The highly anticipated Bellator vs. PFL Champions Card is this weekend at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event features four championship fights in the heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight, and featherweight divisions.
Make no mistake, though, the majority of the hype on the card is surrounding the heavyweight tilt between Renan Ferreira (-120) and Ryan Bader (+100).
The excitement reached another level when it was announced Thursday that the winner of Bader vs. Ferreira will fight Francis Ngannou.
A belt-holder at the lightweight division, Bader brings to the octagon a Bellator-record 3-match win streak as a heavyweight. Over the course of his career, Ryan Bader (31-7) has 13 victories by knockout or technical knockout.
Ferreira (12-3) has an 83% finish rate as a professional fighter with 10 victories by knockout or technical knockout.
NBC Sports Fight Analyst Stephen DeAugustino sat down with Bader during the most recent edition of “Octagons, Circles, and Squares”. They covered a wide range of topics. Here is a taste of their conversation.
As previously noted, the sports books list Bader (6’2” 235lbs.) as the underdog to the much larger Ferriera (6’8” 261lbs.) but that is not how Ryan views the upcoming fight.
“He (Ferreira) is definitely a huge human, but I look at this fight and I look at his weaknesses, kind of glaring weaknesses, and they’re my absolute strengths. He’s not very good on the ground. He doesn’t get up. If he gets taken down, he’s usually down there that whole round. Then you take it one step further and you look at the guys he’s fighting. He’s not fighting D1 wrestlers that are 20-5 or anything like that...granted he’s a great fighter and he’s fighting tough guys over there, but I just feel like my resume, who I’ve fought…it’s not comparable.”
DeAugustino dove a little deeper into the fight plan and asked if he wanted to go upper body in the clinch or go with the single or double leg.
“I’m not a huge upper body guy. Just for me I think it’s kind of iffy especially with big guys like that. You can’t really get them on their toes…I’m going to do what I do…I’m very good at once you’re on the ground, you’re not getting back up. That’s my bread and butter…I’ve been doing that since I was seven years old…For me, that’s kind of home base. Once I get a fight down there it’s my world…I don’t have to think down there…I’ve been there a million times…I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing.”
Bader is so adept at taking guys down to the mat that he is able to occasionally catch his opponent cheating to protect against the takedown.
“A lot of my game is I come in and I level change and you don’t know if I’m coming in with a hook, a right hand, if I’m taking you down. Then they have it in the back of their head, ‘Hey, I can’t get taken down’. You do that level change, and they think you’re coming in for a shot they dropped their hands they dropped their body: you know center of gravity and all sudden a nasty hook is hitting you right in the face…That’s a big part of my game, keeping them guessing…keeping people off guard and never able to really set up themselves.”
No question Bader has a specific plan for the bout. The sweat for bettors backing Bader will be seeing if he can execute it against the much larger but less experienced Ferreira.
Enjoy the fights from Saudi Arabia and know each episode of “Octagons, Circles, and Squares” is talking with the biggest MMA, wrestling, and boxing newsmakers of the moment. Watch, like, and subscribe.
