Bellator featherweight king Patricio Pitbull has been campaigning for cross promotion in MMA for years now, and he will finally get his chance when he faces RIZIN 145-pound titleholder Kleber Koike in the main event of Bellator vs. RIZIN on Dec. 31 in Saitama, Japan.
Don’t expect him to “represent” the company and hope for a clean 5-0 sweep over RIZIN fighters, though, especially since his longtime rival A.J. In the co-main, McKee will be facing Roberto Satoshi, lightweight champion. In the end, Pitbull would return home a happy man if Bellator gets it done by 4-1.
“Tough fight, but I’m rooting for the Brazilian,” Pitbull said on this week’s episode of Trocacao Franca about McKee vs. Satoshi. “Bellator is in this like a team and internally we said we would all fight to beat RIZIN, but I’m Brazil.
“A.J. He continued, “McKee’s feet are very explosive and he can be very dangerous at the beginning.” He will slow down if Satoshi keeps him off the mat in round one. Satoshi, who is far better than me on the ground, pulls off submissions from nowhere. He just beat Tofiq Musayev, who’s super tough, so it’s a tough fight.”
As for Pitbull vs. Koike, none of the belts will be on the line when they meet inside the ring. Yet that doesn’t change a thing for the Bellator star since “I’m set to be at the top all the time” and “I don’t like to lose.”
“Kleber is a great champion, he has 27 submissions in his career,” Pitbull said. “I was impressed by that number, I didn’t know that. … One thing I hadn’t noticed is that he’s very calm and that makes people think they will run through him and then he chokes them out or gets an arm or something out of nowhere. It is important to remain alert all the time. I will not allow that to happen .”
Pitbull won nine of his past 10 bouts, having avenged his most recent setback to McKee, and feels history will be made if he beats Koike in Japan on New Year’s Eve.
” We’re doing what the sport requires,” Pitbull stated. Pitbull said, “We are putting champion against champ there, we will know who is the best of the two of them, and it opens up the possibility that I can face champions other organisations. This is the first step. We will see the next .”
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Depending on how things go at the Saitama Super Arena, Pitbull said he’s willing to run it back against Koike in the United States, this time with both belts on the line, to make history like Kyoji Horiguchi, a former two-promotion champion in RIZIN and Bellator.
“It is something big,” he stated. “But it must be done carefully considering there are logistics to be worked out between promotions and the distance .”
Pitbull stated that he had the choice of choosing the ruleset to use in his match with Koike. He was asked to mix both RIZIN’s and unified rules. Soccer kicks, foot stomps and elbow strikes from all angles will be allowed, he said, including 12-to-6 strikes.
“I started fighting on vale tudo rules and that’s the style in which we had an advantage,” he said. “Patricky [Pitbull], if you look at his record, he had three knockouts by stomps in his first fights. We were limited by that, but we are now adapted to American .”
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Source: https://www.mmafighting.com/2022/12/28/23526927/patricio-pitbull-clean-sweep-bellator-rizin-japan-mma?rand=96749
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