Bellator Champ Douglas Lima Talks Paul Daley, Says “Semtex” is Still in His Sights
By Kelsey Mowatt
Douglas Lima may be focused on his upcoming scrap with Andrey Koreshkov, but that doesn’t mean the Bellator welterweight champ has forgotten about Paul Daley…
The two were scheduled to fight back on February 27th, in a bout that would mark Daley’s first Bellator appearance since 2012. Several weeks out from the bout, however, Lima went down with a knee injury and had to withdraw.
Daley went on to decision Andre Santos at Bellator 134, and the promotion proceeded to book Lima-Koreshkov for Bellator 139 on July 17th. But, before all that happened, Daley proceeded to question how serious Lima’s injury was, and whether the champ had in fact ducked the feared slugger.
“Super disappointed, just for the fact that you know, all the stuff that he was saying. Saying I backed out because I was scared of him and blah, blah, blah,” Lima relayed on a recent episode of Full Contact Fighter Radio. “Then he goes and fights, and then he says he doesn’t want to fight anymore.”
“I was very disappointed. He kind of turned his own words against him…I don’t know man. He just said he didn’t want to fight,” Lima said, while referring to comments Daley made on Facebook where he relayed he wanted “more cage time/another fight prior to our title clash”. The British vet also warned the champ, however, that his “beating will come.”
“He said he needed more experience, but for a guy who has over 70 fights altogether, needing more experience, that just didn’t make any sense for me,” Lima furthered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, but the fight is off. So, I’m just really hoping to fight him next, after Andrey.”
When Lima (26-5) steps into the cage on July 17th, it will mark the first time he’s fought since last April, when he stopped Rick Hawn.
Since then, the 27 year-old has been sidelined with injuries. Koreshkov (17-1), meanwhile, hasn’t fought since July, when he decisioned Adam McDonough.
“It was a knee injury,” said Lima, when asked about the injury which pulled him from Bellator 134. “I think it was like seven, or six weeks away from the fight I had to do another surgery and had to clean up some stuff there. There was no way I could fight.”
Bellator 140 will be hosted by the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The main card will be broadcast on SPIKE.