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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Bellator Middleweight Champion Hector Lombard will be back in non-title action in the upcoming fourth season, as MMAJunkie.com reports that he will meet Falaniko Vitale at Bellator 44.
Lombard captured the Bellator Middleweight Championship when he won the very first Bellator middleweight tournament in season one. He then clocked two straight knockouts in under a minute in non-title action in Bellator before defeating season two tournament winner Alexander Shlemenko by decision in their season three title bout.
Lombard has now won 16 straight fights, and is unbeaten in his last 21 fights dating back to a November 2006 loss to Gegard Mousasi.
Vitale makes his Bellator debut on a two fight winning streak. He returned to action in 2010 after a 17 month absence that followed a loss to Frank Trigg in Strikeforce in 2008. He brings a 28-9 record throughout a near 12 year career spent mostly in his home state of Hawaii.
No city or venue has been chosen for the May 14 event as of yet, but the fight is expected to headline the MTV2 broadcast.
Penick's Analysis: Lombard has been extremely successful in his MMA career, but it's hard to shake the thought that his talent is being wasted right now. He's fighting competition that is, honestly, beneath him at this point considering his record and the way he's looked in winning a lot of his fights. He could easily be plugged into Strikeforce or the UFC and compete with most, if not all, of the middleweights in either division. But being in Bellator, he's relegated to these types of fights. Vitale is certainly a much more credible opponent than "Whisper" Goodman was last August, but he's nowhere near a top 25 opponent in 2011, and someone like Lombard should regularly be fighting that level of opponent.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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