Mandel Nallo picked up arguably the biggest win of his professional MMA career with a knockout victory over Carrington Banks at Bellator 207.
While Nallo is going to be remembered for the highlight reel finish in the second round, some problems in the first round are what the fighter is trying to improve from.
“I think it went…so part of the game plan…because Carrington, he’s a great…he’s an amazing fighter. He was three and one in Bellator before our fight, one thing we noticed is that he does tend to have a better first round. Then his subsequent rounds tend to be worse, we knew round one was lose-able and I made a bit of a tactical error in squeezing an anaconda choke that wasn’t in fully. So I decided at the end of round one to take a bit of a break and I spent too much time on the bottom, but I think the round went fine…outside of being on the bottom, I didn’t take any kind of damage. I defended the first takedown and initiated the second takedown and completed it, then we got into wrestling after me throwing the anaconda choke and missing it. Then me deciding…alright I’m not gonna…I’m gonna spend some time getting my arms back, round two was a minute long,” says Nallo in an exclusive interview with Fightful’s James Lynch.
Nallo now has two wins under the Bellator MMA banner, with the other coming over Alec Williams at Bellator 189.
If there is one goal that Nallo wants to accomplish, it would be to fine a balance between fighting multiple times a year and properly training.
“Especially pre-Bellator, it was very, very difficult. Another thing is we think that there’s a lot of value in training, you can fight six time sin a year...but how much did you really get any better? Then if you win four of those six fights, are you technically skilled enough to challenge the people that you got to the level of with those fights? You wanna be over prepared for your next match up, so I would like to fighter sooner. I would like to fight far more than once a year, but I don’t want to fight a ridiculous amount of times in a year. I think getting better is the main goal and I want to be the best fighter, I don’t wanna be the guy who fights the most in a year. I think its somewhat of a fine line,” says Nallo.
Bellator MMA has yet to announce where or whom Nallo could fight next, but Nallo hasn’t competed twice in the same year since 2014.
