Ringside MMA 12 Results: Paul Daley Keeps UFC Dream Alive

Leading up to Friday night’s victory over Luigi Fioravanti at Ringside MMA 12, Paul Daley told MMAWeekly.com that, despite being exiled by UFC president Dana White, he wanted to try and make his way back to the UFC.

“I feel like, purely based on fighting, I feel like I’ve proven myself as a fighter even though I’ve taken those two loses from (Nick) Diaz and (Tyron) Woodley,” he said.

“Everybody knows I’m not proud of what happened,” Daley said of the cheap shot he landed on Josh Koscheck after their fight, the incident that signaled his firing.

“I’m maturing as a fighter, as a person, and I’m quite open to sitting down and discussing things with whoever it needs to be discussed with in order to compete within the UFC.”

White has been a man to never say never, but he said Daley would “never come back” after the Koscheck incident.

Whether or not the UFC boss changes his mind, Daley took another step towards keeping his name relevant to having such a conversation by scoring a unanimous decision victory over Fioravanti in Montreal.

Ringside MMA 12 Results:Paul Daley def. Luigi Fioravanti via Unanimous Decision
Mitch Gagnon def. David Harris via Submission (Guillotine Choke), R1
Daron Cruickshank def. Mike Ricci via Unanimous Decision
Alex Garcia def. Matt MacGrath via KO, R1
Jason Saggo def. Kevin Morin via TKO (Strikes), R3
Brett Portieous def. Tommy Cote via Split Decision
Francis Charbonneau def. Christ Franck via Unanimous Decision
Keven Tremblay def. Maxime Fecteau via Split Decision
Olivier Aubin-Mercier def. Guy Poulin via Submission (Rear Naked Choke), R1
Vladimir Starcencov def. Craig Hudson via TKO (Strikes), R1

Paul Daley Not Fighting at BAMMA 8, Hopes to Face Marquardt in 2012

Paul Daley and Nate were expected to headline the BAMMA 8 fight card on Dec. 10 at The Capital FM Arena in Nottingham, England, but the process of putting the fight together took too long. Daley plans to sit out the rest of the 2011 following his Oct. 21 bout with Luigi Fioravanti in the Canadian Ringside MMA promotion.
“I would have liked to have fought on BAMMA 8. We tried hard to make it happen,” Daley recently told MMAWeekly Radio. “It’s 100-percent not going to happen. Even if we were waiting on getting the go-ahead, my focus has shifted to just sitting out the rest of the year.”
The fight with Fioravanti will be Daley’s fifth in 2011 and sixth in the last calendar year, and he’s looking forward to some time off.
“This will be 100-percent my last fight of the year,” he said. But the British welterweight is disappointed that he isn’t going to get to face Marquardt in December in his hometown.
“I got up for it. It’s a huge fight for myself. It’s a huge fight my hometown as well. I started planning camp. We planned out how we were going to train and how we were going to split everything up. This would have been one of the most intense and hard-focused training camps I would have had,” said Daley.
“Because there was so much indecisiveness just trying to make the fight happen, it just sort of lost steam with myself and then the other people involved trying to make the fight happen. The process was just too long to keep a sort of motivation going into it.”
Daley is optimistic the match-up with Marquardt can happen sometime in 2012 and hopes it can be for the BAMMA title.
“It’s a fight that can still happen, so hopefully next year, depending on where I’m at and how things work out, it can be a fight we can do next year, hopefully here in the U.K.,” he said.
“I want to fight for the belt and Nate is the biggest fight there in BAMMA. I’m 2-0 in BAMMA now, and I’d like to have the belt. The belts look really good. The show is getting bigger, so it would mean a lot to win the BAMMA belt and even more to win it from Nate Marquardt,” added Daley. “We’ll see what happens.”
Daley will have to wait and see what Strikeforce has in store for him in 2012. He is still under a Strikeforce contract.
“We still talk to Strikeforce. I still have fights left with Strikeforce, and that’s pretty much as much as we know,” said Daley. “Obviously, we have to speak with Strikeforce to get the go-ahead for all these non-Strikeforce fights that I take. My contract was non-exclusive. Pretty much set up in the same way that (Alistair) Overeem’s was, so I’m free to fight in other shows as long as there are no plans for Strikeforce to use me on a show that might conflict with that.”
He’s appreciative of Strikeforce’s cooperation in allowing him to take fights outside of the organization.
“The cool thing is they allow me to fight elsewhere. They haven’t been really difficult to deal with,” stated Daley. “It’s been really cool to work with the Strikeforce people and the people at Showtime. We’ll just see what happens after this fight at Ringside MMA as to what is going to happen with my contract.”

---

Follow @JeffMMAWeekly on Twitter or e-mail Jeff Cain.
For more UFC News and UFC Rumors, follow MMAWeekly.com on Twitter and Facebook.

Daley Operation – Episode Four

In the fourth – and final – episode of “Daley Operation”, Strikeforce® welterweight Paul “Semtex” Daley discusses his strategy for opponent Tyron Woodley, his reason for putting on exciting fights, and a possible new nickname. Watch Daley and Woodley square off at Strikeforce® and M-1 Global Present: Fedor vs. Henderson.

Paul Daley: Daley Operation

Whoa! TV takes an exclusive look at the life of Paul “Semtex” Daley in the days leading up to his fight at Strikeforce® and M-1 Global Present: Fedor vs. Henderson. Watch the trailer for “Daley Operation” here, and be sure to keep an eye out for the full feature in the coming weeks.

Paul Daley on ESPN UK’s MMA Podcast

Ahead of his pivotal bout with Tyron Woodley at Strikeforce and M-1 Global Present: Fedor vs. Henderson, welterweight slugger Paul “Semtex” Daley talked to Gareth Davies and Ben Blackmore on ESPN UK’s MMA podcast. Daley discussed his upcoming battle with the undefeated Woodley, his place in the Strikeforce® rankings, and much more. The entire podcast can be heard here.