Bellator champ Eduardo Dantas tries to put 'worst day of life' – loss to Nam – behind him

ORLANDO – Eduardo Dantas backed Tyson Nam up with a flying knee, pushed him toward the corner and that was all she wrote.

Except for Dantas, Bellator's bantamweight champion, the writing was done by Nam. With an exclamation point on the end.

When Nam knocked out Dantas this past week at a Shooto benefit show for Brazil's special police force, he took Dantas, Bellator and the MMA world by surprise.

Dantas (14-3) took the fight with Nam (12-4) to stay busy – and Bellator let him take it, as the promotion has done with other fighters in the past, since it wouldn't air on TV in the States.

But on Thursday, after shooting some promo spots for Bellator on a Universal Studios soundstage in Orlando, Dantas said the loss was more than just a scar on his record.

"It definitely was the worst day of my life," Dantas told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) through a translator. "I was very confident, I was very focused and I think I was over-aggressive and wanted too much to end the fight quickly – and that's what happened."

It wasn't as if Dantas was fighting poorly against Nam. But when the fight went to the corner of the ring, Nam was able to turn Dantas around ever so briefly – and a right hand was on the button, and Dantas was on the floor.

Along with Dantas' consciousness, Nam took the Bellator champ's seven-fight win streak. But he didn't take his confidence. Dantas already is thinking rematch down the road with a desire to get back what stands for now as the worst loss on his record, or at least the most ill-timed, coming in his first fight after winning Bellator's 135-pound title.

"It definitely was that (I just got caught)," Dantas said. "I think about that every day and every night. I followed my commands like an athlete, like a fighter, and I was fighting like a kid. I wanted to end it quickly. I acted like a kid. But I feel better now and I'm pretty sure in one year or 10 years, we'll fight again. What happened that night was his merit, but if we could fight again, the result would be different."

Dantas won Bellator's bantamweight title by coming from relative obscurity, at least on the mainstream MMA scene, a little less than a year ago. A flying-knee knockout of Wilson Reis in the opening round of Bellator's Season 5 bantamweight tournament put him on the map.

He picked up decision wins over Ed West and Alexis Villa to get to an April title fight with Zach Makovsky, and he choked the champ out with a second-round arm triangle that instantly catapulted him up the bantamweight ranks.

His loss to Nam, of course doesn't affect his standing in Bellator. He'll still get to defend his title – just on a perhaps slightly delayed timetable thanks to a 30-day medical suspension for the knockout.

But what it does affect is Dantas' motivation going forward. His pride perhaps a little sapped from the loss, he's found himself needing to defend taking the fight to begin with.

"A lot of people are criticizing me and saying, 'Why did you take the fight?' because it was out of Bellator," Dantas said. "But I want to be the best in the world. I want to test myself with any kind of test I can get. I took that fight because I knew he was a good fighter standing, so I tried to fight the fight standing, to prove myself – and (the knockout) happened."

Though the fight hasn't been announced in terms of date or location, Dantas knows his opponent for the first defense of the Bellator bantamweight belt. And it comes against a friend and former training partner in Marcos Galvao.

And for that fight, Dantas said he'll take in the same kind of confidence he had before he started Bellator's tournament – which he said he went into planning on winning.

"I was very confident and pretty sure I was going to win the tournament," Dantas said. "That's my aggressive style – always moving forward. And I'll never change that. That's my way of fighting. I'm going to fix some mistakes from the last fight, but fans like me aggressive, so that's how I'm going to fight – confident and forward."

Dantas said he's motivated to get back to training to defend his title – and put the loss to Nam behind him, for now. And while he may not be thrilled with fighting Galvao, a Nova Uniao teammate who beat Luis Nogueira a week ago to win Bellator's Season 6 bantamweight tourney, he'll do what he has to do.

Besides, it's been five years since they trained together.

"We used to train together when I was 15 to 18, and we trained (together) a lot," Dantas said. "He's a friend of mine. We got a little upset because we have to fight a friend. But he has his dream – to be a champion – and I've got mine to stay the champion.

"It's my dream against his dream, so we have to fight."

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