Long Beach, CA — Patricio Pitbull did what Patricio Pitbull does at Bellator 286 on Saturday, turning back another contender in young upstart Adam Borics.
After a five-round decision win by the Brazilian, Bellator CEO Scott Coker reflected on what’s to come for the promotion’s longest-serving star.
“He’s amazing. He was making it happen before even I got here,” Coker told Cageside Press during Saturday’s Bellator 286 post-fight press conference. “He’s been part of the building of this company; he’s put on so many great fights over his career.”
“He’s got a lot of great fights ahead of him. He says he wants to go down to 35 and fight the bantamweight champ. Let’s see if that’s a reality, I know A.J. [McKee] wants to fight him again,” Coker later added. “There’s a lot of great fights for Pitbull.”
On the horizon as well is the promotion’s lightweight grand prix, which is expected to commence sometime in 2023. Names like Patricky Pitbull, Usman Nurmagomedov, and Benson Henderson are expected to take part.
“We have an amazing lightweight division now, and you forgot to mention [Tofiq] Musayev as well, that guy’s a killer. So we start looking at our fights for next year, our match-ups, I think we’ve got some great fights coming up. I think that started with Dublin last week,” Coker stated on that front. “That was such an amazing event, if you guys have never been to a fight in Dublin, it is really something special. The fight with Yoel Romero and Melvin Manhoef, that was special, I think Benson Henderson looked like he was 25-years old again.”
“And so when I started talking to our name internally, we said ‘look, we think the lightweight division makes the most sense.’ Because of the names you just talked about, with Patricky and Usman, which they’re fighting by the way as you know, on the 18th of November, but whoever wins, they’ll go into the tournament as the champion. It’ll be a year long event again, and whoever wins the end of the tournament takes home the million dollar bonus check, and will because the world champion,” Coker continued. “To me there’s a lot riding on the line, and I think we have a division that we’re going to put together a lot of interesting match-ups, and just some amazing fights.”
One of Coker’s other stars, Aaron Pico, had a rough night at the office on Saturday. Pico appeared to dislocate his shoulder and possibly break his clavicle during his featherweight fight with Jeremy Kennedy (Coker later provided an update, stating the shoulder was not broken). That’s a fight that Coker would put together again, but it will all come down to timing.
“Oh yeah, I’d like to run that one back for sure. I’m sure Aaron would too. But let’s see how far— this puts Jeremy in a different position now, now he can advance and move forward. So let’s see when he’s ready; he might be ready way before Aaron’s ready. Timing’s going to be an issue, but we’re going to give him an opportunity to move forward and fight tougher guys. And Aaron’s going to have to go back to the drawing board and get healthy, and then we’ll have him back.”
Watch the full Bellator 286 post-fight press conference with Scott Coker above.
