Wayne Cole is out, and Marcus Sursa is in for a main-card heavyweight bout with UFC veteran Eddie
Sanchez at Thursday's Bellator 20 event.

A source close to the organization told MMAjunkie.com that Cole failed
to finalize his medical work with the Texas Commission of Licensing and
Regulation and wasn't cleared for the fight.

Bellator 20 takes place at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio and airs
on FOX Sports Net.

Veteran Wayne Cole has replaced fellow heavyweight Ralph Kelly in a bout with UFC veteran Eddie Sanchez at next week's Bellator 20 event.

Additionally, a source close to the organization told MMAjunkie.com a currently unannounced bantamweight fight between Mark Oshiro and Nick Mamalis is expected to take the final spot on the night's FOX Sports Net-televised main card.

Bellator 20 takes place May 27 at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas.

Press Release

CHICAGO, Ill. (April 30, 2010) – Bellator Fighting Championships, the fist-of-its-kind tournament-style mixed martial arts promotion, will make its second 2010 stop in the Lone Star State next month when it comes to the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio.

The event-which will be broadcast LIVE and in prime time across the country on FOX Sports Net and during special weekend highlight shows on NBC, Telemundo and mun2-takes place on Thursday, May 27th at the historic theatre, which is located at 224 E. Houston Street in the heart of downtown San Antonio.

Tickets are on sale now at all Ticketmaster outlets and at www.ticketmaster.com.

The fight card for the event includes two semifinal round matchups in Bellator’s ongoing middleweight tournament: Siberian striker Alexander “Storm” Shlemenko (28-4) versus former all-American college wrestler and Bellator Season 1 middleweight tournament runner-up Jared Hess (11-1-1) along with former competitive power-lifter Eric Schambari (12-1) versus Southern California powerhouse Bryan “The Beast” Baker (12-1) in a rematch of their December 2007 fight in the WEC (which Baker won by split decision).

In addition, the evening will feature a special “Heavyweight Feature Fight” between 11-3 former UFC star Eddie Sanchez and EliteXC veteran Ralph Kelly as well as four “Local Feature Fights” between some of the top rising MMA stars from Texas .

“Bellator is thrilled at the opportunity to bring our brand mixed martial arts events and our television partners at Fox Sports Net, NBC, Telemundo and Mun2 to the thousands of passionate MMA fans in the San Antonio area,” said Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney. “Our two Main Event fights feature four of the most exciting middleweights out there right now including a man, Alexander Shlemenko, who I believe is one of the top fighters to come out of Russia in many years. It should be a great night of fights.”

Bellator, which became the first MMA promotion in history to be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks during its highly successful first season, announced late last year that it had formed a groundbreaking new TV distribution alliance for its second season that reaches virtually every home in the U.S. Bellator Season 2 began on Thursday, April 8th at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. Bellator Season 3 begins August 12th. Both seasons run for 12 consecutive weeks.

Bellator is also hosting an event at the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie , Texas , (just outside of Dallas ) one week before the San Antonio event on Thursday, May 20th.

For more information, visit Bellator.com, follow Bellator on Twitter @BellatorMMA or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Bellator.

After its middleweight tournament semifinal fights were revealed on Thursday for the card, Bellator Fighting Championships today announced a host site for its upcoming Bellator 20 event: the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio.

The Texas show takes place May 27 and airs live on FOX Sports Net.

In addition to tournament bouts of Eric Schambari vs. Bryan Baker and Alexander Shlemenko vs. Jared Hess, Bellator 20 features a non-tourney heavyweight bout between UFC vet Eddie Sanchez and EliteXC vet Ralph Kelly.

CHICAGO, Ill. (April 30, 2010) — Bellator Fighting Championships, the fist-of-its-kind tournament-style mixed martial arts promotion, will make its second 2010 stop in the Lone Star State next month when it comes to the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio.

The event—which will be broadcast LIVE and in prime time across the country on FOX Sports Net and during special weekend highlight shows on NBC, Telemundo and mun2—takes place on Thursday, May 27th at the historic theatre, which is located at 224 E. Houston Street in the heart of downtown San Antonio.

Tickets are on sale now at all Ticketmaster outlets and at www.ticketmaster.com.

The fight card for the event includes two semifinal round matchups in Bellator’s ongoing middleweight tournament: Siberian striker Alexander “Storm” Shlemenko (28-4) versus former all-American college wrestler and Bellator Season 1 middleweight tournament runner-up Jared Hess (11-1-1) along with former competitive power-lifter Eric Schambari (12-1) versus Southern California powerhouse Bryan “The Beast” Baker (12-1) in a rematch of their December 2007 fight in the WEC (which Baker won by split decision).

In addition, the evening will feature a special “Heavyweight Feature Fight” between 11-3 former UFC star Eddie Sanchez and EliteXC veteran Ralph Kelly as well as four “Local Feature Fights” between some of the top rising MMA stars from Texas.

“Bellator is thrilled at the opportunity to bring our brand mixed martial arts events and our television partners at Fox Sports Net, NBC, Telemundo and Mun2 to the thousands of passionate MMA fans in the San Antonio area,” said Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney. “Our two Main Event fights feature four of the most exciting middleweights out there right now including a man, Alexander Shlemenko, who I believe is one of the top fighters to come out of Russia in many years. It should be a great night of fights.”

