Bellator light heavyweight Alex Polizzi is happy to get back in the cage at Bellator 297 this Friday, especially being just 90 minutes away from home.
That said, he does admit he’s tried to distance himself a little bit from those asking for tickets, saying during Tuesday’s media day that “I’m hoping that some people make it down. And if they don’t make it live, they’re at least enjoying their time after working and maybe taking in a little violence after.”
Polizzi (10-2) is paired up with Karl Moore at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago, returning from a broken jaw suffered at the hands of Yoel Romero.
“I know Karl Moore is a well-decorated Bellator athlete, but outside of that, I don’t really know a whole lot. I’m here to fight my fight, and like a lot of times, my fight is going to be ugly and kind of wild and pretty violent. Just hang on to the edge of your seat, because it’s going to be a fun one.”
Polizzi, who recently made the move to Las Vegas, joining Xtreme Couture, did admit that he would have enjoyed fighting on Bellator’s recent trip to Hawaii.
“I will say I’m a little disappointed not to fight in Honolulu, but it could have been worse, we could have been in Chicago in December.”
As far as the injury, the time off allowed Polizzi go to back to the drawing board, shape up his game, and work on the mental side of things.
“Six months off after the broken jaw, so we really took a step back to the drawing board, and worked a lot of pad work, mitt work. But also a little bit earlier when I was unable to work out at all, I made sure to get what was going on in my head right,” explained Polizzi. “I saw a performance coach, a mental performance coach who was able to go through some techniques about how to not only get ready, get my mind right to get back into things, but tools going forward to work on the mental side of things as well.”
“I think that’s been really super important and something that I hadn’t really put a lot of time into before.” It’s something, he added, “that before this injury, this broken jaw, that maybe I wouldn’t have done before.”
Watch the full Bellator 297 media day appearance by Alex Polizzi above.
