Next Friday night will mark the seventh fight for Bubba Jenkins in Bellator and it will be the biggest fight of his career as he meets former WSOF featherweight champion Georgi Karakhanyan in the co-main event of Bellator 132.
Jenkins (8-1) is currently on a four fight winning streak and is coming off a decision win against Thiago Meller at Bellator 126 in September.
The fight against Karakhanyan will mark the third fight for Jenkins at featherweight. Following a win over Sean Powers last year, Jenkins made the decision to drop to featherweight because he realize the 145 pound division was best suited for him.
“I would say that looking at a lot of the guys at 55 and being in a number of different gyms, I realized that the 55’ers would much bigger than I was,” Jenkins told TheMMAReport.com. “I was a very small 55’er. My height said it. My weight said it. The way I look at the scale afterwards said it.”
While Karakhanyan is the toughest test in the MMA career of Jenkins, what does he consider his best performance of his career? Could it be his TKO win over Poppies Martinez or one of his early submission wins?
“I would say the Thiago Meller fight was my best performance because I would probably say he was my best opponent,” Jenkins said. “I read a lot about him and I heard a lot about him. I believe he was ranked top twenty in the world as a featherweight and I went in, did a very good job of controlling and doing what I wanted to do and achieving the goal of getting my hand raised. Obviously, I would have love to gotten a finish but it came the way it came. I will take it as it comes because that guy was tough to beat and I beat him pretty soundly.”
Earlier this week, Karakhanyan told TheMMAReport.com that he “would like to make Jenkins bleed before finishing him.” When asked to respond to what his opponent said, Jenkins went into detail on why he believes Karakhanyan is training for the wrong type of fight.
“I think he is training for the wrong fight,” Jenkins explained. “I think that he is thinking that I am going to take him down and he is going to be able to lock me into something where he just simple beat me up or he thinks I am not as good on my feet as I have become. I think that is the wrong train of thought. I think he has had six or seven weeks of training completely wrong.”
“He has been trying to work the sprawl and not get shot on kind of offense and that is not what I am going to do. I am going to punch him in his face and then eventually pose my will upon wrestling him. The guillotine will not be there and I have been guillotine by the best people in the world. I have never given up a submission and I never will especially a guillotine since I know that is the kryptonite of most wrestlers. I hope he sticks to the gameplan and to that mindset because it’s completely wrong of what is going to happen.”
Back in 2013, Jenkins was brought into the camp of Karakhanyan for his fight against Lance Palmer in the World Series of Fighting. Jenkins was brought in to help out with the wrestling aspect that Palmer bring to the cage and Jenkins found out something about his opponent.
“I take from it that he is petrified of wrestlers,” he said. “The way he talked about defending Lance Palmer’s takedowns. The way he talked about the match and the fight itself. He is absolutely scared of a wrestler. That is something that I know he knows that he knows that I know. He can not deal with wrestlers. He is not susceptible to the way we grind, the way we get after it. He is more of a laid back, chill, kick you when I want to kick you style of guy. I am going to be in his face the whole time.”