Cal Ellenor has accused Bellator Dublin opponent James Gallagher of lacking the heart to stand toe-to-toe with him inside the cage.
Bantamweight rivals Gallagher and Ellenor headline the Dublin show on 27 September with the Tyrone native looking to extend his professional career to 10-1 on home soil.
Ellenor meanwhile secured a hugely impressive victory over London prospect Nathan Greyson last time out and now walks into the lion’s den to stop another of Bellator’s brightest prospects.
22-year-old Gallagher is widely known for his confident, sometimes brash, personality inside and outside the cage – a persona Ellenor insists is all a façade he intends to expose.
“Everything he does, it is all just to reassure himself,” Ellenor told Standard Sport. “He’s got loads of insecurities and I feel he is just trying to convince himself. I’m enjoying the process and seeing the back and forth play out.”
“It’s all fake. He’s trying to be someone he is not.
“His heart is his weakness. I just don’t think he has a genuine, fighter’s heart. I feel when things get tough he doesn’t want to be involved in it. He’s mentally weak.
“That’s why I have the edge, I’m tough, durable and he’s not used to it. If it is not going his way you can see chinks in his armour. I just don’t feel he is truly committed, mentally. He’s weak minded.”
Ellenor hopes silencing Gallagher on his own turf where he is also undefeated will earn him the respect he doesn’t feel he truly received after his last victory.
At Bellator Newcastle in February, the Sunderland fighter took on the highly-rated Greyson, an undefeated Cage Warriors champion backed for big things with the promotion. Ellenor was given a nasty cut above the eye early on in their content but recovered brilliantly to seal a first round submission win over the Londoner.
Despite the victory, the 28-year-old was left frustrated with the fallout – with Bellator’s official website even listing him as the loser in that meeting with Greyson until only a few weeks ago.
“I feel it was massively swept under the rug,” he said of that win. “It was a really dangerous fight to take, a super tough fight that I think went under the radar. If it had been the other way around I feel they would have promoted him [Greyson] like crazy.”
Stopping Gallagher in his tracks would certainly wake people up. While Bellator’s European series is a huge step in the right direction, Ellenor believes the promotion must do more to build European-based stars and look beyond those coming out of John Kavanagh’s Straight Blast Gym – the place where Conor McGregor honed his skills and where Gallagher currently learns and develops his craft.
“If I win this one, they have no excuse not to get behind me,” Ellenor continued. “There aren’t enough real stars on the Bellator Europe scene, they need to try and promote new names and create fun fights and get people buzzing about other people for once. It always seems to be the same SBG fighters – that’s cool, build that up, but you have to get behind other people too or people are going to start losing interest.”
Ellenor hopes to not only boost his profile but to boost the profile of mixed martial arts in the north east of England. With UFC star Darren Till the face of the sport in Liverpool and with Leon and Fabian Edwards doing likewise with Birmingham, the bantamweight hopes to have the same effect in his hometown.
“I’d like to smash James and build a name for myself. I’d love to be a kind of pioneer for the north east, not a lot of people get great opportunities from where I am from and I want to show there are routes to becoming a star. There is so much talent in the north east it is crazy. This fight is a step in the right direction in doing that.”
Tickets for Bellator Dublin are on sale now through Ticketmaster.ie and Bellator.com, as well as the 3Arena box office
