Gegard Mousasi has big plans ahead of his return.
Mousasi (46-7-2 MMA, 4-1 BMMA) was scheduled to face Douglas Lima for the vacant middleweight title at Bellator 242 on May 9 before the coronavirus outbreak postponed the event.
Now with some time to reflect, Mousasi has laid out his remaining career goals, which include reclaiming the 185-pound title, then moving up to challenge Bellator light heavyweight champion Ryan Bader.
“Three things I want to do,” Mousasi told MMA Junkie. “One is to fight in my home country of Holland and fight in front of my home crowd. Second, maybe Douglas Lima. I beat him, I get the title. And then Ryan Bader (at) light heavyweight. That’s the things that I still want to do. If I can achieve those three things, those are still things I want to get done.”
Mousasi explained that he had planned to stay active through 2020 before the COVID-19 outbreak put his, and the rest of the MMA world’s, plans on hold.
“I wanted to keep busy, I wanted to fight three times this year,” he said. “So I was thinking two times in U.S., or one time in Europe, and once in Japan on New Year’s Eve – maybe for a belt or whatever. So I had those thoughts, but now everything is on hold, so I just have to wait. But I definitely wanted to keep busy and do the things I wanted to do. Fight for the belt, light heavyweight, in Holland, in Japan, they were all in my plans, actually.”
One of his goals may have come to fruition this summer, as he revealed Bellator was planning its first event on Dutch soil before the global pandemic struck and put a halt on the process. But he sounded confident that Bellator would be hosting events in his homeland in the not-too-distant future.
“They were working on it. Actually they were very close to it,” Mousasi said. “I was hearing April they could have had a show here, but the city of Amsterdam is a little bit difficult with permits for big organizations. But Bellator being a big organization, they’re almost getting the deal done – because usually (Amsterdam) don’t allow it with kickboxing, because kickboxing has a bad name here. But Bellator is close to getting the deal done.”
