Daniel Straus was scheduled to headline next week’s Bellator 95 card in Atlantic City as he was going to challenge Pat Curran for the featherweight title. However, he had to pull out of the fight when he broke his hand in training.
Straus told TheMMAReport.com that he injury occured when he was going for a kimura during a training session.
“The injury happened in training before the fight as I was rolling with some partners back home and it was just unfortunate,” Straus said. “I was rolling around. Went to grab a kimura, he pulled out, busted my hand up and it broke.”
The injury requires a recovery time of six to eight weeks as Straus has been going through the healing process and therapy. Even with the injury, has has been able to do some things in training and could start a full training camp in the coming weeks.
“I want to get in there and I want to fight, thats what I do. Even with my hand injury, I haven’t been able to train to much properly but I haven’t been just sitting on my butt. I have been doing as much as I can with my hand injury. Now that its better, I am waiting for it to heal up and I am going to start training full time and then I will be ready to start a camp. I will say in the next two to three weeks, I will be ready to start a camp and fight whoever I need to fight.”
Curran will be defending the title next week at Bellator 95 against Shahbulat Shamhalaev and Straus will face the winner later this year. Straus does not care who wins, but he would like to see Curran come out victorious.
“How I see it going down is up in the air. Obviously, I don’t care who wins. I want to fight the winner. I would like Pat to win because I would love to fight Pat again, no animosity of course but kind of erase that lost of my head, not off my record but in my head. I think that fight is going to be a good fight for Pat. Pat is a strong guy, good striker, good ground guy and he is very intelligent about the game. I don’t think he is going to fall into anything easily. Shamhalaev is an outstanding striker that has a lot of hear and is a tough dude, so I think it is up in the air.”
Straus wants to get back into action as soon as possible and a potential date for his title fight could be the Summer Series, which he is down for.
“I am down for the end of the summer, beginning of summer and I am down for tomorrow. I just want to fight. That’s my life and fighting is not just what I do, it’s who I am.”