Lorenz Larkin is just coming up on his first championship, it’ll be against Douglas Lima and it’s guaranteed to be an interesting fight, Larkin, who recently transferred form the UFC to Bellator MMA, speaks on how much MORE he is preferring Bellator’s promotion and treatment of him in comparison to the UFC.
“I have no complaints (about Bellator),” Larkin says. “I feel like I probably got promoted out of this card more than my whole career with (the UFC). It’s kind of bittersweet, but it’s a great position I’m at right now, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world right now.”
On the UFC VS. Bellator, promotion-wise and how Bellator’s is, in his opinion, better…
“It just allows me to be myself,” Larkin said. “It allows me to wear what I want to wear. It allows me to be me. I’m not up here wearing a private school uniform. So, I can’t complain.”
“A lot of the guys I’ve fought are strikers,” Larkin said. “He’s a great fighter, but there’s nothing in his repertoire that I’ve not seen before or strikes me as something I really, really need to train for. I felt like I’ve seen it before at one weight class or another. There’s nothing that’s surprised me. If anything, my style is going to frustrate him. From the fights I’ve seen, he’s never fought a guy like me.”
Rory MacDonald another UFC free agent who recently signed with Bellator had a nice little second round submission of Paul Daley earlier, Lorenz and Rory have the chance of fighting it out in the near future and here’s what Larkin had to say about his possible rival’s performance.
“His performance was good, but his opponent’s performance was horrible,” Larkin said. “So I can’t really judge his performance. Yeah, he went in there and killed the dude, but I didn’t even feel like the guy was training. It didn’t look like he was trying or anything like that. I can’t judge that. The guy didn’t fight back to me. But when I hear things, and they talk about Lima and his thoughts on Rory, just keep them coming. It’s just going to feel that much better when they start asking me after the fight.”
“I’m not going to lie – I was a little worried in the beginning, because I was like, ‘Dang, I’ve never done five (five-minute rounds),” Larkin he said when asked about the looming menace of the longer championship fights. “I was like, ugh.”
Rory MacDonald referred to Larkin’s fight with Lima as a “Pick ’em” between the UFC and Bellator MMA, Lorenz Larkin representing the UFC and Douglas Lima obviously being the longtime Bellator fighter and Bellator champ.
“Hell no, man,” he said. “This is Bellator vs. Bellator. That’s a chapter in my life that’s gone, and now I’m all Bellator.”
“When I do my rounds, I’m doing them as hard as I can,” Larkin said. “I’m trying to treat my fifth round like my first round.”
“There’s been times where I’m like, ‘Damn, I can go more,’” Larkin said. “There’s been times I’ve had to kick myself in the ass and go, ‘Dude, you can push much harder, because you can go more.’”
Thankfully, while in training they’ve been doing things to prepare for those five rounds and, it seems that Larkin has gotten over his fears and conquered some of his uncertainties.
“I was like, ‘OK, it’s not as bad as I thought,’” he said.