Rory MacDonald isn’t surprised that he’s going head-to-head with Paul Daley.
“Red King” is set to meet “Semtex” at Bellator 179 inside the SSE Arena, Wembley in London, England. The card will air on Spike on May 19. There’s been no word on if the event will air live or via tape-delay.
MacDonald was in attendance for last night’s (Feb. 24) Bellator 173 event in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight title contender witnessed Liam McGeary earn a dominant TKO victory over Brett McDermott.
Once the event concluded, MacDonald spoke to the media (via SevereMMA.com). “Red King” said his fight with Daley was inevitable:
“Yeah absolutely. I’ve been watching Paul for many years now and (it’s a) same weight class kind of thing. So, I figured definitely we’d be meeting sooner or later. Absolutely this is a title contender fight.”
MacDonald had his nose badly damaged in his title fight against Robbie Lawler. Not only did MacDonald damage the nose even further in training, but he also had the nose injured against Stephen Thompson. “Red King” talked about having to take time off to heal his nose:
“I’ve been pretty miserable with it to be honest. It was a hard couple of years actually. I had taken some time off after the Lawler fight and I damaged it in training. I took a fight trying to get back in there and got hurt again. So this year I had to take actual time off even from training, so it was a bit miserable for me.”
