The great English sportswriter Neville Cardus once wrote that ‘one great fact is worth a thousand opinions’ and in northern California on Saturday night, a Canadian prize-fighter in mixed martial arts revealed what we all really know: being a fighter can be a very bizarre calling. There are thousands of opinions in fight sports: from the good to the bad to the downright ludicrous.
Rory MacDonald, as intense a character we have ever witnessed who explodes with violence on his victims and challengers, produced a moment of profound honesty in his post-fight speech. The FACT is that the desire to punch another man in the face for a living , which started at 16 years of age, is beginning to lack meaning.
It was delivered after a hollow performance, without the vim he is renowned for.
After a majority draw with opponent Jon Fitch, MacDonald said in his post-fight interview: “I just don’t know if I have that same drive to hurt people anymore.”
Bellator 220 was many things: a showcase of the complexities of judging in MMA, fighting in MMA, and how nothing will ever be straightforward in MMA. The event at the SAP Center in San Jose whistled with controversy, entertainment and ongoing storylines.
The two champions – MacDonald and the Hawaiian Ilima-Lei Macfarlane – retained their respective welterweight and women’s flyweight titles. MacDonald, though, was far short of his very best against a brilliant 41-year-old Fitch. Five rounds of grind.
“I landed some good stuff in there, but it’s just hard to sometimes pull the trigger now, I guess,” MacDonald told former referee turned television analyst John McCarthy.
“I don’t have that killer inside. It’s really hard to explain. It takes a certain spirit to come in here and put a man through pain and stuff. I just don’t know if I have that same drive to hurt people anymore. I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s confusing. But I know The Lord has something in store for me. He was speaking to me in here tonight, and I don’t know…it’s a weird feeling.”
Overall for MacDonald, it was a weird night. He had a fast start, but was ground down by the resilient hometown challenger, who arguably deserved the decision after five exhausting rounds.
The pattern was fairly straightforward: MacDonald was the man on the feet; Fitch on the floor. MacDonald retained the crown he has thus far coveted by the skin on his bruised elbows.
The 48-46, 47-47 twice verdict from the judges rendering it a majority draw means that the incumbent champion moves on to defend against Nieman Gracie, at Madison Square Garden, New York, on June 14.
“I was just being honest in the moment, it was just a feeling,” he said openly later at a post fight news conference, where he confirmed he had few injures of significance and would be defending the crown in Manhattan in six weeks’ time. The next few days will no doubt bring further comment on his future.
If he does not, or cannot, surely Fitch should get the nod, for this was one of his finest performances against a champion considered as the pound for pound No 1 at 170lbs in the sport.
“I’m on the fence about retiring,” said Fitch. “But if I got the call, I’d definitely want to take up the challenge to fight at MSG.”
Women’s flyweight queen Macfarlane had the toughest two rounds of attrition of her career before what she later referred to as “a shark-like elbow” to bust open a gash across challenger Veta Arteaga’s forehead.
It was brutal, ugly, and definitive. The very opposite of MacDonald’s desire.
Before the third round assault from the top by the reigning champion, Arteaga was a marauding menace: Dangerous with her hands, sound in wrestling defence.
The TKO stoppage meant Veta went to hospital; Ilima most likely back to Hawaii for her fourth defence of the title, possibly in December.
The champion invited a rematch, though Scott Coker, the president of Bellator, was not so convinced.
“We are developing the roster, we want to grow the division, so we’ll see…,” he responded, having seen a night of twists and turns through a main card that delivered a conveyor belt of talking points.
Macfarlane said she had suffered an “adrenaline dump” in the dressing room, and it had given her a slow start. But there was no doubting the finish, and the growing status of the champion.
Benson Henderson and Adam Piccolotti indulged in a three-round showcase for why mixed martial arts is utterly entertaining at its best, and why to do so, the exponents need to be athletes, fighters and even physical magicians to produce crowd-pleasing contests.
Henderson, who has been in twelve title fights, lost the first round to Piccolotti, but won the war in the final few seconds of the stanza. Prior to that the young fighter made huge inroads, over fifteen minutes of non-stop action in which his stock rose enormously.
Many felt Piccolotti had done enough to take the decision in a terrific fight, with both men consistently looking for ascendancy and dominance. The contest literally went everywhere, every fighting facet of MMA fighting explored.
On another day Piccolotti would have taken the decision. Yet everything Henderson does is clean, eye catching,and efficient. That probably won it for him.
Henderson took the decision 29-28, 29-28 and 28-29, though there were plenty of calls from the audience within the Shark Tank for it to have gone the other way.
The lone Briton on the Bellator 220 card, Liam McGeary, suffered a broken jaw in the second round and was stopped in the third round by Phil Davis. The American is now 2-0 over his light-heavyweight foe.
Davis got back to winning ways after a defeat to Vadim Nemkov, calling for a trilogy fight with Ryan Bader, but Coker, the Bellator supremo, told The Telegraph: “The next fight for Bader will be at heavyweight. And he’ll be fighting Cheick Kongo sometime in the summer.”
“And then when goes to defend his 205lbs, I think Vadim Nemkov is in the picture. We’ll keep Davis busy. Maybe he could fight Nemkov and then the winner fights Bader… but Bader definitely wants to fight at heavyweight next against Kongo.”
Bellator now moves to Birmingham next weekend, with coverage on network Channel 5 television, the card headlined by former Bellator lightweight champion Brent Primus, against Briton Tim Wilde. Middleweight Fabian Edwards also marks his return.
Coker remains confident that the Bellator brand will grow exponentially over the coming months and years. The main card from Bellator 220 was aired live on Sky Sports Arena in the early hours of this morning in the UK. “My understanding is Sky are happy with the numbers we’re producing from them,” Coker told The Telegraph.
“They’re tip-toeing into it. It’s a big deal and we’re happy to be on it. We have these big iconic fights. Madison Square Garden will be live in the UK. A year ago we were getting hammered by the media about no live fights (being shown) in the UK. We’ve got Channel 5. Bellator has the best UK distribution now, period. It doesn’t get any better than Channel 5 and Sky Sports.”
“We’re excited about Birmingham and London (on June 22),” he added. “We haven’t even announced all the fights for London. We’ll go back to London again and Dublin at some point in the year. We’ll start expanding from there. It’s game on.”