What to Watch For: Bellator 155

Melvin Manhoef has climbed high enough to see the top of the Bellator MMA middleweight mountain. There sits Rafael Carvalho. Manhoef will challenge Carvalho for his 185-pound championship in the Bellator 155 headliner on Friday at CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho. The two middleweights will shoulder the marquee for a five-fight main card that also features a featherweight co-headliner pairing Pat Curran with Georgi Karakhanyan, a women’s featherweight battle pitting Marloes Coenen against Alexis Dufresne and two heavyweight tilts, as Augusto Sakai meets Dan Charles and Joey Beltran faces Chase Gormley. A former Cage Rage champion, Manhoef last fought on Nov. 20, when he knocked out Hisaki Kato 3:43 into their Bellator 146 confrontation. The 40-year-old Suriname-born Dutchman has long been one of MMA’s premier knockout artists, with 28 of his 30 career victories coming by KO or TKO. Included among those wins are quick finishes of Doug Marshall, Evangelista Santos, Denis Kang, Kazuo Misaki, Mark Hunt and Kazushi Sakuraba. Manhoef has compiled a 2-1 mark since arriving in Bellator in 2014. Carvalho, meanwhile, has rattled off 12 consecutive victories, 10 of them finishes. The 29-year-old Brazilian captured the middleweight crown at Bellator 144 on Oct. 23, when he cut down Brandon Halsey with a second-round body kick at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. Wins over Joe Schilling, Brian Rogers and Gustavo Machado highlight the Carvalho resume, which includes a perfect 3-0 record in Bellator. With the Carvalho-Manhoef title bout as the focal point, here is what to watch for at Bellator 155:Common Pursuits Curran and Karakhanyan have a shared interest: the Bellator featherweight title currently resting on the waist of Daniel Straus. The fact that their paths cross in the co-main event should come as little surprise. Bellator’s former champion at 145 pounds, Curran has lost three of …

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