Following Bellator 257, Mads Burnell is sitting pretty in Bellator’s featherweight division. Two fights into his tenure with the promotion, and the former UFC fighter has two wins, both finishes. The latest, on Friday night, came via rear-naked choke against Saul Rogers.
Overall, Burnell (15-3) has won his last six, and captured a Cage Warriors title in the process. That leaves him in a good spot in a 145lb weight class that Burnell agreed is “the strongest division in the promotion.”
When it comes to his immediate future in the division, “usually I don’t look at what I want to do next. I always try to focus on myself, how I can try to better myself, how I can control everything I can control and perform to the best of my ability. Boring answer, but correct answer,” said Burnell, speaking to media outlets including Cageside Press following the win.
But even having said that, the Danish fighter did call out Germany’s Daniel Weichel following the bout. Ideally, that fight would come in one of their home countries, but Burnell admitted that ultimately, “it’s up to Bellator. And as the situation is right now, there’s no way there’s going to be a fight in Germany or Denmark because of the COVID situation.” The dream, however, “would be, to fight, main event, at a Bellator card in Copenhagen in front of all my friends and family. Fill out an arena no doubt,” Burnell stated.
Maybe that’s not as far off as Burnell thinks. Following Bellator 257 on Friday, Bellator President Scott Coker revealed that the promotion’s Euro Series would resume in the fall, with Bellator potentially visiting a few nations it had yet to set foot in.
As to the fight with Rogers, “first of all, I thought, it was like fighting The Rock in a Fast and Furious movie, because that dude was strong as hell,” Burnell observed. “The plan was chip away to his body, chip away to his legs. I thought he would take a little more time to shoot in, only because I actually thought he had a little more respect for my ground game. But he shot in, and that was that.”
Watch the full Bellator 257 post-fight press conference with Mads Burnell above.
