Venom: I’m going to be the face of Bellator

The best, most common base for top MMA fighters is wrestling. Sometimes it is exciting, sometimes not so much. Bellator MMA British welterweight Michael ‘Venom’ Page has one of the most unusual bases in the sport – point fighting.

The sport evolved out of traditional karate tournaments where it was believed that the strikes were too deadly to actually be applied with fill contact, even to the body. Then a prominent Taekwondo instructor named Jhoon Rhee invented foam pool floaty protectors and semi-contact karate was born (Full contact karate is also known as American Rules kickboxing). Eventually semi contact tournament fighting developed Continuous Point Fighting, kickboxing, but with contact throttled back. Controlling the contact to a degree allows for more spectacular attacks.

Venom is not a star in MMA, but he says he will be.

“I don’t just think that, I know that,” said Page to Marc Raimondi for MMAFighting.com. “I know I will be one of the biggest faces of MMA. If I’m part of Bellator, then I’m going to be the biggest face on Bellator. I know I have the ability to do that, because of my style. I’ve created so much waves with just the few fights that I’ve got. That’s what I’m going to be.”

“I know I don’t have that far to go before I’m that for Bellator. I’m happy for that, because I think Bellator is an amazing show. I think Scott Coker is amazing and I’m happy to grow with a show like that.”

“At the moment, I’m in cruise control, because there’s a lot I need to learn about myself in MMA. For me, it’s more of a personal journey. That’s why I’m not rushing to take top fights for the sake of it. And I could have done that. I could run my mouth a bit more and call out fighters and I would have gotten it.”

“For me, my style speaks so loudly that I don’t have to talk. I’ve got people calling me out now in this industry already and I don’t even have a belt. The fact that they’re calling my name out means I must be doing something right.”

“I think my last hurdle is shutting the crowd up with regards to people saying he hasn’t fought anybody of a high caliber,. I think when you see me against what people classify as bigger names and I’m still putting them away in exciting fashion and doing exactly what I’m doing now, then people will say, ‘He’s the real deal. He is exactly what he seemed to be in the beginning. It wasn’t a joke.'”

“I really do want to torture my next opponent. I want to make a statement. I actually don’t want to put him away quickly. I want him to be resilient. I want to see in his eyes during the fight, ‘Why the hell did I take this fight?’ I’ve seen that before.”

Michael ‘Venom’ Page fights Rudy Bears at Bellator 140 on Friday night at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn.