Bellator champion, Patricio Pitbull Freire is certain that there will be no cross-promotion event with the UFC.
The final Bellator event of the year is set to be a historic one. On December 31, four Bellator fighters will be headed to Japan to take on four Rizin fighters in a cross-promotional event being called Bellator MMA vs. Rizin FF. This special event will see current and former Bellator champions taking on some of Rizin’s finest stars. The event will broaden the spectrum of MMA fans and allow a peek into the conversation of which promotion is better.
Within MMA, there is an ongoing conversation about which promotion can be called the best. In many people’s eyes, the UFC holds the best fighters in the world, but over recent years the movement away from the UFC to other promotions such as PFL, Balletor, and ONE Championship has increased.
A great way to settle these kinds of conversations would be to have fighters from different promotions face each other exactly as they are doing in this Bellator MMA vs. Rizin FF card.
Patricio Pitbull knows Dana White would never hold a cross-promotional card
The four fighters who will be involved in this end-of-the-year event from Bellator are, featherweight champion Patricio Pitbull, AJ McKee, Juan Archuleta, and Kyoji Horiguchi. Pitbull likes the idea of the cross-promotion and feels that Bellator should do more shows like this. In an exclusive interview with Middle Easy, he said he would be open to doing so with PFL but thinks the UFC will never.
“Everyone knows that Dana White doesn’t have balls to make a challenger of Bellator against UFC,” he said. “I don’t think that is part of the game.”
Pitbull has been vocal about wanting to hold a Bellator vs. UFC event. He has called out several UFC fighters before and continues to claim that he can beat any man in his division within the UFC. The UFC has a strong following and does not need to hold this type of event to make money. They are competitors of Bellator and would not really make sense to put their fighters at risk of losing in this way.
