Ilima-Lei Macfarlane will call for title shot with win

HONOLULU – One among Bellator’s all-time nice champions has a plan to recapture a title earlier than it’s time to hold up the gloves.

Former ladies’s flyweight champion Ilima-Lei Macfarlane (12-2 MMA, 11-2 BMMA) is ready to return Saturday for a battle in entrance of her residence metropolis followers in opposition to Kana Watanabe (11-1-1 MMA, 3-1 BMMA) at Bellator 295, which takes place Saturday at Neal S. Blaisdell Area in Honolulu. The principle card airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.

If Macfarlane, a Honolulu native, can get the 125-pound belt again, she’d prefer to retire in entrance of her residence followers.

“I don’t suppose I’m going to be a type of that’s like, ‘I’m performed,’ after which I’m not,” Macfarlane instructed MMA Junkie at an open exercise session for followers and the media at Royal Hawaiian Heart in Honolulu. “I all the time say that I do need to retire definitively. The plan is that if I win this battle, I’m going to name for a title shot. It simply is smart that the winner of Saturday will get the following shot – and that’ll be it. That’ll be the top.”

Macfarlane misplaced the ladies’s flyweight title to Juliana Velasquez in late 2020. It was her first MMA loss. She dropped a second in a row after that to Justine Kish earlier than a bounce-back win over Bruna Ellen this previous August.

However Velasquez misplaced the title to present champ Liz Carmouche, who occurs to be a longtime coaching accomplice and buddy of hers. Their dream lengthy has been in the event that they need to battle, it’d as nicely be for the title in a giant manufacturing.

“I need to get it out of the way in which,” Macfarlane mentioned. “OK: So (again to Honolulu in) December. … I’ve no alternative however to retire right here. All proper, if I win on Saturday evening, then I’m going to name for the shot and I’m going to name for Uncle Scott (Coker) and Bellator to return again in December. How’s that?”

Try Macfarlane’s full interview within the video above.

For extra on the cardboard, go to MMA Junkie’s occasion hub for Bellator 295.