On Friday night in the Bellator 195 main event, Leandro Higo fights for Bellator bantamweight gold in his third appearance under the Viacom-backed promotion. He squares off with champion Darrion Caldwell, who is set to defend his title for the first time after besting Eduardo Dantas last October.
Higo made his Bellator debut last April after very successful runs in RFA and, more recently, LFA. He fell to Dantas by close decision. It was supposed to be for Dantas’ 135-pound title, but Higo, who had stepped up on short notice, missed weight.
The Brazilian followed that loss up with a victory over Joe Taimanglo on the same night Caldwell captured the title. Higo is satisfied with his Bellator run thus far, but admitted his first two Bellator fights could have been a little more impressive — two wins are better than one.
“I’m happy with my run. It could be a bit better,” Higo told BloodyElbow.com. “That first title fight, it came in a turbulent time for me. But I don’t like to talk too much about it, because it’s in the past. What matters now is the present, which is me fighting for this title and having the change to get it.”
Higo was confident he’d get the next title shot — especially after initially being booked to fight for the belt in his Bellator debut — after beating Taimanglo. Caldwell’s win over Dantas gave Higo a clearer path to the belt, too, because he had never fought Caldwell. It was less likely Bellator would book a Dantas vs. Higo rematch so soon.
If he wasn’t given the title shot immediately after his first Bellator win, Higo expected to face former two-division champ Joe Warren instead.
“I knew [Bellator] would go after someone new (as Caldwell’s first challenger),” Higo said. “Caldwell had fought almost everybody, but I hadn’t. I thought that they would either put me against Joe Warren — and if I won that they would put me to the title — or they would put me straight to a title fight, and that is what happened.
“It was actually better for me, because it left the division wide open and got me closer to a title,” Higo said of Caldwell’s win over Dantas. “My fight against ‘DuDu,’ it left everything pretty much wide open. It wasn’t conclusive. I thought I won. Had I not missed weight, it would’ve been a five-round fight, and I’m pretty sure I would’ve beaten him over five rounds.”
He’s lost to Dantas, who’s lost to Caldwell. Going by MMA math — and the betting odds, which favor Caldwell — Caldwell should Higo. But we all know MMA math is the most flawed system in the world. Higo, 29, explained why.
“I don’t think it means anything, because every fight is a different style, a different person, and everybody deals with things differently,” he said. “I have a way to deal with a fighter’s reach, Dantas has another, and so on. Every fight has a different story and a different future; it depends on who’s fighting.”
Higo doesn’t feel extra pressure on himself going into Friday’s headliner, despite already having lost to a champion in Bellator before. If he loses to Caldwell, it will be awhile before getting another crack at gold. But Higo doesn’t think about those ideas.
“The fighter that thinks about stuff like that, he already goes into the cage defeated,” he said. “That’s not something that belongs to me. All I think about is the win.”
Higo could become a champion in a major organization in the midst of the “money” era. The era in which every champion in the book wants to fight another champion, or fight a boxer, or just not fight at all.
Higo said he plans to move to featherweight in the future, but not just because he wants to have the fame that comes along with being a two-division champion. Besides, his friend and teammate, Patricio Freire, currently reigns over the 145-pound division. Higo just wants to lessen his weight cut.
“Right now, I just got in the organization, so my focus is on building my legacy and establishing my name with all the fans and Bellator itself,” Higo said. “Then, after I’ve built said legacy, after I’ve defended my belt a few times, I’m gonna think about fighting other people in other weight classes. But money isn’t crossing my mind right now; I didn’t even see how much I was gonna make for this fight. I just signed [the contract].
“When I think about 145 (pounds), being a two-division champion would be nice, but I think about it in terms of health. I want to be in my 40s and still be fighting. I want to be an uncle who’s very fit and can beat people’s asses.”