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The opening round match-ups for Bellator FC’s season two lightweight tournament have been announced.

Chad Hinton will get first crack at tournament favorite Roger Huerta while 2009 Submission of the Year winner Toby Imada will face off against Ferrid Kheder. The other pairings include Janne Tulirinta vs. Carey Vanier and Pat Curran vs. Mike Ricci.

Season two kicks off with Bellator XIII on Thursday, April 8, at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida and will air live on FSN followed by a highlight show on NBC and Telemundo on Saturday, April 10. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.

Press release below:

On this week’s edition of ESPN MMA Live, Jon Anik and crew preview UFC on Versus 1 and talk about Roger Huerta signing with Bellator.

Roger Huerta is no longer a free agent. He has signed with Bellator Fighting Championships to compete in their season two lightweight tournament with the opportunity to face Bellator lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez if he wins out. From Bellator’s press release:

Roger Huerta, the top free agent in MMA and one of the sport’s brightest young stars, announced today that he has signed an exclusive contract with Bellator Fighting Championships and will compete in the promotion’s upcoming Season 2 lightweight tournament.

If Huerta can win the April-May-June lightweight tournament, he would win the chance to challenge the world’s No. 2-rated lightweight and reigning Bellator World Champion Eddie Alvarez in a title bout this fall.

“The chance to be a part of this year’s Bellator tournament was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up,” Huerta said. “I think Bellator is the next big thing in this sport. I love the tournament format and the awesome talent that they have at 155 will give me a chance to prove myself as one of the top lightweights in the world.”

Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney, meanwhile, called Huerta “one of the most exciting and accomplished lightweights in the world.”

“Roger is truly a young man who has defied the odds to achieve greatness,” Rebney said.   “Adding Roger to our 155 division and tournament is a great signing for Bellator that provides us the ability to showcase him on national television upwards of three times before summer (provided he wins). His personal story is inspirational.  He has not had an easy road, but has fought hard and persevered.  It’s hard not to root for a guy who has triumphed over adversity like he has.”

To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the news. I figured Roger would either sign with Strikeforce to bolster their rather thin lightweight division or end up re-signing with the UFC. Apparently not. Huerta liked the idea that he could control his own destiny.

“Bellator provided me with a sense of security,” Huerta told Sherdog.com on Monday. “I control my own destiny in the tournament. The winner gets to face one of the best lightweight fighters in the world — that’s the goal. If I lose, then it’s my fault. It’s on me and I can deal with that.”

I’m sure it didn’t hurt either that Huerta stands to make $100,000 if he wins his three fights in the tournament. Of course, it’s entirely possible he could make that or more in the UFC over the course of three fights, especially with the Fight of the Night bonuses, but it’s hard to argue his competition in Bellator won’t be easier, at least during the actual tournament.

Like I said, not what I was expecting, but it seems like a good match. Bellator needs a few higher profile fighters that won’t break the bank and Huerta gets away from the politics that bothered him so much in the UFC and still gets the opportunity to make good money. Plus, it could get him in the cage with Eddie Alvarez which is a fight that’s great for everyone, especially the fans.

Image via Sherdog

Update: Josh Gross has more on Huerta’s contract. Specific details aren’t fully revealed, but it sounds like he’s getting more than the standard Bellator tournament contract.

Mere rumors of Huerta’s asking price — which, according to sources outside the fighter’s camp familiar with the negotiations, included a $250,000 signing bonus — was enough to keep Dream, Japan’s top promoter, from making an offer, said its U.S. representative, Mike Kogan.

However Bellator, a tournament-based organization that debuted in 2009 to strong reviews, was not put off by Huerta’s demands. Bjorn Rebney, the Chicago-based promotion’s CEO, declined to disclose the terms of his deal with Huerta, though they’re believed to be considerable.

“They gave him a lot of things that really made it enticing,” said Huerta’s manager Jeff Clark, who also serves as a consultant to Bellator. “I felt what they offered and what they came through with was fairly strong where it wouldn’t be matched.”

“It was a very easy decision to make after a very long and exhaustive negotiation with his management and attorneys,” Rebney said. “But it came through.”

Bellator has steadily been announcing season two’s tournament participants over the last few months. Their featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight tournaments are chock full of some of the sport’s top prospects but questions still remain about who their champions will fight in the meantime.

Well, it looks like we finally have one of those answers. Bellator lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez will take on Josh Neer in May in what Bellator calls a non-title “Super Fight.”

Bellator Fighting Championships announced today that its reigning lightweight champion, Eddie Alvarez, the No. 2-ranked lightweight in the world, will square off in a non-title “Super Fight” with UFC veteran Josh “The Dentist” Neer under the Bellator banner this May.

