Scott Coker has confirmed what most analysts and fans had anticipated. The winner of Rory MacDonald vs. Paul Daley at Bellator 179 will receive a welterweight title opportunity. Coker confirmed the news during a media conference call (via MMAFighting.com). Champion Douglas Lima is set to defend his title against Lorenz Larkin at Bellator NYC on […]
Scott Coker has confirmed what most analysts and fans had anticipated. The winner of Rory MacDonald vs. Paul Daley at Bellator 179 will receive a welterweight title opportunity. Coker confirmed the news during a media conference call (via MMAFighting.com). Champion Douglas Lima is set to defend his title against Lorenz Larkin at Bellator NYC on […]
After scoring a rampant knockout victory at Bellator 170 against Brennan Ward, UFC veteran Paul Daley called out Rory MacDonald. Having crossed over from the UFC himself, the Canadian prospect was yet to be linked to a debut fight. MacDonald’s UFC run was considerably longer than Daley’s, and he fought for the title against Robbie
After scoring a rampant knockout victory at Bellator 170 against Brennan Ward, UFC veteran Paul Daley called out Rory MacDonald. Having crossed over from the UFC himself, the Canadian prospect was yet to be linked to a debut fight. MacDonald’s UFC run was considerably longer than Daley’s, and he fought for the title against Robbie Lawler in his penultimate fight. ‘Semtex’ was fired after exploding with a sucker punch against Josh Koscheck.
Although ‘Red King’ wasn’t sacked, he didn’t leave on great terms. The UFC wouldn’t match Bellator MMA’s offer, and so one of the best welterweights in the division jumped ship. Now the two are on a collision course.
MacDonald vs. Daley
Confirmed by Bellator’s official Twitter page, Rory MacDonald will take on Paul Daley in the Bellator 179 main event:
Although coming off two losses, ‘The Canadian Psycho’ is still widely considered one of the best at 170 pounds. Before his run of bad fortune in the UFC, MacDonald had defeated Nate Diaz, BJ Penn, current champion Tyron Woodley, Demian Maia and Jake Ellenberger to name a few.
What a Fight!
Having lost a decision during Bellator’s last London trip, Daley will hope to get a W on home soil this time around. MacDonald is no walk in the park, though, and could make it two home defeats in a row on February 19th.
Rory MacDonald finally has his Bellator MMA debut set, and it’s a promising one. Despite talk of Paul Daley facing fellow Brit Michael “Venom” Page in London, Daley has been paired up with MacDonald to welcome the former UFC title challenger to Bellator. The fight will take place in May at Bellator 179, the promotion […]
Rory MacDonald finally has his Bellator MMA debut set, and it’s a promising one. Despite talk of Paul Daley facing fellow Brit Michael “Venom” Page in London, Daley has been paired up with MacDonald to welcome the former UFC title challenger to Bellator. The fight will take place in May at Bellator 179, the promotion […]
Former UFC welterweight title challenger Rory MacDonald has recently made headlines around MMA for a variety of topics, with most of them centering on his potentially ground-breaking deal with Bellator MMA following a 0-2 stint to close out his UFC career. Not surprisingly, “The Red King” has since called out his former employers on a
Former UFC welterweight title challenger Rory MacDonald has recently made headlines around MMA for a variety of topics, with most of them centering on his potentially ground-breaking deal with Bellator MMA following a 0-2 stint to close out his UFC career.
Not surprisingly, “The Red King” has since called out his former employers on a litany of topics such as fighter pay and treatment that are currently at the forefront of MMA’s most heated discussions.
Unfortunately, however, those headlines are going to be the extent of what we’re going to hear from this new, outspoken version of MacDonald for now, as the broken nose he suffered at against Robbie Lawler at UFC 189 and re-broke against Stephen Thompson this June will keep him out of the Bellator cage until sometime in summer 2017.
When he does begin training to return, MacDonald will make some changes to his camp. He told Ariel Helwani on ‘The MMA Hour‘ that he was going to follow the many elite fighters who have eliminated hard sparring from their training:
“I want to make sure my nose is completely healed. I didn’t do that last year after the Robbie fight. I just kind of was too hungry to get back in there and start punching people, and getting into sparring matches and stuff. I didn’t go about it smart, so this time I’ve got to take the proper (approach).
“I don’t know if it’ll be summer, but I really have to be smart about it and I have to lay off sparring. I’m really going to tone that down in my career, in general, because I’ve been doing this since I was 14 years old sparring full-grown men, so I’ve done thousands upon thousands of rounds. I’ve really just got to cool that down at this point in my career.”
