The fighters in Friday night’s Bellator 64 main card addressed the media at Caesar’s Windsor in the post-fight press conference. Included below are their comments.
Hiroshi Nakamura:
Rodrigo Lima is a very tough fighter. He’s a fantastic fighter. This was a very difficult fight. It was my first time fighting in North America, so I was a little uptight. I’m looking forward to looking at the tape and study what I have to do to get ready for the next fight.
Rodrigo Lima:
I want to thank Bellator for having me. Unfortunately, the fight didn’t go my way, but I will grow from it and go back to training. I’m still young and I’ll be ready next time.
It was a tough fight, unfortunately I had that point taken away from the knee [low]. It wasn’t personal, it was completely accidental. I was going for submissions when I was on my back, I was going for the knockout when I was on my feet. I was trying to be aggressive. After I lost the point, it went to the judges decision and they chose the wrestler over the aggressive guy on the bottom.
Travis Marx
Obviously it’s a pleasure and an opportunity for me. As many fighter throughout the world understand, this is a game where we don’t always get the opportunities we feel we deserve. That can be said for people everywhere. I did have the opportunity and I feel like I took full advantage of it. I plan on continuing to take advantage of the opportunities that Bjorn and the others at Bellator have given me. I appreciate this opportunity and I hope that I’ve performed up to what they expected of me. I hope to do better in the future. I definitely have some things that I have to work on after that fight but I’ll take the win and I’ll keep pressing forward.
Everything falls back to what I know. My first twenty years of competing was in wrestling, then I tried to adapt into MMA. My hands are definitely coming, my striking’s coming but it’s taking some time. I hope tonight that I showcased that my hands are getting there but when it comes down to it, I fall back on my wrestling. Fortunately tonight, I came out on top. Obviously, Masakatsu is a wrestler as well and he’s a really good wrestler as you can tell. Having that base has kept me from a lot of potentially harmful situations, or allowed me to gut it through to where I was able to get some of the stand-up advantage with some of the newfound talent in my hands.
Masakatsu Ueda
I lost the fight. All I can do is come back strong.
Marlon Sandro
I’m very happy for the victory because this guy’s a tough guy. I wanted to bring more emotion for everybody, and everybody looking for the Bellator – remember me. I want to fight for the belt, I want to fight Pat Curran again. I train everyday very hard with my team. This is my dream. For me, for my son. Everybody said to me “you lost”, and it stayed here in my heart. I’m grateful for everybody. Thanks to my fans, my family. I thank Bjorn for the opportunity to fight in a big show. This is the best show in the world.
I was trying to study the whole fight. I knew Popo was coming forward all the time, so I tried to study the fight a lot. Popo did land a good punch, I lost my equilibrium for a bit. But I just got back up and did what I did.
Popo Bezarra
I lost the fight, so I’ll go back home and watch the tape. I lost, so I think I have to work more. I think with more work, I win the fight. I’ll go back home, work more, train more and come back. I want to be the best and I want to fight.
Ben Askren
I knew it was a dangerous fight going into it. Douglas is already a really good fighter, but in my opinion if he learns to respect wrestling and to wrestle he could be a very, very dominant fighter in this sport. His stand-up isn’t something you want to mess with. If any of those idiot Canadian fans want to try and stand on their feet with Douglas for 25 minutes, they wouldn’t last that long. He’d finish them earlier. My striking’s improved tremendously but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand for 25 minutes and strike with someone who’s got one punch knockout power. That’s just ridiculous. If I wanted to do that, I’d go the sport of kickboxing. But this sport is mixed martial arts and wrestling’s something that I’ve done my whole life. Something that people neglect is I am a brown belt in jiu-jitsu and Douglas has good subs. He had an armbar that was very close, he went for a couple of heel hooks that were good. But that dominant jiu-jitsu and top control kept me in a position to land a lot of punches. Ground and pound is something else that we’ve been working on with Coach Duke [Roufus]. I felt like I landed ten times as many punches that I ever have. A lot of them were really hard. Kudos to Douglas for continuing to try to fight through it. A lot of lesser men probably would have just rolled over and gave up a rear-naked choke like most of the sissies in MMA do.
It’s my tenth professional fight. I’ve also been a full-time mixed martial artist for eight months now. Before that, I was training but I was also coaching college wrestling. I feel very comfortable on my feet in the gym. But like I said earlier, when someone’s got one punch knockout power, you don’t stand around and see how it goes. That’s a terrible strategy and it’s not something that I’m going to employ. If it comes up that whoever wins this next tournament is a strong ground guy and maybe their striking’s not as good, then sure I’ll stand up a little longer with him.
Douglas Lima
Hats off to Ben. He’s really got good wrestling and a good top game. People say his style is boring, he doesn’t finish fights, but he wins the fights. That’s what’s important. No excuses, I came into this fight prepared 100%. Thanks to all my training partners and everybody that supported me. I’ve got to keep training hard and work a lot more on my wrestling. It wasn’t enough tonight. But, live and learn. I’ve just got to go back to the gym as quick as possible. Get this swelling down on my face, I took a lot of punches. But it’s all good. Hats off to him again, he’s a good champion. I’ll come back a lot stronger. I’m happy to be back in Canada, we had a great crowd. I’m happy to be in this casino, it’s a great place. Thanks to Bjorn and Bellator for the opportunity. I’ll work harder and come back stronger.
Maybe it was the weight cut, but I did feel a little tired after the third. I think I still had power, but I wasn’t able to land. He did a great job with his wrestling, so I wasn’t able to land anything clean. I think my power was still there, but I didn’t land.
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