After a career filled with ups and downs, Corey Anderson is on the verge of taking home some championship hardware if he can defeat Vadim Nemkov at Bellator 277 on Friday night.
The bout will serve as the finals of the promotion’s light heavyweight grand prix, and Anderson has been impressive thus far, earning TKO wins over Ryan Bader and Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov to make his way through the bracket. The man known as “Overtime” has enjoyed a resurgence in Bellator after suffering a first-round knockout loss to Jan Blachowicz in his last UFC appearance, a defeat that removed him from consideration for a potential title shot in the Las Vegas-based promotion.
It’s not the first time Anderson has bounced back. He also lost three of four UFC bouts from from 2016 to 2017 — including two via KO. This time around, Anderson says a new mindset accompanied the move to a new organization.
“It came full circle. I started off in this game young. A lot of people doubted me,” Anderson said at a pre-fight press conference on Monday. “I had ups and downs. A lot of those downs, people that I was done — it was over. Such bad knockouts, Corey can never come back. He’s washed up.
For me to come back and rekindle the career the way I have, [I had to] just change my mindset, change my point of view in the fight game, period. It was no longer the fight game, it was the fight business. I became a businessman. I got hungry. I got serious.”
Anderson can pinpoint the moment where he changed his outlook, and it came not long after his knockout loss to Blachowicz at UFC Fight Night 167 in February 2020.
“I remember the exact moment like it was two seconds ago,” Anderson said. “I remember after my last UFC fight I ended up having a fall at home,” he said. “Something happened, I passed out, smacked my face and then … I remember going to the hospital. Something that happened previously from training and fighting and I didn’t take the time to rest. I looked at my wife and my son, I remember looking at her saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore…I’ve got to get serious.’ This ain’t a game, this is a business.”
If Anderson can get past Nemkov, who has been impressive as the Bellator 205-pound champ, he believes he’ll have a legitimate claim to being the best light heavyweight in the world, regardless of organization. After all, he owns a dominant victory over current UFC champ Glover Teixeira.
“You can say what you want to say. I beat the UFC champ handily on two weeks notice,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t one scorecard that went his way. … Boy, I milked him like a cow. It was the easiest fight I have. I was taking him down left and right.
“If I go out there serious and do what I do, I’m untouchable.”
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