When he does finally step into a Bellator cage, MacDonald plans to bring the house down with performances, where he predicts he’ll be running through opponents with dominating ease, especially in his native Canada:
“One-hundred percent, we’re coming to Canada. And like I was tweeting [Sunday], these shows are going to be big. This is going to be a legit show. You’re going to go there and it’s going to be an experience. You’re going to be talking about it on the car ride home and the next day, saying ‘oh wow, that was an amazing show, I can’t wait for the next one.’
“And I can guarantee you, I’m going to be putting on a strong fight game when I come out there for Bellator. I’m going to be dropping people like flies out there. I’m going to be coming forward and bringing the action. Without a doubt, people are going to be going crazy.”
Just a few short days after he officially signed with Bellator MMA as arguably the UFC’s most high-profile free agent defector, top-ranked welterweight Rory MacDonald has come out with some potentially game-breaking news about why part of the reason he left the Octagon. According to MacDonald during an appearance on ‘The MMA Hour’ today (transcribed
Just a few short days after he officially signed with Bellator MMA as arguably the UFC’s most high-profile free agent defector, top-ranked welterweight Rory MacDonald has come out with some potentially game-breaking news about why part of the reason he left the Octagon.
According to MacDonald during an appearance on ‘The MMA Hour’ today (transcribed via MMA Mania), “The Red King” has received some ‘interesting information’ about former welterweight champ Robbie Lawler being involved in some funny business surrounding the drug tests for his all-out classic war with MacDonald in the co-main event of UFC 189:
“To answer your question about leaving UFC without winning a belt, yeah I am. Actually right before this conversation, something very interesting came up to me. We are going to have to see where it goes, but it has something to do with the title fight against Robbie Lawler. Some very interesting information just came about. We’ll see what happens with that.”
MacDonald added that he wasn’t going to cause a big stir about the scenario just, because he still had more facts to gather and research to do. If it did prove to be valid, however, “The Red King” said it would be big news.
With performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) quite possibly the hottest overall topic in MMA today, MacDonald laid out his career as a clean fighter, and he would be understandably angered if Lawler did indeed beat him him in perhaps the bloodiest UFC war of all-time while he was on steroids:
“I don’t really want to speak too loud about it, but it’s something that really grabbed my attention and I think a lot of people are going to be very interested to hear about this if it actually is true, I have to do my research.”
“But it could be a potentially very big thing and it pisses me off. It pisses me right off to hear about it, to be honest. I feel very robbed. I worked hard for that fight and I fought my heart out. I left everything in there. I left my soul and I really left everything out there. I came in honest, and I always have my entire career. I don’t play with any dirty drugs, any performance enhancers or something I don’t believe in morally. I always believe in myself that if I work hard, work on my techniques, train hard that I can get to the top and be the best.”
With his Bellator debut pushed back to sometime in the summer of 2017 due to the severely broken nose he suffered against Lawler, “The Red King” seemed to get more heated as he kept discussing Lawler’s potential failure. He described a scene where some of “Ruthless’s” test results were at four times that of a normal human, and he also cited American Top Team’s seedy history with PEDs.
Although he would certainly have a right to be furious were that the case, MacDonald recollected himself as he remembered he didn’t yet have the facts of the matter:
“The fact that whatever happened in there, if this is true, it pisses me right off to my core. Some test results came out four times higher than the limit for my fight with him. It could be bullshit. That’s why we have to look into it. I don’t want to start pointing fingers or anything. Look at that team’s history. It makes me very suspicious but I can’t go out and start saying for sure without making my research that all this is true.”
While obviously nothing can be proven against Lawler right now, it would be a significant black eye on the sport of MMA were he to have survived a vicious third round head kick and barrage of follow-up strikes to finish “The Red King” with a gruesome fifth round onslaught thanks to PED use the very weekend that the UFC’s new and increased drug testing partnership with USADA was unveiled.
It would seem that MacDonald would have to be at least somewhat certain in his accusations to unveil such a rumor live on MMA’s most-watched interview show, but it could be him just throwing more shade on the UFC after freeing himself from their grasp. “The Red King” could have just a bit of sour grapes because of his failed title bid that is now affecting his ability to fight.
Either way, it’d be a shame for steroids to mar what many people feel was the greatest MMA bout of all time.
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