Melvin Manhoef: Winning Bellator Middleweight Title Would ‘Complete My Career’

Melvin Manhoef isn’t ready to call it a career just yet, but even he admits that winning Bellator MMA gold would make for a nice cherry atop a career that has spanned 45 professional mixed martial arts bouts.   Manhoef will  get that chance when he faces reigning 185-pound king Rafael Carvalho in the Bellator 155 headliner at CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho, on Friday night. The evening’s main card airs on Spike TV beginning at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT, with the preliminary draw streaming on Bellator.com at approximately 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.     “It means a lot. Also at my age, people are saying, ‘He has to stop.’ This is a very special moment. When I win this fight, it is going to be one of the most special titles because.. I’ve been through a lot. It’s going to be a real special,” Manhoef told Sherdog.com. “It’s going to make my fighting career complete I think because if I decided to stop tomorrow I stop as a champion. It would be great.”   That doesn’t mean Manhoef plans on stopping. Prior to his matchup with Hisaki Kato at Bellator 146, the 40-year-old Dutchman had suffered brutal back-to-back knockouts against Alexander Shlemenko and Joe Schilling. While the Shlemenko result …

continue reading in source www.sherdog.com