The fight is the first Super Fight matchup to be announced by Bellator, which is now gearing up for its much-anticipated nationally-televised second season. These non-tournament, non-title catch-weight fights will pit Bellator’s Season 1 Champions — Alvarez, Joe Soto, Lyman Good and Hector Lombard — against top competition as they prepare to defend their titles from Bellator’s Season 2 tournament winners this fall.

I don’t know about the “Super Fight” label, but it is great to see their champs getting fights while they wait for the tournaments to play out.

For one reason or another Bellator’s middleweight champ, Hector Lombard, has always flown under the radar, but if he has his way, that won’t be the case for long. He wants a fight with Dan Henderson in Strikeforce and he isn’t shy in letting the world know about it.

“I would sign that contract today. Dan Henderson is a great fighter and a legend in the sport, but I know I have the skills to beat him…U.S. fans have only seen a little of my abilities. Fighting and beating Dan Henderson would let me show the world what I’m capable of…I look forward to hearing something from Strikeforce. I know they want to put on a great show on such a big stage, and I promise I can give that to them…I want Dan Henderson – period.”

The good news for Lombard is Bellator has given their blessing to pursue the fight while he awaits his first title defense. The bad news is Dan Henderson already has fights with Jake Shields, Gegard Mousasi and possibly even Fedor Emelianenko on the horizon. Even if those fell through, there’s plenty of other match-ups in Strikeforce for Hendo. At the moment, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Strikeforce is willing to give a relatively unknown fighter a shot at one of their marquee fighters without the ability to promote him before or after the bout.

Having said that and no offense to Bellator, but Lombard along with Eddie Alvarez really should be in the UFC or Strikeforce. They’re both explosive, a threat to anyone they face and deserve to fight on a much bigger stage in the US than they have in the past. At this point of their careers, they should be fighting the top fighters in their respective weight divisions, and thus far Bellator hasn’t proved they can provide them with that level of competition.

On this week’s edition of Fox Fight Game, Mike Straka talks with Bellator CEO Jason Statham Bjorn Rebney, Miguel Torres and Dominick Cruz.

It had been so long since Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney teased their new television deal, I was beginning to wonder if it had fallen through. Well, it didn’t. Today, Bellator announced they have secured television deals with not one network, but three — Fox Sports Net, NBC and Telemundo — which probably explains why it took so long to announce.

Here’s a breakdown of their “landscape-altering” broadcast alliance for seasons two and three.

• Fox Sports Net, 82 million homes, live primetime events on Thursday nights, beginning April 8, 2010, available in HD
• NBC, 112 million homes, 30-minute highlight show, every Saturday night the week of an event, 24 weeks in 2010, available in HD
• Telemundo, 62 million homes, one-hour highlight show in Spanish, every Saturday night the week of an event Midnight-1AM, available in HD

Season two will kick off on April 8, 2010 and season three on August 12, 2010. Both seasons will run for 12 consecutive weeks and will follow the tournament format they used in season one.

Rebney described this alliance as his “dream scenario.”

“It was my dream scenario. I had this triangle in mind of what I wanted accomplished. I wanted a live weekly broadcast for two hours in prime time so people could see what we’re all about. I wanted it easy to find, and FSN accomplishes that…I also wanted a network play. What we ended up with is a rock-em’, sock-em’ highlights show on NBC similar to ‘The NFL Today,’ for lack of a better comparison. The third part of the triangle then was a Spanish-language option. The Spanish-language audience responded just magically last season … and we wanted to bring that back to those fans…Without naming names, this sport is littered with the carcasses of organizations that cut (broadcast) deals that just didn’t work for the businesses. If you’re not cash-flow positive pretty quickly, you’re not going to last. With our deal, I wanted to assure not only that we would have seasons three and four of Bellator but also seasons five, six and so on. … My focus wasn’t the next year or two; it was the next five, 10, 15 and all the way down the line.”

Update: Bjorn Rebney spoke to Fanhouse about the tournament structures for seasons two and three, what their champions will do while the season two tournament plays out and what the pay structure looks like.

I’m keeping the guys busy. Joe just fought in Northern California and will fight again in January. Eddie fights Sunday in Dream. Hector and Lyman will fight again soon as well. Once our second season starts we’ll put them in superfights, and during Season 2 we’ll crown four tournament winners in featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight, and then we’ll have those tournament winners fight our champions in Season 3. In Season 3 we’ll also do tournaments at heavyweight, light heavyweight and probably bantamweight.

Our Season 3 championship tournaments will keep the same pay structure, where the winner gets $175,000. Our Season 2 challenger tournaments will still pay the winners more than $100,000 but it won’t be the $175,000 that guys win for winning a championship tournament. When you’re fighting for our title, you get more.

Full press release after the jump.

Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney says they’ve signed a new TV deal that will put them in 150 million homes. Any guesses?

We all know the problem Strikeforce has with Gegard Mousasi. They don’t have any good opponents for him.