Featherweight Mads Burnell was not thrown by his fight with Saul Rogers being pushed back.
The former Cage Warriors champ and UFC fighter was supposed to face Rogers earlier this month at Bellator 255. However, that was bumped back to this Friday’s Bellator 257, reportedly due to visa issues Rogers was experiencing.
It didn’t bother Burnell, who was already in the U.S. “Not at all,” he said during this week’s Bellator 257 virtual media day. “When I got the call and they said it was a little postponed, it’s like ‘I’m out here anyway.’ Two weeks here, three weeks there, it’s fine. I’m in shape. It was fine with me.”
Burnell (14-3) isn’t trying to predict how the fight will play out. “I don’t think about that. I just think about what I can control, and what I need to do to perform to the best of my ability,” he stated. “And when I do that, it’s going to be a fun night.”
There’s a reason for that, he added. “If you expect or predict anything when you go into a fight, you’re stupid. Because everything can happen in a fight,” he exclaimed. “He can be running the show for like ten minutes, and I swing one time and boom, he’s down. And the other way around. I just go in there and do me, and that’s it. Whatever happens happens.”
Burnell was a little taken aback at the lack of a ranking for Rogers, however. “He’s not ranked as far as I know, which is a little shocking to me,” he told Cageside Press. Still, he’s not too concerned with where a win might leave him. “I don’t think about that. I have this man in front of me right now, and that’s what I’m focusing on. Then everything will come by itself afterwards.”
Mads Burnell fights Saul Rogers this Friday, April 16 at Bellator 257. The main card airs live on Showtime (and right here on Cageside Press for Canadian viewers) following online prelims.
