WEEKLY REPORT 1-7/11/21: Jordan Barton Interview - A Tough Night in Ireland

This past weekend we saw a handful of British fighters out competing in Dublin for Bellator 270. There were some great fights to see and Lee Chadwick even managed to get a win in front of the anti English crowd which is definitely something to be proud of, but one bout that really caught my attention was the Jordan Barton vs Ciaran Clarke fight in the featherweight division.

"There is positives to take, I haven’t fought for a while but felt great in there I’ve made a lot of improvements" said Barton.

"it was down to a mistake and at this level all it takes is a mistake for the fight to change. I’ll learn from it and be back to winning ways."

It is worth saying that the crowd for the night in Dublin was definitely up for the occasion making it a very rowdy place to be, putting a lot of pressure onto the English fighters and being extremely vocal in support of their fellow Irishmen, the noise when Ciaran Clarke and Peter Queally came out was phenomenal. Ariel Helwani went as far as saying that the crowd was "P4P best crowd in MMA."

"I expected the crowd to be as it was that was why I was so eager to fight there, cheering or booing it excites me and gives me energy." Barton added

"I’d like to fight again end of February, just see what happens and fights will come up."

Barton definitely landed the better strikes in his fight damaging Clarke rather heavily leaving him bleeding with some nice elbows, he also landed a devastating flying knee showing just how tough Clarke is as he was able to overcome these shots in the third round when he locked in a rear naked choke with less than a minute left on the clock.

"Ciaran showed he’s a solid fighter and very tough. He stuck to what he’s good at and eventually paid off, I think I got careless at the end thinking he wouldn’t get my back as I had stopped it the whole fight. It was a mistake that cost me unfortunately but these are the things that you learn from."

On the same night Lee Chadwick overcame Arunas Andriuskevicus via split decision, Bobby Pallet came up just short against Nicolo Solli also via split decision and heavyweight Charlie Milner was unfortunately caught and knocked out in just 15 seconds of the first round against his opponent Gökhan Saricam.