After a career filled with ups and downs, Corey
Anderson is on the verge of taking home some championship
hardware if he can defeat Vadim
Nemkov at
Bellator 277 on Friday night.
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The bout will serve as the finals of the promotion’s light
heavyweight grand prix, and Anderson has been impressive thus far,
earning TKO wins over Ryan Bader
and Dovletdzhan
Yagshimuradov to make his way through the bracket. The man
known as “Overtime” has enjoyed a resurgence in Bellator after
suffering a first-round knockout loss to Jan
Blachowicz in his last UFC appearance, a defeat that removed
him from consideration for a potential title shot in the Las
Vegas-based promotion.
It’s not the first time Anderson has bounced back. He also lost
three of four UFC bouts from from 2016 to 2017 — including two via
KO. This time around, Anderson says a new mindset accompanied the
move to a new organization.
“It came full circle. I started off in this game young. A lot of
people doubted me,” Anderson said at a pre-fight press conference
on Monday. “I had ups and downs. A lot of those downs, people that
I was done — it was over. Such bad knockouts, Corey can never come
back. He’s washed up.
For me to come back and rekindle the career the way I have, [I had
to] just change my mindset, change my point of view in the fight
game, period. It was no longer the fight game, it was the fight
business. I became a businessman. I got hungry. I got serious.”
Anderson can pinpoint the moment where he changed his outlook, and
it came not long after his knockout loss to Blachowicz at UFC Fight
Night 167 in February 2020.
“I remember the exact moment like it was two seconds ago,” Anderson
said. “I remember after my last UFC fight I ended up having a fall
at home,” he said. “Something happened, I passed out, smacked my
face and then … I remember going to the hospital. Something that
happened previously from training and fighting and I didn’t take
the time to rest. I looked at my wife and my son, I remember
looking at her saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore…I’ve got to get
serious.’ This ain’t a game, this is a business.”
If Anderson can get past Nemkov, who has been impressive as the
Bellator 205-pound champ, he believes he’ll have a legitimate claim
to being the best light heavyweight in the world, regardless of
organization. After all, he owns a dominant victory over current
UFC champ Glover
Teixeira.
“You can say what you want to say. I beat the UFC champ handily on
two weeks notice,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t one scorecard that
went his way. … Boy, I milked him like a cow. It was the easiest
fight I have. I was taking him down left and right.
“If I go out there serious and do what I do, I’m
untouchable.”