Hawaiian champ eyes bigger prizes
Bellator flyweight Macfarlane wants 2 belts
HONOLULU – After another successful title defense, Bellator women’s flyweight champion Ilima-Lei Macfarlane had a couple of things on her mind.
While not yet official, her boss, promotion president Scott Coker, has teased that 2020 might include the start of a grand prix in her division. A tournament sounds just fine to Macfarlane, but she also wants Coker and the Bellator brass to create an official women’s division at bantamweight, one class up, so she can fight there – and become the promotion’s latest dual champ.
“I want that champ-champ status, or I want that opportunity,” she told USA TODAY Sports after her five-round unanimous decision win over Kate Jackson on Saturday. “So I’m saying it now: I want a bantamweight division.”
Macfarlane’s win over Jackson (11-4-1 MMA, 3-2 BMMA) came in the Bellator 236 main event at Neal S. Blaisdell Center in the city she grew up in. It was the second year in a row Bellator had her headline a show in her hometown. The crowd response was palpable, particularly to a walkout that included native Hawaiian women against a video backdrop that served as part protest to the islands’ demonstrations against construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.
But beyond her continued work outside the cage to not only embrace her culture but fight for social justice, as well as help fight for political and cultural issues like the one on Mauna Kea, Macfarlane (11-0, 10-0) knows there’s work to be done inside the cage.
If a tournament at flyweight happens, more than likely it would include the potential for Macfarlane to fight her longtime teammate, training partner and friend Liz Carmouche. She signed with Bellator this past week after years and two title challenges at bantamweight in the UFC, and she signed while in Hawaii to help corner Macfarlane and get her ready for Jackson.
In a move that would buck the trend set by many of their male MMA counterparts over the years, each says they’d have no issue fighting each other with a title on the line.
“We are totally prepared to fight each other,” Macfarlane said. “We would want to be on the other side of the bracket. But I am so down for a tournament.”
Coker is fairly certain he can deliver on the first one of those requests. But setting up a women’s bantamweight division for Bellator right now might be a bridge too far.
“I don’t think she had that hard of a time to get to (125 pounds),” Coker said after Bellator 236. “We’ll talk to her. We have a 125-pound weight class. She looked great in there – she didn’t gas. It’s not like she cuts so much weight she gassed out there. She was in a tough match for five rounds and she handled it. To me, we’d like her to stay there. If it was really something that she had to do, we would consider it.”
The fight against Jackson was the first time she had to go to the judges’ scorecards for a win as champ. The result was just as dominant with a sweep: 50-45 and two 50-44s.