Sioux Falls, SD — For Canadian Aaron Jeffery, his trip to Sioux Falls paid off with a win over Dalton Rosta, which could set up the Niagara Top Team fighter for big things moving forward.
Perhaps even a title shot?
“Yeah, gimmie the belt,” Jeffery (14-4) said following the fight, speaking to media outlets including Cageside Press. “Why not?”
Next up for the title is Fabian Edwards, however. He fights Johnny Eblen for championship gold in Dublin, Ireland next month — beyond that, nothing is certain in Bellator at the moment, with the company reportedly up for sale.
As for Jeffery, during a gruelling three-round fight with hulking middleweight Dalton Rosta, things went according to plan. And any perceived frustration at the end of the fight wasn’t that, even with Rosta hanging on to takedown attempts that simply weren’t happening.
“It wasn’t even frustration. I don’t know. I knew he was f*cking done, and I had that position. I was kind of f*cking around a little bit, seeing what was going to happen. He just stayed down there, didn’t really give me a ton of sh*t to open up with,” explained Jeffery. “I maybe could have stood up and done something. At the end I stood up and threw the kicks to the body and whatever.”
“He was just done, it seemed like he quit down there and I was kind of just having fun.”
Jeffery, with a 3-1 start to his Bellator run, appears to have lived up to expectations, just not his own. Still, he hopes the promotion keeps giving him big spots.
“I hope so. I don’t think I’ve lived up to my own expectations yet. I think I can do a lot better than that still,” said Jeffery. “I think I’m maybe starting to find my groove here a little bit. I got a loss out of the way, you never want to lose but I think having that kind of behind me now, maybe there’s a little bit of pressure off too.”
“I think I’m only going up from here,” he added. Before worrying about title shots or anything else, however, first comes the celebration. Set to feature “30 beers and 20 slices of pizza,” joked Jeffery.
Watch the full Bellator 298 post-fight press conference with Aaron Jeffery above.
