
Issue 213
January 2025
1 May 2009
Dayton, Ohio
Bellator 5
By Brad Wharton
The Bellator brand was laid to rest at the start of 2025. While it went out with a whimper rather than a roar, the promotion certainly made its fair share of noise across a near sixteen-year tenure. As the UFC was eating its imitators in the late ’00s, Bellator gambled on an alternative product based almost entirely around multi-night, single-elimination tournaments—a taste of nostalgia with a modern twist.
The early tournaments featured an eclectic mix of up-and-comers, international imports, and veterans looking to revitalize stagnating careers. This glorious melting pot blessed us with the meeting of journeyman Toby Imada and future superstar Jorge Masvidal. This bout would go down in history as a Bellator classic and give modern-era MMA one of its first viral moments.
THE JOURNEYMAN
The term ‘journeyman’ is often used negatively in modern combat sports, particularly MMA, when in reality, it’s anything but. Toby Imada was 31 when he entered Bellator’s inaugural lightweight tournament in 2009. No spring chicken, but hardly over the hill. His record was hardly pristine. At 22-13, it wasn’t exactly screaming ‘prospect.’ In many ways, he was a product of his environment. Imada had debuted in the sport in the 90s, when you fought whoever, whenever, at whatever weight. He’d never made it to the UFC or PRIDE, but instead, he kicked around the California circuit, fighting anywhere from feather to light heavyweight in MMA, kickboxing, and grappling. Pretty much, however, he could test his mettle.
He couldn’t quite get over the hump. The notable names on the early part of his ledger – Jason Miller, Jake Shields, Joe Stevenson, Dave Strasser, and Antonio McKee – were usually marked in red. Still, early 2009 found the Californian on a six-fight win streak. After a handy submission victory over fellow vet Alonzo Martinez at Bellator 1, Imada was within touching distance of big money and true recognition for the first time in his career.
THE OUTSIDER
Nowadays, it would be almost unthinkable for an ultra-charismatic stand-up specialist with a 16-3 record not to have been snapped up by the UFC. 2009 was a different time, though, and Jorge Masvidal was cool with being an outsider. His father – a Cuban defector who nearly died escaping the country on a makeshift raft - was imprisoned for most of his childhood on drug trafficking charges, having previously done time for manslaughter. Raised by his Peruvian mother, Masvidal had looked for solace in sport, but despite being a competent grappler, poor grades precluded him from joining the high school wrestling team. Jorge was a scrapper, though, taking to boxing and karate like a duck to water. He'd compete on the streets if he couldn’t compete on the mats. By his mid-teens, he was already fighting grown men for handfuls of well-thumbed notes in some of Miami's secluded backyards. The young Masvidal was no Kimbo Slice when it came to the fame game, but the footage of them sharing the same backyards would help build his rags-to-riches legend many years later. That rise would take time, and it would start with Bellator.
MAY 1ST, 2009: FUN FIGHT FRIDAY
Masvidal looked typically cool at the sound of the buzzer, while Imada uncharacteristically stalked the cage. Despite the venomous looks, there was no early blitz from the veteran. It was just a chopping leg kick and a bunch of feints as the first minute melted off the clock. The prospect began to pick up the pace, snapping off a mean left jab and a flurry of straight punches as his man teased, dipping his head for a takedown. Just when it looked like Imada was getting a read, Jorge tossed a knee up the middle instead, forcing him to scramble to regain solid footing. Masvidal displayed a calmness belying his age, keeping his guard high and tight, peeping out to touch his foe with crisp shots and forcing Imada to overextend on everything he threw. The older man pressed the action, but baiting a guy with a five-inch reach advantage only saw him soundly peppered with swift, linear punches.
With 90 seconds left in the first round, Imada could finally force a grappling exchange, but a failed trip allowed his opponent to crash down into his guard before evading the subsequent armbar attempt. Imada absorbed punch after punch as he wrestled back to his feet. Now, it was Masvidal taking the initiative, skipping forward behind a flurry of punches and pumping another solid knee up into Imada’s jaw. An uppercut followed. Imada showed no signs of going down, but his sharpness was fading fast.
SECOND WIND
Masvidal looked to maintain the status quo in the second, but Imada came out weaving and found a home for the looping punches that he’d missed from more static setups in the first. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t force the brawl against a man content to out-snipe him from inches outside the pocket.
Gamebred’s jabs began to disguise hooks and combinations, with Imada’s face acting as a living ledger of his success. If the veteran scrapper had been brought in purely to make up the numbers, though, he wouldn’t have been given a script. If anything, the cleaner blows seemed to spur him on, and with 90 on the clock in the second, he forced a little honesty with a solid right hand of his own.
An eerie calm seemed to descend over Masvidal. This was perhaps a regression to the bone-on-bone tear-ups of his youth where junkyard dogs that were too tough to take a knee needed to be put down the hard way. The hands became a little more disciplined, the shots a little stiffer. Still, Imada marched forward.
THE LAST ROLL OF THE DICE
As Masvidal trudged out for the final round, Imada glared across the cage with a face that looked like it had been used for target practice. It was all-or-nothing time, and in defiance of their earlier dance pattern, the underdog took the lead. An overhand right opened his account before a knee found the jaw, forcing Masvidal to tie up.
Imada finally scored a clean takedown, and the pair scrambled like rats in a sack, eventually ending up face-to-face and back in the pocket. It wasn’t exactly a shift in momentum, but there was something in the air. With two minutes on the clock, he shot in and switched to a single, depositing Masvidal to his back. The younger man reacted on pure instinct, wrestling forward from his knees, but as he latched onto a deep single leg, Imada spilled forwards over his back, lacing his legs around Masvidal’s arms and neck in the process.
Only the keenest eye would have seen it coming. Gamebred rose to his feet with his opponent still attached, the crowd whooping and hollering in anticipation of a WWE-inspired slam. Imada had other ideas, adjusting his lower limbs to clamp his calf across Masvidal’s throat and lock in a reverse triangle, lacing his arms under the groin to curtail defensive movement. The exact grip one would use on the ground, just six feet in the air.
The upstart was caught like a deer in the headlights. He flexed, jerking his torso forward ninety degrees, but it was fruitless. In a dramatic flourish that Tarantino himself couldn’t have penned, the realization etched itself across Masvidal’s face at the precise moment his suddenly lifeless body collapsed to the mat like a puppet with its strings cut.
...