Bellator Kickboxing welterweight champion Raymond Daniels talks about his highlight reel knockout win over Wilker Barros at Bellator Birmingham last weekend.
Kickboxing ace Raymond Daniels has made a living off of highlight reel knockouts. It was once again in full display during his fight against Wilker Barros at Bellator: Birmingham over the weekend.
The 39-year-old Daniels, however, refuses to buy into the hype surrounding this win.
“For me, that’s just another day in the office,” Daniels told MMA Fighting. “I’m accustomed to that kind of thing; it’s what I feel like I’ve been doing my whole career. This just happened to be my Bellator MMA debut. That made it important to me.
“I had that MMA debut all those years ago, I was a young kid and I wasn’t prepared mentally or physically. This time around I went in with a whole new set of eyes and whole different confidence in aura about myself, so I was able to be in there and be at my best and that’s when I can produce results like that.”
Many are already looking at his win over Barros as a Knockout of the Year candidate, but for Daniels, there are other notable moments.
“I honestly don’t think it’s the best knockout I’ve had and now people are calling it the best knockout of the century or the decade, or whatever,” he said. “I’ve already had other knockouts that have been labeled with that and they were some of my previous knockouts.
“This is just the new thing that I did. There are going to be people who love and people who hate it, but as long as they’re tuning into it, that’s all that really matters.”
Prior to his Bellator appearance, Daniels made his MMA debut in 2008 under the now-defunct Strikeforce banner. He faced Jeremiah Metcalf and lost via second-round submission.