opportunity to outwardly prove how good I was, and, even back then, the guys I fought were close to the best but not the best. When I fought Douglas Lima in Bellator, I think he was ranked in the sixth-to-eighth range in the pan-promotion welterweight class. When I fought Jay Hieron, he was around tenth or twelfth, and Andrey Koreshkov—whom I outstruck officially 248–3—was in the range of tenth to fifteenth. I’d never gotten to fight a legitimate top-five guy.
