FanHouse Fighting

Bellator middleweight champion Hector Lombard, recovering from a concussion that led to the postponement of the entire Oct. 9 Cage Fighting Championship 11 card in Queensland, Australia, will meet UFC veteran Kalib Starnes in the rescheduled date and location of Nov. 20 in Sydney.

It will be Lombard (22-2-1)'s first trip back into the cage since he was crowned the Bellator champion in June by stopping previously undefeated Jared Hess. Video of the fight is above.

If Vale Tudo Japan '09 was indeed Takanori Gomi's send-off event from Japan, and while his performance put forth wasn't ideal, the former PRIDE champion can take solace in the fact that he will leave on back-to-back wins.

Gomi defeated King of the Cage lightweight titleholder Tony Hervey Friday in Tokyo in the main event of the rebirth of the venerable Vale Tudo Japan series, which returned after a 10-year absence.

Josh Barnett is scheduled to present his appeal in front of the California state athletic commission on Dec. 8 to clear his name from a positive drug test earlier this summer.

Barnett, who was the first fighter subjected to a random testing in California, was scheduled to meet with the commission Monday, but the former UFC champ's attorney requested that his hearing be postponed to allow additional time for Barnett to receive unspecified documents related to his results from the World Anti-doping Agency test facility at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Light-heavyweight veteran Trevor Prangley believes he did not breach his contract with the Maximum Fighting Championship that led to his release from the Canadian promotion.

The MFC stated Monday that former UFC and Strikeforce competitor has been stripped of his 205-pound title and waived for accepting two outside fights, violating the exclusivity clause in his contract.

Former UFC middleweight Dean Lister has signed a multi-fight deal with Maximum Fighting Championship and his first opponent for the Canadian promotion will be former UFC title challenger Thales Leites in the main event of MFC 23 on Dec. 4 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

John Rallo pursued MMA's sanctioning in Maryland until he got a submission. That came in May of 2008, when governor, Martin O'Malley, made the state the country's 35th to legalize MMA.

In an exclusive interview with FanHouse, Rallo, owner of three training facilities called Ground Control, discusses what it took for him to get MMA sanctioned, his past as an MMA fighter and celebrity bodyguard for Tommy Lee and others, and "Shogun Fights," Maryland's first ever MMA event this Saturday night at Baltimore's First Mariner Arena.

Check it out below.

---

---

Former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski has begun training with renowned coach Greg Jackson at his academy in New Mexico as Arlovski looks to end a streak of back-to-back high-profile losses.

California welterweight Brett Cooper stepped in on late notice in place of his trainer Antonio McKee and knocked out Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion Sergio Moraes at the buzzer in the main event of Jungle Fight 15 on Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Former UFC middleweight and Olympic wrestler Jordan Radev knocked out highly regarded Russian Alexander "Storm" Shlemenko Saturday at Fight Festival 26 in Helsinki, Finland.