Bellator 84 will be the season finale for the seventh season of Bellator and the main event will decide the next Bellator heavyweight champion when Rich Hale faces Alexander Volkov in the heavyweight tournament final.
Bellator Chairman & CEO Bjorn Rebney confirmed the news with TheMMAReport.com on Wednesday and the fight will be a scheduled for five rounds.
Rebney said after Bellator 80, that he needed to have a conversation with Sam Caplan about the heavyweight title and they recently decided to make the tournament final a title fight since heavyweight champion Cole Konrad recently retired.
“We just decided that Cole is retired, we are just going to make this a five-five and make it for the world title,” Rebney said. “Both guys have looked good. I loved Volkov’s stand up game. I love Hale’s guts and how and the way he has been bringing the fight. We are going to make this a five-five for the world title and we will see how it plays itself out. It will be a nice way to close out our near two year run with MTV2 and to welcome in the next evolution of Bellator on Spike.”
Hale (21-4-1) moved up to the heavyweight division after being a finalist in the season four light heavyweight tournament. In this heavyweight tournament, he defeated Mike Wessel by TKO in the first round in the quarterfinals and then defeated Thiago Santos in the semifinals by TKO in the first round. He is known as a finisher as 18 of his 21 wins are by stoppage and 10 of those wins are by knockout.
Volkov (18-3) made his Bellator debut in this tournament and defeated veteran heavyweight Brett Rogers by decision in the quarterfinals. He returned at Bellator 80 earlier this month and defeated Vinicius “Spartan” Queiroz by TKO with one second left in the second round.
Bellator 84 will take place on December 14th from The Venue at Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana and tickets for the card are already available. Along with the heavyweight final to determine the next champion, the card will also have the lightweight final between Dave Jansen and Marcin Held.