When Lorenz Larkin left the UFC for Bellator this summer, he was curious in exploring how things would change for him as a fighter
Larkin landed a title shot against welterweight champion Douglas Lima in June in his first fight but was beaten by way of unanimous decision on the night.
The 31-year-old has a chance to take his first win under the promotion’s banner when he faces off against England’s Paul Daley at Bellator 183 this weekend, however. Despite preparing for just his second bout with the UFC’s biggest rival, Larkin is already noticing big changes (via MMAFighting):
“Shoot, in my last fight, I probably got promoted more in that fight than in my whole UFC career,” Larkin told MMA Fighting ahead of this weekend’s Bellator 183 event, where he faces British powerhouse, Paul Daley. “It’s just one of those things where we’re taking advantage of it, and I’m just like, I’m here to work. Put me to work. You want me to do media? I’m down for it, but I just never got the chance in UFC.”
Another contributing factor to how Larkin sees the Bellator model trumping that of the UFC’s is the relationship he enjoys with Scott Coker, the Californian-based promotion’s President. Freedom, however, is at the core of his happiness right now:
“The big difference for me is that I’m able to hit up Scott,” Larkin said. “And don’t get me wrong, there’s probably people in the UFC who are able to hit up Dana, and just hit him up on any type of call and really talk about stuff, like about what they need. But with Scott, I can just give him a call on the phone and there will be an answer. Or if not that, it’ll be a callback in like 20 minutes and I can talk to him about anything, about the fight, it’s not even an issue.
“There’s probably a handful of guys in the UFC that can do that, but with me, that wasn’t the situation. But it is what it is, and [I was] in a position where I couldn’t do all of that and I couldn’t talk business with my boss.
“It’s just, it’s freedom,” Larkin added. “Everything is freedom. Me being able to pick out what I want to wear — it’s originality. I don’t have to just conform to what people want me to wear, to do. It’s just freedom of expression.
“One thing for fighters, especially people that are in this industry, we’re in there for 15 minutes and you want to be as comfortable as you can, and this is a big way of feeling comfortable. We get to pick out what we’re going to wear, we get to choose what’s on our shorts, our walkout. It’s a great feeling.”
