When Michael Chandler's hand was raised following the main event of this past Saturday's Bellator 44 event, the newly-crowned season-four lightweight tourney winner felt relieved.
Finally, he could say what he'd been wanting to let the world know since his promotional debut in September 2010: Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez (22-2 MMA, 6-0 BFC) is a wanted man.
"I've been thinking about Eddie since I came to Bellator," Chandler (8-0 MMA, 5-0 BFC) today told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). "It's been in my mind knowing that that's the light at the end of the tunnel.
"That was the light at the end of this road that I was going to be on. Now when people ask me about him, I can say, 'Yes, I have been thinking about Eddie."
Chandler's impressive run through this season's 155-pound tourney began with a submission win over grappling ace Marcin Held, continued with a gritty decision over Lloyd Woodard and wrapped up with an impressive display of striking against knockout artist Patricky "Pitbull" Freire.
While most MMA pundits expected Chandler, a former All-American wrestler at Missouri, to rely on his grappling base in the final, the fighter instead utilized a much-improved striking attack to keep Freire off-balance. The Xtreme Couture product credits boxing coach Gil Martinez for turning him from wrestler to mixed martial artist.
"My hat's off to Gil Martinez," Chandler said. "We worked on this stuff. We worked on footwork. We worked on getting in and out. We worked on keeping my jab long, my hooks long, stay away from his power and get in and out. It was a perfect gameplan. I went right out there and hit him with a couple of jabs right away, right off the bat, and I think it kind of threw him off a little bit.
Source: MMAJunkie.com
