Bellator returns to Dublin but Irish disappointment is the order of the night

Published date08 November 2021
No dispute about the outcomes or the event, an energetic, high octane and good natured atmosphere in the 3Arena. But as so often as is hoped for in a world championship bout with an Irish lead man, the ending with a title going to Brazil is not what the fans had come to see.

It was all so perfect with the loud blasting of the fighter's anthems, the light show and the choreographed walks to the ring, right down to the girls holding up wooden signs with a picture of a mask above the word 'Please'.

As they were almost the only ones wearing masks, you couldn't see the expressions of disappointment. The guess is they were similar to those in the arena, when Showstopper was stopped and Strabanimal was tamed. It was far from a celebration night for the Irish.

MMA might not be everyone's bag. But for almost 10,000 raucous, fans, most of them under 30-years-old, they had hoped Peter 'Showstopper' Queally might follow his training partner Conor McGregor and become only the second Irish MMA world champion and the first under the Bellator banner.

But the blocky, hard-punching Patricky 'Pitbull' Fieire, who Queally had beaten last time out, was on the night indestructible and drew the fire from a Dublin crowd that began to get in the mood hours earlier when James 'Strabanimal' Gallagher paraded around the ring three fights before his scheduled meeting with American, Patchy Mix.

University bar

In case they had forgotten, Strabanimal made a loop of the ring to whip up support before the last of the preliminary bouts involving Ireland's Ciarán Clarke against England's Jordan Barton.

Clarke, goateed and looking like he had just fallen out of a university bar, against the Johnny Commando figure of Barton, whose proportioned physique had him set like he'd been assembled from a box in the back of the arena.

As the fight progressed and Clarke's blood began to give Barton's white shorts a pink rinse, for two rounds it seemed doomed. Bravely sticking with it, Clarke took the fight to the third and the two went to ground. A tangle of bodies later and it is stunned Barton, in a rear naked choke, tapping to submission. It prompted a frustrated London voice from behind to call it as he saw it.

"Flat down in two rounds, only in f****ng Dublin."

A few fights later and The Soldier's Song is pumping out with the cocky Strabanimal swaying down a corridor towards the ring. The Tyrone bantamweight who left school at 15 telling his parents he couldn't "sit in a classroom full of negative...

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