Dream Vet Galesic Joins Bellator Season 5 Middleweight Tourney

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Croatian middleweight Zelg Galesic has signed with Chicago-based Bellator Fighting Championships and will participate in the promotion’s fifth-season 185-pound tournament.

Sherdog.com confirmed the news with a source close to the negotiations Wednesday following an initial report from MMAWeekly.com. Galesic joins second-season tournament winner Alexander Shlemenko, Sam Alvey, Bryan Baker, Jared Hess, Brian Rogers and Vitor Vianna in the eight-man bracket, which is expected to begin in September.

As with all Bellator tournaments, the middleweight field’s participants will vie for a total of $100,000 in pay and a shot at the division’s reigning champion -- in this case, streaking Cuban knockout artist Hector Lombard.

Galesic, 32, is a taekwondo stylist who cut his teeth on the U.K. amateur circuit, but made his name with a string of vicious knockouts in England’s now-defunct Cage Rage organization. Having claimed the promotion’s British middleweight title, “Benkei” took his career to Japan, where he competed for Pride, K-1 Hero’s and Dream between 2007 and 2009.

After advancing to the semifinals of Dream’s 2008 middleweight grand prix, Galesic was dealt his first defeat in the Dream ring, an 87-second armbar submission to current Strikeforce ace Ronaldo Souza. Following a 13-month layoff, Galesic returned against Kazushi Sakuraba in October 2009, only to have a preexisting leg injury aggravated by a kneebar from the Japanese legend. Returning from another year-plus layoff, Galesic bounced back on March 5 by knocking out Lee Chadwick in Liverpool, England.