'd have to favor the winner of Tirloni/Jansen for the whole tournament though. Tirloni looks a lot better in this tournament than he did in the last and looks much more comfortable with his striking. As for Jansen, he's been on a tear since his exit from the WEC. He's riding high and it's going to take a hell of a fight to knock him off of cloud nine. Best fight of the tournament so far, I believe.