Andrey Koreshkov is a fighter who likes to keep busy.
This is a competitor, after all, who fought seven times from Nov. 2011-Nov. 2012 alone. He went through, and won, two Bellator welterweight tournaments, and unlike most of his tournament veteran counterparts, he doesn’t roll his eyes at the mere thought of the company’s old format.
“They were good for me,” Koreshkov (17-1) said in a recent phone interview with MMAFighting.com. “I grew as a competitor and worked on my skills. I didn’t mind them at all.”
So you can imagine it didn’t sit too well when Koreshkov, who has 18 pro fights under his belt by the time he was 23, had to sit out an entire year after a shoulder injury and resultant surgery.
The Bellator season 10 tournament winner becomes one of the final tourney winners to cash in on his title shot on Friday night when he meets champion Douglas Lima in the main event of Bellator 140 at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena.
“Obviously it was frustrating at times,” Korsehkov said, through an interpreter, of the layoff. “But after a while, I began to look at it differently. I wasn’t able to spar obviously, but I was still training and doing cardio work. And it made me focus on the mental aspect of the game, on thinking about how I can improve as a fighter and how to apply that to my training when I was ready to go again. So between that and the time to rest up and heal up, I think all in all, in an unusual way it’s helped make me a better fighter.”
And while an obvious question about Koreshkov would seem to be ring rust, as it turns out, Lima himself has been out even longer than Koreshkov. Lima, who comes into the bout on a five-fight win streak, last fought in April of last year, when he stopped Rick Hawn to win the Bellator title that had been vacated by Ben Askren.
So with ring rust likely an offsetting factor, the bout could simply come down to who lands the first big bomb. Lima (26-5) has 12 knockouts and 11 submissions on his record, with all five wins on his recent run coming via KO or TKO. Koreshkov has 13 finishes among his 17 victories, including 10 knockouts.
“I don’t think it’s a secret what type of fight this is going to be,” Koreshkov said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident wherever the fight goes, whether it is standup or on the ground. But if you look at the two of us and how we like to fight, this is going to be a fun fight for the fans. But it will be more fun for me.”