Ahead of his title eliminator with Magomed Magomedov at Bellator 264, Raufeon Stots feels a Bellator bantamweight Grand Prix
All across MMA, including Bellator, the bantamweight division seems to be one of the deepest and most rich in talent.
Raufeon Stots is one of those names in Bellator who is toward the top of their bantamweight ranks, and he has a big opportunity come Bellator 264 when he and Magomed Magomedov face off in a bout that could very well help determine the first challenger for new Bellator bantamweight champ Sergio Pettis.
The rest of Bellator’s top 10 at 135, as of Aug. 10, also show how the division is stacked. Former champ Juan Archuleta will want to regain the belt. Patchy Mix and James Gallagher are set to do battle later this year. There’s veteran talent like Leandro Higo, young up-and-comers like Cass Bell and even another former champ in Darrion Caldwell.
And Stots, with his high ranking, and even with his friend and training partner as champion, is not afraid to fight them all.
In fact, in an exclusive interview with FanSided MMA, Stots took it a step further and proposed that bantamweight be given the next edition of the Bellator Grand Prix, believing it can be set up to his advantage.
“I’ll fight anybody; I’m down to fight him all,” Stots told FanSided MMA. “In my head, I want to fight them all. I feel like if we could do a Grand Prix tournament, that feels like that’s best case scenario for me…because then I get to knock off as many as I can.
“I think that’s the next move, I think. There’s a lot of talent coming in, they got a lot of guys, a good amount of names. So let’s put them all in the mix and see who comes out on top.”
Raufeon Stots down to fight anybody, says Patchy Mix and James Gallagher haven’t accepted his callouts
Of course, in spite of the anticipation for Stots vs. Magomedov, which has already been briefly delayed once, it’s not a lock that the winner will be pegged as the next title challenger.
Mix and Gallagher will clash at Bellator 269 in November, after having a target of Bellator 258 in May pushed back due to a Gallagher injury.
Mix fell just short of the bantamweight championship at Bellator 246 in September, where he dropped a decision to Archuleta for the vacant belt. Meanwhile, Gallagher, a member of SBG Ireland, is a heavily pushed name in Bellator, and he has his fanbase.
It may not be farfetched to believe Bellator may jump the Mix-Gallagher winner over the Stots-Magomedov winner in the title picture. But Stots feels Mix or Gallagher jumping him, let alone either of them jumping Magomedov, is illogical.
Stots further claimed that both Mix and Gallagher, especially the former, have ducked his challenges.
“[Magomedov] will be my third guy I fought in the top 10 of Bellator. Magomedov, with his experience — I don’t think he’s fought anybody in the top 10, but he’s fought, you know people in top organizations, like UFC champions. So I feel like this should be [for] the No. 1 contender spot, if any fights should be. As far as Gallagher and Patchy, I’m not very impressed with the people they beat. I’ve called them out a couple times, and they’ve denied a fight with me. So, I definitely don’t feel like they deserve to be number one contender.
“After that Josh Hill fight, I literally walked up to [Mix] face-to-face and was like, ‘Hey, what’s up man? What you got going on next? I’m trying to fight.’ He told me that he was trying to fight. Gallagher, but if Bellator gave me his name or whatever, he would fight me. But also, he was like, ‘I could [take the fight] at that time because they said it wouldn’t be for a title.’ That’s not what I heard, but whatever.”
Stots was last in action on the previously mentioned Bellator 258 card, scoring a unanimous decision win over Josh Hill. While it wasn’t the most well-received fight online, Stots says what mattered was he got the job done — and that the damage done was more than meets the eye.
“I was very satisfied with my performance,” Stots said. “I stuck to a game plan that really frustrated Josh Hill. I mean, they didn’t realize I broke his arm, I cut him open, I inflicted a lot of damage and took virtually no damage. So, I’m happy, my family’s happy my cousins are happy, so that’s pretty much all that matters.”
Now all eyes lay upon Stots and Magomedov, two wrestlers with their own styles and tendencies, to do battle with a potential title shot in a loaded division at stake.
“Just figuring out what he wants to get to, and that’s like a lot of my game. If I know what they want, we can kind of game plan around that,” Stots said. “It’s just been figuring out the Sambo wrestling and MMA wrestling of the Dagestani, and then just kind of picking it apart and seeing what works and don’t work against it. A lot of the stuff that I’ve been doing is actually beneficial to fighting a Sambo wrestler.
“On the striking end, I feel like I should have the advantage. I don’t feel like his striking is very conducive to his style of wrestling. I feel like he’s either striking, or he’s wrestling, which is good for me. And so that’s how I feel like the fight is gonna play out, kind of like the Josh Hill fight. I feel like he’s going to figure out soon that I’m not as easy to get in on or I’m not as easy to take down, and, coming into this, I hope that he thinks he’s gonna run me over or he’s going to gas me out or pressure me to death. I’m excited because I hope that if that happens, it’s going to be a short night for him. If he runs, and if I’m the bully like I usually am in fights, then he’ll last longer but I’ll get the W.”
Bellator 264 takes place on Aug. 13, 2021, live from the Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT. Follow along with FanSided for all your live news and highlights.
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