Douglas Lima is on top of the world right now, and thinks he can beat any welterweight out there.
Lima (32-7 MMA, 14-3 BMMA) won Bellator’s 170-pound grand prix, a $1 million dollar tournament bonus prize, and regained the welterweight title by avenging a loss to Rory MacDonald at Bellator 232 this past Saturday.
Now Lima wants to see Bellator co-promote with the UFC so he can prove that he can compete with the top 170 pounders in the world.
“It’s not the name ‘UFC,’ or ‘Bellator,’ or ‘ONE FC’ – there’s killers everywhere, and I’ve been fighting all these guys. I’ve been beating them,” Lima told TMZ Sports. “(I’m a) three-time world champion, three tournament (wins), but they still don’t believe me. Now that (Bellator president) Scott Coker is doing the co-promotions – he’s doing that with Rizin – I would love if we would do that with the UFC.”
The UFC’s welterweight champ is Kamaru Usman, who hasn’t lost in more than six years. But Lima is confident that if they fought, he’d take him out.
“Of course I’ll do great – I’ll beat him,” Lima said. “I’ll probably KO him, you know. But he’s a great wrestler, for sure. He wrestles a lot. But man, any point in that fight if I connect, I can put him away. I don’t even think about that. I just know that I can beat him. I know I can beat anybody at this weight class. I’m not talking bad about the guy. He’s the champion there. He’s doing his thing. But I just know it, man – if one day something like this happened, I definitely believe in myself to just go over there and just kill it.”
Lima, long considered one of the sport’s underrated fighters, hates the narrative that the best fighters in the world are in the UFC. He believes he’s been competing with the best welterweights in the world throughout his entire career.
“I think about it every time, especially after a win like this, because I know real MMA fans, they recognize,” Lima said. “They know I’m up there with those guys. They know I can fight any of them. But most of them are like, ‘Man, you’re not in the UFC, you’re a nobody, and I hate that. That’s people that don’t understand the sport.”
Douglas Lima wants Bellator to co-promote with UFC, thinks he'd beat fellow champ Kamaru Usman
