Room only exists for one.
Sergio
Pettis will put his
Bellator
MMA bantamweight crown in the line against interim titleholder
Patrick
Mix when their unification bout co-headlines
Bellator 301 on Friday at Wintrust Arena in Chicago. The
championship has been fractured since April 2022. Pettis enters the
cage with the wind of six-fight winning streak at his back, having
established himself as one of the organization’s pound-for-pound
standouts. The
Roufusport rep last appeared at Bellator 297, where he retained
his half of the title with a unanimous decision over
Patricio
Freire on June 16. Mix, meanwhile, has rattled off five
straight victories. He last competed on April 22, when he cut down
Raufeon
Stots with a first-round knee strike at Bellator 295 to win the
promotion’s $1 million bantamweight grand prix and the interim
championship.
As Pettis and Mix move ever closer to their looming showdown at 135
pounds, a look at some of the numbers that have accompanied them to
this point:
30: Years of age for Pettis, who was born in Milwaukee on Aug. 18,
1993.
4: Pettis wins by knockout or technical knockout, accounting for
17.5% of his career total (23). His list of victims:
Kyoji
Horiguchi,
Dillard
Pegg,
Tony
Zelinski and
Kyle Vivian.
Pettis owns four other wins by submission (17.5%) and 15 more by
decision (65%).
924: Days spent by Pettis as Bellator bantamweight champion. It
ranks as the longest title reign in the history of the company’s
135-pound weight class, just ahead of
Eduardo
Dantas (911 days).
77: Rounds started by Pettis as a professional mixed martial
artist. He has gone the distance on 18 different occasions and
carries a 15-3 record in those bouts.
142: Combined victories between the six men—Freire, Horiguchi,
Juan
Archuleta,
Ricky
Bandejas,
Alfred
Khashakyan and
Tyson
Nam—Pettis has defeated since he last suffered a setback. They
boast a cumulative .770 winning percentage at 142-42-1.
30: Years of age for Mix, who was born on Aug. 16, 1993 in Angola,
New York.
12: Mix victories by submission, accounting for 67% of his career
total (18). His methods of choice: five rear-naked chokes, four
guillotine chokes, two kneebars and an arm-triangle choke. Mix
holds two other victories by knockout or technical knockout (11%)
and four more by decision (22%).
51: Seconds needed for Mix to dispatch
Alberto
Martinez Jr. with a rear-naked choke under the
King of
the Cage banner on Feb. 25, 2017. Nearly seven years later, it
remains his fastest finish to date.
8: Consecutive calendar years in which Mix has fought at least
once. In addition to his 1-0 mark in 2023, he went 2-0 in 2016, 4-0
in 2017, 3-0 in 2018, 4-0 in 2019, 0-1 in 2020, 2-0 in 2021 and 2-0
in 2022.
.816: Cumulative winning percentage between the five men—Stots,
Horiguchi,
Magomed
Magomedov,
James
Gallagher and
Albert
Morales—Mix has beaten since he last experienced a loss. They
sport a combined record of 95-21-1.