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Bellator Featherweight Champion Patricio Pitbull will challenge Bellator Bantamweight Champion Sergio Pettis for the gold in the co-main event of Bellator 297.
Pitbull, who is also a former Bellator Lightweight Champion, believes that he will be talked about as one of MMA’s greatest if he becomes a champion in a third division.
“I stopped thinking about that a long time ago,” Pitbull said on a recent episode of MMA Fighting’s Trocação Franca podcast. “I have a lot of submissions, I have a lot of knockouts, I’ve been fighting overseas since 2010, and I was never the ‘Submission of the Year,’ I was never the ‘Knockout of the Year,’ the ‘Athlete of the Year.’ I think media has been ignoring me a bit, but my results don’t depend on what the media thinks.
“Some people might think I’m upset with that, that I’m not being valued, but I have an organization that values me, that does everything it can. An excellent platform. [Bellator] has plans to come to Brazil now and they definitely will. I do it for my legacy. Maybe global sports media still doesn’t recognize me after I win this title, but it will be hard to explain in the history of the sport how that guy won three belts in different divisions and you didn’t see, you didn’t notice. It will be on them. I’m not worried.”
The fighter has been a part of the Bellator roster for over a decade now and has picked up 23 wins in the promotion.
One thing Pitbull does believe is that some fans downplay his and other fighters accomplishments if they happen outside of the UFC.
“I don’t understand the resistance against the great fighters we have in Bellator, but it’s getting hard to hide it,” Pitbull said. “It’s hard to hide Fedor [Emelianenko], who ended his career in Bellator. It’s hard to hide Cris Cyborg, the greatest of all-time — there’s Amanda Nunes, I have a ton of respect for her, she’s my friend, double champion and beat Cris, but the career as a whole, Cris was the greatest. I’m making some noise too with the numbers and records and belts — maybe another one — so it’s hard to tell the story [of MMA] without talking about us.”
