Raufeon Stots fought and then he sang.
After the split decision was read on Friday night and Stots was declared the winner of a Bellator 289 main event that had a fiery leadup littered with trash talk, Danny Sabatello stormed out of the cage, whereupon Stots grabbed his interviewer’s microphone and led the crowd in song: “Nah nah nah nah! Nah nah nah nah! Hey, hey, hey! Goodbye!”
Stots added an expletive to the end of the gloating sendoff to an opponent who had just failed — but come close — to wrest away his interim bantamweight championship in a fight that also served as a semifinal in the Bellator Bantamweight World Grand Prix.
Earlier during the card at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, Patchy Mix had earned the other spot in the final. Stots and Mix will face off for the tournament’s $1 million prize and a shot at champion Sergio Pettis, who is recovering from a knee injury.
Stots earned his way by landing twice as many strikes as Sabatello, bloodying him and fending off 15 of his 19 takedown attempts. Sabatello was relentless with those shots, and when he did get the fight to the canvas, he maintained control for long stretches. But he did practically no damage to Stots and had to fend off submission attempts by the champ.
Two judges scored the bout for Stots (19-1), three rounds to two. The other judge dissented in a big way, giving all five rounds to Sabatello (13-2).
“He didn’t do no damage,” said Stots, who won his 11th fight in a row and ended Sabatello’s seven-fight winning streak. “I was walking him down the whole time, I had his face bloodied. I got blood all in that highlighted hair. And we’re moving on to the final, baby!”
Mix (17-1) earned his spot in the final by choking Magomed Magomedov (19-3) unconscious with a guillotine at 2:39 of the second round, becoming the first to finish the Dagestani.
Bellator 289 also featured another title fight, in which women’s flyweight champion Liz Carmouche successfully defended her belt with a dominant second-round submission win over former champ Juliana Velasquez. Carmouche had won the title in April with a fourth-round TKO of Velasquez.
Velasquez was looking to avenge what she insisted was an unjust loss in the first fight. Her claims that the earlier fight was stopped prematurely had cast a pall over the reign of Carmouche (18-7). But when Velasquez (12-2) tapped out on Friday at 4:24 of the second and got up holding her elbow, there was no questioning a Carmouche win this time.
“She tapped and it popped,” Carmouche said, “so there’s no doubt anywhere.”