It was announced today by Bellator MMA that they had signed undefeated lightweight fighter Bubba Jenkins to a long term promotional agreement and that he would be making his debut this summer.
Jenkins will not be placed into a Bellator tournament immediately as Bellator plans to build him and allow him to grow as a fighter.
Jenkins explained to TheMMAReport.com why he decided to sign with Bellator and his is excited to grow his career with the organization.
“The reason to sign with Bellator is that I had a good conversation with Bjorn [Rebney] and I have had other conversations with other MMA fighters in the game,” Jenkins said. “I weighed my pros, I weighed my cons and at the end of the day, it came out to a good financial decision for me. A good platform to build a future with my MMA and somewhere that I feel like will appreciate me as much as a appreciate them.”
“Bellator is an organization that pay their fighters well and they really look after a lot of guys and Spike TV deal. I know that there is a lot of wrestlers in Bellator and that is something I pride myself with just being apart of that wrestling community. I am excited about it as much as the guys on Twitter are.”
After the signing was announced, fans and people involved in the business of mixed martial arts sound off on Twitter about the signing with many people not understanding why Jenkins decided to sign with the number two organization. Jenkins has a message for people who think he is making a bad career decision.
“First things first, the food is on the table and my family has to eat. They are saying that I am not being patient enough. I have to put clothes on my back and food on the table and Bellator is giving me an opportunity with Viacom, Spike and corporate sponsors and things like that to achieve that. Financial stability is something we all look to do.”
“Not only that, those guys on Twitter and these people are not fighting, they are not in the cage, they don’t lock those doors and these are not there careers. They can say and do whatever they want. A lot of the time when I look at Twitter, that is peoples avenue to vent anonymous. They want to vent about something in MMA anonymous, it could be the contracts in Bellator and all this and all that. I get in the cage and I win my fight, I go to the next one. I am not really worried about the losing and things like that.”
“Winners worry about winning and losers worry about losing and that is why I don’t think about the bad side of the contract and the bad side of those things. I can just focus on winning the next fight and going to the next fight. I am focus about the people around me: American Top Team, Ricardo Liborio are really good builders of careers and really good people I have around me. They can really support, show and help me with the travel to the next step.”
“With the support system that I have, it wasn’t the fear of Bellator or the contract or things like that. It was confidence in myself. Confidence in the people around me that they are going to build me the right way. Confidence in Bellator that they are going to say or do what they said they are going to do and that is something that I believe.”
Jenkins does not know the exact date of his Bellator debut but believes the organization would like to have him on the July 31st card in New Mexico which will be headlined by Ben Askren defending the Bellator welterweight title against Andrey Koreshkov.
His full interview with TheMMAReport.com is below which includes his story about wrestling Michael Chandler as a freshmen in college.