James Gallagher has been here before.
Twice before he has headlined a Bellator event in the Irish capital and ahead of what will be the third iteration of ‘The Jimmy Show’ inside Ireland’s largest indoor arena, he finds himself in reflective mood. His opponent on February 22, Cal Ellenor, was originally slated to be Gallagher’s opponent in the same arena in September but complications which arose from a medical scan forced his removal from the card to be replaced by UFC veteran Roman Salazar.
That fight followed the blueprint he has established in his career to this point: James Gallagher by rear-naked choke submission, and ahead his next headline performance he expects more of the same.
“It’s phenomenal as always,” Gallagher said to The Mac Life of once again topping a fight card in Dublin. “I’m going to sell out the show again and I’m going to walk out there and put on the best performance I’ve ever put on in my life. I’m rejuvenated, I’m focused and I’m ready to go. I feel I’ve got a new focus, a new purpose on why I’m doing this and I’m going to change the game.”
Several of Gallagher’s opponents, including two of the last men who fought him, spoke in the lead-in to the fight of presenting a different type of challenge to the Irishman. They were, they said, the best grapplers that the Irishman will have faced in his career but neither Steven Graham or Roman Salazar were able to mount a significant challenge, and both were submitted in a combined three minutes (a decision win against Jeremiah Labiano was sandwiched in between).
Cal Ellenor, though, says he is made of different stock compared to Gallagher’s previous opponents.
“This is where I should be,” Ellenor said to The Mac Life on Wednesday. “I believe that the first time it should have happened and then obviously all that shit went on and they took it from us then, but now it’s good to finally have it back. James can say whatever he wants but I’m glad to finally get my hands on him. I’ve wanted to fight him for a long time anyway. It’s the right fight to make. I bring something that he hasn’t seen before and I’ll show you that on the night.”
8-2 in his career to date, Ellenor comes into the bout on the back of his own rear-naked choke submission win against former Cage Warriors champion Nathan Greyson back in February.
“These are the factors you need to understand when you fight me,” he said. “James can go in there and he can fight these guys who don’t really want to have a ‘fight’ with him but I’ll go in there and have a dogfight with him. You watch my fights, I’m game to go to the bitter end. You’ll have to kill me.”
Ellenor comes back into the fold after the aforementioned medical scans threatened his career. Safe MMA regulations in Ireland require fighters to submit brain scans to assure of an athlete’s health in advance of a fight and his scan in advance of the first booking with Gallagher showed irregularities from a scan he had taken two years prior, prompting doctors to advise him to retire from competition at the age of just 28.
However, further studies into his scans revealed that the abnormalities discovered in his brain scan which were thought to have appeared over the span of just two years had in fact been there for much longer, perhaps even from birth, allaying concerns of a deterioration in his health.
“It was horrible stuff, it just broke my heart,” Ellenor said, also revealing that his mother passed away around the same time. “It was everything at one time, do you know what I mean? A big fight, a big opportunity taken from me and then that happened — it was just a nightmare situation.”
“I’m 100% mentally past it. I’m bulletproof every time I’m getting ready for a fight. These are the fights that I want. I never want the easy fight. I feel like a lot of people seek out the easy fights; I want to fight the best people possible.”
Still though, and despite the winding path it has taken to get these two men in the cage with one another, Gallagher says that besides a few ‘tricks’, Ellenor doesn’t have much to offer him.
“[If those tricks fail] then he’s got no route to it and he’s got no route from it,” Gallagher explained. “My game is that I have all the middle ground, they’re all mastered. I hold you down, you won’t be able to move, I’ll take your back and then I’ll strangle you.
“That’s what I meant by that, his fundamental game isn’t that good — but he’s got good chokes. It’s like someone playing a football match and someone who’s good at doing tricks with a ball. Let’s see how they get on with someone who’s just a simple, good football player. That’s the difference.”
