Aaron Jeffery —who returns to motion towards John Salter at Bellator 293 tomorrow evening (Fri., March 30, 2023) — seems like combined martial arts (MMA) followers are the worst. Certainly, it’s a love-hate relationship between followers and fighters (promoters, too). To cite quite a few athletes: “The followers love you if you’re successful, however flip on you if you lose.”
For Jeffery — Bellator’s No. 7-ranked Middleweight — he felt that toxicity firsthand after his final technical knockout win, which happened at Bellator 284 in Aug. 2022. Jeffery picked up the largest win of his profession, ending former 185-pound title challenger, Austin Vanderford, in lower than two minutes.
Whereas Jeffery bought some reward for such an enormous win, he was additionally showered with, “Vanderford is a bum.”
“It’s what it’s, man,” Jeffery instructed MMAmania.com. “In MMA, like we’ve bought the worst f—king fan base of any sport. Persons are so sh—ty, so that you simply gotta take it with a grain of salt….[Austin] is a f—king phenomenal fighter. He’s solely bought two losses to 2 fairly high-level guys. And everybody hates him due to who his girlfriend [Paige VanZant] is.
“I imply, it’s insulting to me, too,” Jeffery continued. “Everybody’s identical to, ‘Yeah, this man f—king sucks,’ and I’m like, properly, years of my life have come to this second to beat this man, and it’s essential to me, ? Everybody simply saying he sucks — it’s disrespectful to each of us.”
The huge win over Vanderford vaulted Jeffery into the High 10 and set him up for his subsequent match towards the No. 3-seeded Salter.
With a win over Salter, Jeffery thinks he can be preventing for a title by the top of 2023.
“If I beat John Salter, and so they don’t give me the title shot immediately, what number of extra are in entrance of me? I’d say another,” Jeffery mentioned. “[Fabian Edwards vs. Gegard Mousasi] is in the course of the 12 months, so I can get another on the finish of the 12 months, and it’s gonna be a title battle.”
To take a look at the most recent Bellator MMA-related information and notes make sure you hit up our complete information archive proper right here.