Bellator, which became the first MMA promotion in history to be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks during its highly successful first season, announced late last year that it had formed a groundbreaking new TV distribution alliance for its second season that reaches virtually every home in the U.S. Bellator Season 2 began on Thursday, April 8th at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. Bellator Season 3 begins August 12th. Both seasons run for 12 consecutive weeks.

Bellator is also hosting an event at the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie, Texas, (just outside of Dallas) one week before the San Antonio event on Thursday, May 20th.

For more information, visit Bellator.com, follow Bellator on Twitter @BellatorMMA or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Bellator.

THQ has announced many changes to UFC Undisputed 2010 gameplay, adding the ability to pick you own strikes and submissions in create-a-fighter, ability to use the cage, three news styles, and online fight camps. While this is nice, it seems like THQ is going to stick with their original career mode set-up which was criticized by many of the journalists in their reviews for being lackluster.

With EA MMA on the way and their claims of a “Robust” career mode, one would think that career mode would get a major overhaul in order to persuade any potential gamers who were thinking of saving their money and buying EA MMA.

So  I’ve racked my brain and came up with five ideas that could make the Career Mode you know….interesting.

5. Being the Villain

Brock Lesnar has shown us that being the bad guy in MMA isn’t a bad gig. Fans pay more money to see you get your butt kicked and that means more fights and more money. In UFC 2010, you could do interviews in—which you trash talk about your opponent about how they lost their last fight to a bad fighter, talk about how your going to claim that Knockout of The Night, etc. Doing stuff like this enough times would draw people to boo you come fight night, and hell you could have the option to hit your opponent when puts his fist out at the beginning of the fight. If you lose the fight, claim that the ref did it, or that Josh Barnett put your dog in a Kimura when he came to visit. It would be nice to actually have some variety in your career mode, because let’s face it being good only gets you the respect of the fans and Dana White constantly tweeting you about meeting him at Pinkberry for a chocolate frozen yogurt. Being the villain would be a nice curveball, and something that would make career mode fun.

4. Post-Fight Damage/Injuries

Let’s say that you just got out of a five round war with Anderson Silva, in which he used your legs and body as target practice for kicks. That would mean that when you go back to training you move a bit slower do to the damage that was done in the previous fight. If you suffer a knockout, you can train on the ground until your trainer would feel that can return to stand-up training. Injuries can occur while your training and there’s a risk/reward system if you decide to return early from training you could re-injure yourself and delay your return to fighting even more, or you make it through training injury-free and can return to training and prepare yourself for your next fight.

3. Balanced Pacing During Fights

When it comes to this sort of thing in most boxing or now MMA games, you seemingly run into a wall of unbalance. You can either throw an extravagant amount of strikes in one five minute round without losing much cardio or you lose a lot of cardio by throwing a one strike too many. The last Fight Night game added this problem in which you could throw about 200 punches in one round without even breaking a sweat. In Undisputed, special moves like head kicks and superman punches could be thrown at a relentless pace without facing any discipline if you knew when to back off at the right time. These moves are considered special for a reason, and throwing them should yield a significant amount of energy loss. This would also help in the online mode where xxxSuperPWNGAGEPRN13xxx will relentless do this and this call you a “f***** b****” when you submit him.

2. Expanded Sparring

In the last game, sparring was basically having a three minute fight that would give you points for listening to the directions. If would to see skill-specific training such as the new ability to work against the cage. You get a list of the things that you are supposed to do: Five points for getting your opponent against the cage, three points for every successful strike you land against the cage, and ten points for every takedown you land. For cage defense: Five points for defending the takedown, three points for blocking the strikes, and ten points for escaping and taking the fight back to the center of the cage. You also lose the same amount for letting the opponent beat you senseless. I also wouldn’t mind seeing minor stuff like heavybag training, stand-up sparring, and ground training.

1. Better Matchmaking

The one major gripe that I had with the career mode in the game was the matchmaking. In my first attempt at Heavyweight, I started off 4-0 with my biggest victory being over future champion Eddie Sanchez (don’t ask) and was given the opportunity to face Brandon Vera who had lost two straight fights. I took the fight and trained extremely hard, but when the fight began I was completely destroyed in under a few minutes. Despite my fighter being around Vera’s size, I moved significantly slower and Vera manhandled me and took me out with knees. I figured that they would offer me more can fights, but the idiot light in my head went off when the chance to fight Cro Cop arrived. I did much better (I made it out of the first round) but I still lost, and I still moved like I had cement shoes on. I realized that the problem with the game was the steep difficulty hike. The matchmaking should be determined on how your performance in previous fights has been. If you’re slashing through opponents like Jason Voorhees at a teenager convention, then your next fight will be against an established fighter. If you’re just taking the fight to a decision by using lay—and—pray, then your choice of opponents will be weaker.

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Well, those are my five ideas to make career mode better. Of course, if you have better recommendations or criticisms on how to make it better, please feel free to comment below. The ability to download User Created Content would be a nice add-on since EA had done it so well with the Fight Night games. It would be a lot easier than creating a bunch of fighters and having to take each one through career mode to boost their stats, and sometimes the instructions that some people give for creating fighters can make your head explode.