BBC to air live MMA for first time ever with Bellator Paris
France will host its first ever major MMA event as Bellator goes to Paris
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Your support makes all the difference.This weekend, the BBC will air live mixed martial arts action for the first time.
American promotion Bellator will be staging an event in Paris on Saturday 10 October, which itself marks a historic moment.
MMA was banned in France in 2016 but was recognised as a sport in January 2020, and Bellator’s upcoming card represents the first ever top-level event to be held in the country.
And the BBC will be airing the action, streaming the card live on BBC iPlayer.
A heavyweight rematch between previous victor Cheick Kongo (30-10-2, 1 no contest) and Timothy Johnson (14-6) will serve as the main event, while Londoner Michael ‘Venom’ Page (17-1) takes on undefeated former Cage Warriors champion Ross Houston (8-0, 1 NC) of Scotland in the co-main. The bout is Houston’s first with Bellator and will take place in front of a maximum of 1,000 fans due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Ross is a great MMA fighter, he’s achieved something I haven’t achieved in MMA, which is a world title,” former kickboxing champion Page tells The Independent.
“Obviously he’s not as big a name as myself, but that’s just because of my style, how I’m able to market myself and obviously being on Bellator for so many years – and Bellator being as big of a platform as it is.
“But he has to go up against somebody that is a jigsaw puzzle, a bit of a Rubik’s Cube. It’s gonna be the hardest chess game he’s ever played in his life.
“For me, MMA fighters tend to be very similar to one other, they’re not too far different, a lot of them. You have the odd unique ones, and they’re the ones that tend to stand out.
“And I’m a completely different entity. I know for a fact he can’t bring in anybody that’s gonna replicate what I can do. All of these things are gonna be his first experience when he’s in front of me, and it’s too late by that point a lot of the time.”
Page, known for his eye-catching style of fighting and showmanship in the ring, has said that the smaller crowd in Paris – a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic – will not deter him from being himself when he’s locked in the cage with Houston.
“I have to deliver that same ‘wow’ factor every single time,” Page, 33, says. “I don’t care if there’s one or two people watching, or thousands and thousands of people watching, I just like to please, I like to put on a show. Even if it were just for the Bellator staff here, I’d still make a point about having them enjoy that moment.
“At the same time, in the back of my head I know there’s gonna be millions of people watching because it’s such a historical event.”
Page has possessed that attitude – that desire to entertain – since before his days as a fighter.
“It’s kind of just been in my nature. My father was like that when he was fighting as well, he was a bit of a showman, so I guess it’s something I was raised watching and kind of took on.
“It sounds funny, but I kind of have no shame. Even if I flash back to my secondary school, year 7, your first year, we had a dance thing that our teachers put on. It’s typical, that film scene where all the boys are on one side and all the girls are on the other side, and for the whole two hours I was in the middle of the dancefloor, dancing away.
“There was nobody that joined me – I was by myself, and I was having a blast. And I think everybody else enjoyed that as well. I don’t mind the spotlight, I don’t shy away from it.”
The spotlight will be firmly on Page, Houston and their Bellator colleagues in Paris on Saturday night.
The BBC’s coverage of Bellator Paris will begin at 4.30pm BST on BBC iPlayer before Channel 5 and Virgin Media Sport take over from 10pm. Page vs Houston will air live on BBC iPlayer.
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