After another monumental win over a former champion, Jason Jackson has a pretty good idea of what he wants next.
Jackson (16-4 MMA, 7-1 BMMA) dominated former welterweight champ Douglas Lima (32-11 MMA, 14-7 BMMA) and swept the scorecards with a trio of 50-45 tallies in the Bellator 283 main event Friday in Tacoma, Wash.
It was the sixth straight win for “The Ass-Kicking Machine,” and those victories have come against top-shelf opponents like former UFC champ Benson Henderson, jiu-jitsu standout Neiman Gracie, legendary knockout artist Paul Daley, and now Lima.
In return, Jackson said he deserves a Bellator title shot.
“If they come to me with a fight and it’s not the title, it better have a lot of money,” Jackson said after his win. “Right now, I want one thing, and that’s the title. I want to be a champion. I want to be the champ. I’m going to be the champ.
“When you’re this close, you’ve just got to keep going. Once the timing’s right, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. This is God’s plan.”
Jackson’s six straight wins all have been by unanimous decision. After four straight Bellator co-main event slots, he moved up to headliner status to take on Lima, who is on the worst slide of his career with four straight losses – all by decision.
When Lima held the welterweight title, he moved up to middleweight to challenge then-champ Gegard Mousasi in an attempt to hold two belts at once. He lost that bout in late 2020, then lost the 170-pound belt to Yaroslav Amosov in June 2021. Amosov, a native of Ukraine, has not yet defended the title. He pulled out of a scheduled title defense against Michael Page due to the country’s war with Russia.
With Page still presumably next in line, Jackson may have to wait his turn once Amosov is scheduled to come back – or hope for something like an interim title fight with Page if Amosov’s return doesn’t have a date in the near future.
But for now, Jackson just knew he had to beat Lima no matter what, or any title thoughts would be put on the back burner for a while.
“I just did what I had to and did the strategy that I knew I had to,” he said. “I didn’t want to risk it because at the level that we’re fighting at, anything could happen. I wanted to take him to deep waters and drown him, so I came prepared for five rounds. I could go 10, 20 (rounds) – it doesn’t matter. Ain’t no way 25 minutes was going to stop me.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 283.
