Alexander Shabliy, who scored a dominant win over Brazilian Patricky Freire in the Bellator lightweight grand prix semifinal match, believes his next opponent will be American A.J. McKee, who will replace the disqualified Usman Nurmagomedov in the finals.
“They don’t know who will be my opponent now – if they had a ready-made decision, they would give us a battle of looks,” the Russian said in an interview with the channel “Ushataika” After the Bellator 301 tournament in Chicago. “They’d bring in Brent Primus, or maybe bring out A.J. McKee, who was just coming off a win after me, and have a sterdown. There’s no ready solution today. I don’t think bringing Primus out against me is advisable either, because I’ve beaten him before, knocked him out. They’ll probably want to bring out A.J. McKee. I heard Usman won’t be in the grand prix.”
“I actually think that while Usman is out of the grand prix, we should have had a championship belt in our fight with Pitbull, and not a temporary one, but a real one for the champion to go to the finals. And it turns out that the belt is not in our grid, or in that grid, and in the finals, maybe we will fight for a temporary belt. It’s kind of weird, in my opinion
The fight between Alexander Shabliy and Patricky Freire went the full distance and ended with the Russian winning 50-45 three times, while AJ McKee won a unanimous decision over Sidney Outlaw in the co-main event.
Last week, the head of the California State Athletic Commission, Andy Foster, announced that Usman Nurmagomedov, who holds the Bellator lightweight title, failed a doping test and has been disqualified for six months, and his fight with Brent Primus headlining the Bellator 300 event in San Diego on October 7 has been ruled a no contest.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/33186-aleksandr-shablij-nazval-potentsialnogo-sopernika-po-finalu-gran-pri-bellator.html?rand=19907
