Bellator 145: "Vengeance" takes place Nov. 6, 2015, at Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The five-fight main card for Spike TV will be capped off with a Featherweight title defense for "Pitbull" Patricio Freire.
"Pitbull" and his opponent, Daniel Straus, know each other well. Freire beat Straus for the second time at Bellator 132, but the former 145-pound champion has not given up on his quest to regain the belt.
Writer Doug Merlino has a new a book out called, "Beast: Blood, Struggle, and Dreams at the Heart of Mixed Martial Arts" in which the story of Straus (and his struggles in and outside the cage) play a prominent role.
Bellator MMA and Merlino offered us the following excerpt from this new book.
Fighting was a business now, with the need to Facebook and Instagram. The fans wanted to see everything -- fighters out in their cars, playing with their dogs, cutting weight before a fight, partying afterward. For Straus, it was an uncomfortably public life.
"People don't realize how stressed we get," he said, "because every time I look at my Twitter someone's talking about how this guy is going to knock me out - it's not like I can't see it because they're adding my name to the list, so it's like now I got a 100 people talking about how this guy is going to knock me out tonight and I'm already insecure about losing in front of people. It turns into entertainment, when before it was just fighting."
You can find "Beast: Blood, Struggle, and Dreams at the Heart of Mixed Martial Arts" on Amazon.com and from other major book sellers.
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