Bellator MMA #3-ranked heavyweight Steve Mowry was alway keen on booking a rematch with Valentin Moldavsky, a rematch that finally arrives at Bellator 298 in Sioux Falls, SD this Friday.
It just took a little longer than expected to get to this point.
“The way it had been indicated to me after the fight is that Bellator wanted to book it right away too,” Mowry (10-0-1, 1NC) told Cageside Press in a recent exclusive interview. “It was just that whenever Fedor had announced that he was going to take one more ride at Ryan Bader, they wanted to make that happen, so it kind of got shuffled out of the mix as it were.”
Mowry and Moldavsky first met a year ago, almost to the day of their rematch. The fight had barely gotten started when an eye poke left Mowry unable to continue; the end result was an unfortunate No Contest. With Fedor Emelianenko opting to face Ryan Bader for his retirement fight, however, teammate Moldavsky was bumped up to a title eliminator with Linton Vassell.
Now, a year after their first encounter, Mowry and Moldavsky get a chance for a do-over.
“It was really important to me,” admitted Mowry. “Valentin Moldavsky is somebody I really respect as a competitor. I really respect him as a fighter. That said, it would really mean a lot to me to have a victory over someone like him.”
In the interim, while Moldavsky lost his fight with Vassell, Mowry fought to a draw with former PFL heavyweight champion Ali Isaev. In terms of what he took away from that fight, it was “definitely a big learning experience in terms of, just some things in-competition that I really should have addressed,” said Mowry. “Some things about my competitive attitude, my competitive approach that I needed to fix, I needed to shore up.”
Mowry added, however that “on a positive side, it really kind of reminded me that I am one of the best in the world, I belong in there with the best. Ali Isaev, while somewhat kind of lacking in MMA experience, is an experienced competitor as a wrestler, and was able to accomplish a lot in a very short amount of time in a different promotion, becoming a world champion.”
The fight being a draw, “it’s not really fair to say I did well, or I did poorly,” continued Mowry, though he sees examples of both. “But that said, I really feel like I belong in there with the best, I belong in there with the best fighters in the planet. I’m one of the best fighters on the planet, and I’m here to stay.”
Given Vassell has the next title shot, Mowry vs. Moldavsky 2 has all the markings of a title eliminator. But Mowry himself isn’t putting too much credence in that.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. Because, just to give you some perspective, I think Linton had been guaranteed the title shot before the Moldavsky fight, and then whenever Fedor came back, they kind of shuffled their cards again.” With that in mind, “I’m not looking at it as anything other than an opportunity to go in there and put my full skill set on display.”
Of course, with Bellator MMA reportedly up for sale, there’s the possibility that a title shot might never come, if the promotion is bought out and absorbed. “I don’t know. It’s one of those things, like, there’s just so much conjecture in the picture that if I were to sit here and think about any one thing, I’d have to think of a million things. So it’s like, it’s definitely occurred to me that there is going to be a little bit of a shake-up here no matter what, but that said it really doesn’t change my perspective on the immediate future, which is to handle business here in a week.”
This week, it’s Valentin Moldavsky. Last week, it was whistle-blowers testifying before congress about UFOs and alien bodies. Straight out of The X-Files, a show Mowry watched as a kid, and revisted a few years back. Since we spoke to him about that a couple of years ago, we wanted to get his thoughts on the recent congressional hearings.
“If the government is going to finally cop to aliens, what is it that they really want us to not be paying attention to? Because the the general public has had a sneaking suspicion that aliens have been around for the better part of, we could probably comfortably say the better part of 60 years,” noted Mowry. “Everybody listening now probably imagines a nice tinfoil hat on my head. But not to get on my political soapbox, big but, but if they’re finally going to cop to something as big as aliens, I wonder what it is that they don’t want us to pay attention to?”
One thing you should pay attention to— Mowry’s fight with Moldavsky, that serves as the Bellator 298 co-main event in Sioux Falls, South Dakota this Friday night.
