A Spaniard Seeking MMA Gold
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Following his impressive knockout win over Eduardo Dantas at Bellator 222, Juan Archuleta seemed on a collision course with new bantamweight champion Kyoji Horiguchi. However, the two-division threat did not get matched up with the Japanese star for his title. Instead, he finds himself competing for a different kind of gold on Sept. 28 at Bellator 228. Patricio Freire’s featherweight gold.
“I told [Bellator], my next fight’s a title fight. I don’t care what weight class it is,” Archuleta told Sherdog. “I would like it to be at 135. I just took out the [former] ’35-pound champion. It makes sense for me to fight at ’35, and I was really pushing it. Kyoji and his team straight turned it down. They just said no. The ‘Pitbull’ fight was next. [Bellator] said, ‘since Kyoji doesn’t want the fight, we want to get you in the tournament.’ I said, ‘I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s a title fight.’ They said it was done because no one wanted to fight him. A lot of people were like, we wanted ‘Pitbull.’ OK, all I did was pick up the phone and ask, and they said yes.”
In this exclusive video interview with Sherdog, Archuleta talked about the victory that earned him a title opportunity, the striking “illusions” that set up the destructive finish and learning the methods of striking coach Duane Ludwig.
