Roger Huerta's Loss: What Does This Mean for Bellator?

Thanks to Pat Curran, a lot of steam just came out of the sails known as Bellator Fighting Championships.

Roger Huerta's loss at the hands of Curran comes as a shock to many MMA fans, but none more so than to Huerta himself.

"I take my hat off to Pat," said Huerta almost in disbelief in the post fight conference.  "I mean, it's my fault for leaving it up to the judges."

Curran came into the fight with a hefty 10-3 record, but with many of his wins coming against opponents that are relatively unknown.

His record no longer can be characterized as soft.

Huerta and Curran stood toe-to-toe for 15 minutes, leaving it all in the cage. Though Curran opened up the fight with dangerous kicks, Huerta came back with a strong flurry of punches and gave Curran a fit to say the least. It wasn't until the latter half third round when Curran came alive again, peppering Huerta with smaller punches and kicks.

Both fighters left the judges with a very hard decision to make at the end of the three rounds, but it was Curran that scored the victory, and secured a lightweight finals fight with Toby Imada.

"I'm actually really excited to fight Toby," said Curran in the postfight conference.

With his loss, Huerta is now left in limbo. The Bellator poster-boy was all but penciled in for the final against Eddie Alvarez, who won his fight against Josh "The Dentist" Neer shortly after Huerta's bout. The question remained, where does Huerta go from here?

"We likely won't see [Roger] again this season, but we'll sit down and figure something out for him," said Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney. "[He] is a world-class athlete and someone we're very thrilled to have fight for our organization. We're no less thrilled right now than we were five or six hours ago, or two hours ago or forty-five minutes ago [to have Roger]."

Let it be known, however, that May 6, 2010 is a day that Pat Curran proved anyone has a chance against anyone on any day.