For a crowd receptive to encouragement, one that with the mildest provocation will belt out any song, Bellator 270 was a night to turn the page, a challenge for the Irish crowd to truly love.
No dispute about the outcomes or the event, an energetic, high octane and good natured atmosphere in the 3Arena. But as so often as is hoped for in a world championship bout with an Irish lead man, the ending with a title going to Brazil is not what the fans had come to see.
It was all so perfect with the loud blasting of the fighter’s anthems, the light show and the choreographed walks to the ring, right down to the girls holding up wooden signs with a picture of a mask above the word ‘Please’.
The blocky, hard-punching Patricky 'Pitbull' Fieire, who Queally had beaten last time out, was on the night indestructible and drew the fire from a Dublin crowd
As they were almost the only ones wearing masks, you couldn’t see the expressions of disappointment. The guess is they were similar to those in the arena, when Showstopper was stopped and Strabanimal was tamed. It was far from a celebration night for the Irish.
MMA might not be everyone’s bag. But for almost 10,000 raucous, fans, most of them under 30-years-old, they had hoped Peter ‘Showstopper’ Queally might follow his training partner Conor McGregor and become only the second Irish MMA world champion and the first under the Bellator banner.
But the blocky, hard-punching Patricky ‘Pitbull’ Fieire, who Queally had beaten last time out, was on the night indestructible and drew the fire from a Dublin crowd that began to get in the mood hours earlier when James ‘Strabanimal’ Gallagher paraded around the ring three fights before his scheduled meeting with American, Patchy Mix.
University bar
In case they had forgotten, Strabanimal made a loop of the ring to whip up support before the last of the preliminary bouts involving Ireland’s Ciarán Clarke against England’s Jordan Barton.
Clarke, goateed and looking like he had just fallen out of a university bar, against the Johnny Commando figure of Barton, whose proportioned physique had him set like he’d been assembled from a box in the back of the arena.
As the fight progressed and Clarke’s blood began to give Barton’s white shorts a pink rinse, for two rounds it seemed doomed. Bravely sticking with it, Clarke took the fight to the third and the two went to ground. A tangle of bodies later and it is stunned Barton, in a rear naked choke, tapping to submission. It prompted a frustrated London voice from behind to call it as he saw it.
“Flat down in two rounds, only in f****ng Dublin.”
A few fights later and The Soldier’s Song is pumping out with the cocky Strabanimal swaying down a corridor towards the ring. The Tyrone bantamweight who left school at 15 telling his parents he couldn’t “sit in a classroom full of negative people” and wanted to fight for a living, has a tricolour scarf around his neck and comes out, arms in the air and a 100 watt smile.
Around the cage are four cameras pointing into the ring as Showstopper and Pitbull begin a fandango of circling and flicking out kicks to the shin
It is a catch weight bout because opponent Patchy missed the weight by two pounds. “He’s already beat. His mind is weak,” quipped Gallagher after the weigh-in.
The number six ranked 25-year-old was competing in his first fight since departing John Kavanagh’s Straight Blast Gym (SBG) for the USA. A crowd player, Gallagher has high energy but it’s the beginning of a disappointing end to the night with Patchy from Angola, New York the first piece of grit in Irish ointment.
In an even fight that begins to unfold to a swaying crowd and The Fields Of Athenry, two rounds pass before the American manoeuvres Gallagher into a guillotine choke in the third round. The guillotine is a guaranteed submission.
The scene closes with the New Yorker climbing on top of the cage and his deflated opponent throwing up into a bucket in his corner.
Undeterred, salvation lies in the main world championship bout. Queally’s arrival to the stage raises the crowd after Strabanimal’s beating, the Cranberries tune Zombie belting out to an expectant and optimistic auditorium.
“In your heeead, in your heeead Zombie, Zombie, Zombie…bie…bie…”
Around the cage are four cameras pointing into the ring as Showstopper and Pitbull begin a fandango of circling and flicking out kicks to the shin, the occasional roundhouse effort missing its mark.
Patience and opportunity is the Irish theme of the night with the Brazilian, who was gifted the world title chance by his brother Patricio who opted to surrender his belt, looking eager for contact. But Queally feints and rotates and stays out of the strike zone.
Flashing hands
An early miscalculated blow from the Waterford fighter in the second round of five catches his opponent in the eye with a finger and adds to the unfolding drama. It’s an accident but enough for a doctor to be called to the ring and delay the bout for some minutes.
They shake hands and continue before the flashing hands of Pitbull give reason to his name. A right that catches the Waterford man sends him spinning across the ring. Queally gets up but the damage is done and Pitbull scents it. Another right and again the Irishman goes down, the follow-up slamming him back first into the side of the cage.
Struggling to get up and defenceless with Pitbull hovering and about to strike for a third time, the referee rightly steps in, waving the contest and Queally’s aspirations to a close.
“Good fight, one apiece,” says Conor McGregor afterwards. McGregor is a friend and training partner of Queally from their SBG days. One apiece, as Queally defeated Pitbull in their last meeting, when a bleeding cut could not be stopped and a doctor halted the bout.
“That’s 1-1 on my scorecard. Yeah it went a rematch dead heat, Showstopper bro. That’s one apiece. We go again bro, we go again.”
And so they might as a dulled crowd filters out and up the Liffey, across the Tom Clarke Bridge and to the north of the city, contemplating the smouldering disappointment of what might have been.
