Bellator president challenges UFC to cross-promotional fight with 18-0 featherweight champion AJ McKee

Bellator’s AJ McKee has been making a case to be considered the best featherweight in the world.

The American moved to 18-0 at the weekend after finishing Patricio Pitbull in the main event of Bellator 263 to become the promotions new 145lbs champion and the winner of the $1million (£719,855) grand prize.

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McKee is still only 26 years old and he’s been blasting through the competition in a variety of ways.

He’s won his last three fights via submission and he has seven wins that way, but he also has six knockouts and five decision wins.

Bellator has long been considered the number two MMA promotion in the world with UFC the obvious number one.

Following McKee’s victory, Bellator president Scott Coker challenged UFC to put their best featherweights, champion Alexander Volkanovski or Max Holloway, against their best.

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“Yeah, I mean I would love to see (McKee) fight against other people as well, as you guys would also, but it’s not going to happen because it’s not the UFC’s business model to do it.

“But you tell me this kid couldn’t go in there and fight anybody right now. Everybody knows that he can do it. So if they want to get it on, we’d do it in a second,” Coker said.

UFC president Dana White has never shown much interst in making fights with Bellator and has previously said he doesn’t see them as competition at all.

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In 2020, he told TSN: “Really, if you look at Bellator, there’s not much to be interested in. 

“There’s much better promotions all over the world that are actually dealing in up-and-coming talent. 

“There’s lots of great shows to watch all over the world. All you (media) talk about are two, when there are plenty of other places.”

The places White refers to include promotions like ONE Championship in Asia, Cage Warriors and KSW in Europe and PFL in the United States has also been making waves. 

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While it would be interesting to have a cross-promotional event, realistically, White isn’t likely to ever bite.

What benefit is it to UFC if their fighters lose? It’s everything to lose and not much to gain from UFC’s standpoint, even if it might garner a decent buyrate in the short-term.

Talents like Ben Askren and Michael Chandler have made the move over from Bellator in recent memory with varying degrees of success.

The latter just came up short in his bid to become UFC lightweight champion.