Matches to Make After Bellator 264

Gegard Mousasi put an emphatic stamp on his second Bellator MMA middleweight title reign.

In the main event of Bellator 264 on Friday, “The Dreamcatcher” took a round to wake up against John Salter, then proceeded to blow the challenger’s doors off, notching a possible 10-8 second round before securing top position off of a blown Salter takedown attempt and pounding him out on the ground early in the third. With the dominant performance in his first title defense of this reign, the 36-year-old appears poised to hold onto his hardware for a while. The question is what Bellator will do for a next challenge, though the choice to have undefeated middleweight contender Austin Vanderford at the desk Friday as a guest analyst suggests that the promotion might just have something in mind.

Outside of the championship main event, Friday’s card featured several other significant matchups, and the winners who emerged included red-hot rising contenders, undefeated prospects and a former champ from another promotion making her Bellator debut. All of them need a next dance partner, so in the wake of Bellator 264, here are some matchups that ought to be made:

Gegard Mousasi vs. Austin Vanderford: Bellator seems to be leaning in the direction of this matchup, and it makes sense. The 31-year-old Vanderford last fought in May, taking a one-sided decision over Fabian Edwards at Bellator 259. “The Gentleman” is 11-0 overall and 5-0 in Bellator over a dominant run that has seen him lose one round in two and a half years. He is the highest-ranked middleweight in Bellator coming off of a win. Sounds like a title contender.

Andrey Koreshkov vs. Logan Storley-Dante Schiro winner: Former welterweight champ Koreshkov looked sensational in his first Bellator appearance in almost two years, thrashing Sabah Homasi on the feet as well as on the ground on the way to a unanimous decision that included two 30-26 scorecards. Koreshkov has been an integral part of Bellator’s 170-pound division for so long that it’s difficult to believe that he’s only 30 years old. Now having proven that he’s still very much a factor in the division, he now needs to indicate whether he can be a factor in the title picture again, or Friday’s performance was just the result of Koreshkov facing an opponent who wielded a slightly inferior version of his same basic skill set.

Storley, who faces the debuting Schiro next week at Bellator 265, is being bizarrely undermatched, considering his only career loss was a competitive decision against current champ Yaroslav Amosov. Storley will likely be at least a -1000 favorite in the fight; if he comes through, he has earned a shot at a name like Koreshkov, and each would provide a suitable challenge for the other.

Raufeon Stots vs. Sergio Pettis: The most eye-opening performance on the Bellator 264 main card belonged to “Supa,” who turned in a thoroughly dominant two and a half rounds of work against the heavily favored Magomed Magomedov. While Magomedov did enough in the final round to win over one of the judges, it was academic, as Stots was never in real danger and had won the first two rounds handily. The story of the fight was Stots’ stark advantages in speed and power on the feet, and the degree to which he more than held his own in the wrestling and grappling.

With the best win of his career banked away, Stots looks primed for a possible shot at the bantamweight title held by Pettis. While Patrick Mix is currently ranked ahead of Stots in Bellator’s official poll, Mix is booked to fight James Gallagher in November, and in any event is 1-1 in his last two while Stots is a perfect 5-0 in Bellator and on a nine-fight win steak overall. Unless Bellator decides to rematch Pettis with the man he defeated to win the belt, Juan Archuleta — and there is no indication they intend to do so — Stots is the obvious choice.

Davion Franklin vs. Said Sowma: Make no mistake, the matchup of 3-0 Franklin and 15-0 Everett Cummings on Friday was an absolute setup fight for Franklin, and he performed exactly as hoped, overwhelming Cummings with the first half-dozen strikes he threw on the way to a 21-second blowout. That’s just fine, as Bellator usually does a solid job bringing along ultra-green prospects from the world of amateur wrestling. However, Franklin has now entered Bellator’s heavyweight Top 10, where the bottom half is composed of prospects like himself, Steve Mowry and Jake Hager, mostly with 10 or fewer fights, and the top half is full of tough-as-nails veterans.

Smashing Franklin up with one of his fellow undefeated prospects like Mowry or Hager seems premature if not outright wasteful, but so does throwing him in with a Cheick Kongo or Linton Vassell. Sowma, who crashed the Bellator heavyweight rankings with an upset knockout of Ronny Markes last month at Bellator 262, would be a great test for Franklin.

Pam Sorenson vs. Leah McCourt: The good news is that “Bam” did enough to escape with a close split decision over Roberta Samad on Friday. The bad news is that’s about all she did, and there’s no indication Samad is that good a fighter. For a fighter in Sorenson who signed with Bellator as a sitting Invicta FC champ, it’s hard not to see the pedestrian performance as a little bit of a letdown.

All is not lost for Sorenson, however. She survived and advanced; the only difference is that, where a spectacular or at least a dominant victory might have launched her straight into a featherweight title shot, she will probably need to win another fight or two. McCourt, who tapped out Janay Harding in May to extend her personal winning streak to five, four of those in Bellator, would be a great next challenge. It would further measure the ability of the 36-year-old, 5-foot-4 Sorenson to deal with Bellator’s younger, big-framed featherweights, while on the other side, Sorenson would serve as the kind of bigger-name foe that could help put McCourt in title contention herself.