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Ryan Bader Excited For Bellator’s Heavyweight Tournament

November 24, 2017 | Posted by Joseph Lee

In an interview with MMA Junkie, Bellator MMA light heavyweight champion Ryan Bader spoke about his decision to join Bellator and the upcoming heavyweight tournament. Here are highlights:

On having no regret about joining Bellator: “I’m totally happy with my decision. Go out, win the belt, defend it, and then get offered to go in a heavyweight tournament? It doesn’t get, really, much better than that. I came over here for those unique opportunities, you know. And they brought it up to me – I didn’t have to go searching for (them). When I first met with them, they were like, ‘Would you be willing to fight in Japan? Would you be willing to go to heavyweight?’ I said yes to all of that. ‘Give me those opportunities.’ So when it presented itself to be in this tournament, we said, ‘Hell yeah, why not? Let’s do it.’”

On the stacked tournament: “I can make the case for fighting anyone of those guys would be awesome,” Bader said. “It’s one of those stacked tournaments where you look at one paper and you’re like, ‘Man, there’s some big names in here. Big guys.’ But there’s not a guy in there that I’m like, ‘Oh man, he may be too big.’ Or (that) I’m concerned about. I’m going in there to win that thing. So it really doesn’t matter to me. It’s kind of breaking it down like I used to do it in the old wrestling das, when you’re going to a national tournament and there’s 64 men in your bracket. You look at it and it’s pretty daunting, but you just go out there and you wrestle one match at a time. Same with fighting: You go out there, fight your fight. You win three in a row and you’re the heavyweight champion.”

On wanting a fight with Fedor: “Before Fedor is done, it’d be an honor to get in the cage with him. And it’s just one of those things, where it’s nothing but respect. For me, I was watching a lot of the wrestlers coming up, because I was wrestling at (Arizona State University) and watching Fedor just tearing people apart like a buzzsaw over in PRIDE, (he’s) definitely one of my favorite fighters. To be able to share that cage with him and those guys that are on my record, it’s pretty surreal. I don’t really take the time to look back and reminisce on that, and there will be a time for that, but now is time to go forward. To fight him would be a great honor but, make no mistake about it, I’m trying to run through him.”

article topics :

Ryan Bader, Joseph Lee