With its heavyweight champ tied up in the light heavyweight
tournament, Bellator MMA is adding an interim heavyweight belt to
the mix.
On Friday, MMA
Junkie announced that Bellator is planning an interim
heavyweight title tilt between Timothy
Johnson (15-6) and Valentin
Moldavsky (10-1) atop
Bellator 261. The June 25 event will be held in the Mohegan Sun
Arena in Uncasville, Conn., and fans will reportedly be in
attendance per Bellator head Scott Coker in a media scrum on
Thursday. The promotion has since confirmed this news via press
release.
Johnson punched his ticket to a title fight with a three-fight win
streak over Tyrell
Fortune, Matt
Mitrione and Cheick Kongo
in 2020. The burly brawler is currently on his longest win streak
since a run from 2011 to 2015 where he finished eight consecutive
foes to get into the Ultimate Fighting Championship. A tenure where
Johnson alternated wins and losses in seven UFC bouts led to him
joining the Bellator ranks, where he lost to Kongo and Vitaly
Minakov before his current run.
Moldavsky’s win streak inside the Bellator cage is set at five
right now, since making his promotional debut in 2017 and beating
names like Roy Nelson
and Linton
Vassell. The Russian holds a finish rate below .500, which is
low for a typical heavyweight, and four of his five Bellator wins
have come by unanimous verdict. The 29-year-old’s lone defeat came
against Amir
Aliakbari in the Rizin Fighting Federation openweight tournament
in 2016.
The promotion has also added a few additional bouts to the June
card in the form of a lightweight match pitting Myles Jury
(19-5) against Sidney
Outlaw (15-4), as well as a strawweight clash between Kyra Batara
(8-4) and Lena
Ovchynnikova (12-6). In the latter, neither woman has competed
since mid-2019. Finally, a lightweight bout between an MMA newcomer
in Isaiah Hokit (0-0) and Aaron Hughes (1-1) will be on tap on the
prelims.
Bellator 261 will go down at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville,
Conn., on June 25. The current headliner sees Johnson take on
Moldavsky for interim heavyweight gold. No main card match has been
announced.