Bellator 216 main event
Promotion president likes fight’s potential
Page-Daley headline welterweight grand prix
NEW YORK – A fight about two years in the making has the potential to be one of the biggest in Bellator MMA history.
If nothing else, Scott Coker, the promotion’s president, believes it will be the biggest MMA fight between a pair of British fighters, and he’ll reserve judgment on the bigger-picture significance of Michael Page (13-0 MMA, 8-0 BMMA) vs. Paul Daley (40-16-2, 6-3) until the fight is over.
But when the Brits headline Bellator 216 on Saturday (DAZN, 10 p.m. ET), the second of back-to-back events on consecutive nights at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, Coker at least will feel a sense of relief.
“These fights are not easy to put together, and they don’t happen all the time,” Coker told USA TODAY. “We try our best, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. When you talk about this matchup, to me this is the biggest matchup in the history of the U.K.”
The fight takes on added importance given it’s a first-round matchup in Bellator’s ongoing welterweight grand prix. The winner will advance to a semifinal matchup against former champion Douglas Lima.
Page and Daley, whose heated rivalry started two years ago after a postfight comment from Daley got under the skin of unbeaten Page, each said they wanted to be paired up early in the tournament and not just have the potential to fight each other from opposite sides of the bracket.
“I wanted it because I don’t believe he would have made it through to the final anyway,” Page said. “This is what I’ve been screaming for for a very long time now; I’ve been asking for this fight for ages.”
Daley said the fight happening in the tournament’s first round gives the overall grand prix a bigger meaning.
“If this fight wasn’t made in the tournament, the tournament wouldn’t be half as interesting, in my opinion,” Daley said.
The fact that he and Page have one of the hottest grudges in the sport is an added bonus, even if Page still isn’t quite sure exactly why his comment in 2017 offended “MVP” in such a way that things escalated to what they are ahead of the fight.
Daley, after a win, said Page wasn’t on his radar. He acknowledged his talent but added that a meeting wasn’t something he was eyeing. Page took it the way he took it, and here they are.
“I didn’t mean to insult him,” Daley said. “Obviously there was something there already that he took it the way he did. I just meant I’m further along in the game. I’d been in the sport probably 10, 11 years before he started. He was never someone I had ambitions of fighting.”
Now they’ll fight in a bout Coker believes could be “one of those epic battles that we all love to see.”
Daley is a veteran striker known for his knockout power. Page has a kickboxing background, but has less than a quarter of the pro MMA fights than Daley has, and a flashy style that has endeared him to fans.
Will it be one of the biggest fights in Bellator history?
“That’s something I think we can answer on Saturday night,” Coker said. “But the matchup, this is a fight I’ve been looking forward to seeing myself for the last two years. It was not easy to put this fight together, believe me. But we finally made it happen.”