Los Angeles, CA – Georgi Karakhanyan knows that he has to lean on his cage experience against Kiefer Crosbie at Bellator 263.
“Just use my experience, you know, I’m a vet. This is my eighteenth fight with Bellator. I have over 40 professional fights. It’s up to me where I take the fight,” Karakhanyan said during Wednesday’s media day promoting the event.
Karakhanyan (30-11) has fought names like Myles Jury, A.J. McKee and Emmanuel Sanchez. He’ll rely on that experience to take on Crosbie who is heading into his 11th fight.
“It’s a perfect match-up, he has 10 fights total. I should be able to take this anywhere I want. Saturday night comes, I’m going to do that.”
Crosbie (8-2) is coming off a TKO loss vs Charlie Leary at Bellator Milan in October 2020. Karakhanyan admitted he has the upper hand in the ground game, but said he preferred to make it a stand up fight.
“That’s true, but I would like to keep it standing. He comes forward, I come forward. I think that fight with Charlie Leary was a great fight. The difference with me is if I smell him getting tired I’m for sure going for a kill. Me as a vet I’ve seen those so if I smell that, it’s over.”
In the middle of a pandemic Karakhanyan was able to fight with no crowds in the arena, but he’s eager to get in there with a full crowd. Still, he admits he’ll miss some of what having no fans brought to the fight.
“I guess the only thing I’ll miss is hearing my opponent’s coaches because that’s what I would do a lot. Whatever they would tell to my opponent, I would do to my opponent. But now with the crowd it might be a little hard. But it doesn’t matter it’s still the same mission. Whoever is in front of me I’m there to kill them.”
Watch the full Bellator 263 media day press scrum with Georgi Karakhanyan above. The event takes place this Saturday, July 31 at The Forum in Los Angeles. The main card airs on Showtime following online prelims right here on Cageside Press.
