Joe Warren meets Nick Kirk in Bellator 101 headliner, Kongo-Godbeer moved

Joe Warren was cleared to fight earlier this week, and Bellator will waste no time getting the former champion back to work.

Warren (8-3 MMA, 6-2 BMMA) will meet Nick Kirk (10-2 MMA, 0-2 BMMA) in a bantamweight tournament semifinal fight to headline next week’s Bellator 101 event. Promotion officials made the announcement late Friday.

Bellator 101 takes place Sept. 27 at The Moda Center at Rose Quarter (formerly known as Rose Garden) in Portland. The five-fight main card, which features four opening-round fights in the Season 9 lightweight tournament, will air on Spike TV following prelims on Spike.com.

With Warren-Kirk taking the main-event position at Bellator 101, the previously planned heavyweight tournament semifinal fight between former UFC standout Cheick Kongo and Mark Godbeer will move to Bellator 102, which takes place Oct. 4 at Visalia Convention Center in California.

Kongo tweeted that news on Friday, including a hashtag of “#notmychoice.”

Warren and Kirk were supposed to meet at Bellator 98, the promotion’s season opener. But he was ruled out of the event by the Mohegan Tribe of Athletic Regulation, which declared him medically unfit to fight on the card at Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut.

But now recovered, the NCAA Division I All-American wrestler will fight for the first time since a November 2012 win over Owen Evinger. That fight got him back on track after back-to-back losses to Alexis Vila and Pat Curran. The loss to Vila was in the opening round of the Season 5 bantamweight tournament as he tried to go after a second title. The brutal knockout loss to Curran was one that saw him surrender his featherweight belt.

Kirk has won three of his past four fights, but still is searching for his first win under the Bellator banner. At Bellator 67, he lost a unanimous decision to David Harris. And at Bellator 87, he dropped a split call to Tony Zelinski.

With the addition, the Bellator 101 card now includes:

MAIN CARD (Spike TV, 9 p.m. ET)

• Nick Kirk vs. Joe Warren – bantamweight tournament semifinal
• Marcus Davis vs. Alexander Sarnavskiy – lightweight tournament opening round
• John Alessio vs. Will Brooks – lightweight tournament opening round
• Saad Awad vs. Martin Stapleton – lightweight tournament opening round
• Rich Clementi vs. Ricardo Tirloni – lightweight tournament opening round

PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike.com, 7 p.m. ET)

• Ryan Healy vs. Marcin Held
• Tyson Jeffries vs. Joe Pacheco
• Nathan Coy vs. Andy Uhrich
• Peter Aspenwal vs. Jeremiah Riggs
• Brent Primus vs. Scott Thometz
• Brent Alvarez vs. Austin Springer

For the latest on Bellator 101, stay tuned to the MMA Rumors section of the site.

(Pictured: Joe Warren)