Matt Mitrione's Bellator debut almost turned into a nightmare.
The former UFC heavyweight, who parted ways with the Las Vegas-based promotion earlier this year, took his first ever fight outside the Octagon on Friday night.
Mitrione got back in the win column after seeing out his UFC tenure with back-to-back defeats when he knocked out Carl Seumanutafa at Bellator 157 this weekend.
But he didn't have it all his way.
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'Meathead' was rocked badly by Seumanutafa early in the first round and the fight was close to being stopped by referee John McCarthy.
But, credit to Mitrione, he recovered and stopped his opponent just moments later when he threw Seumanutafa's legs to one side and dropped a bomb of a right hand on his chin.
Seumanutafa went limp and Mitrione got his Bellator career started with a victory.
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Oddly, it was announced immediately after the fight that the promotion was aiming to have Mitrione fight on its London card on July 16 which came as a surprise due to the fact that Mitrione had been so badly hurt in the early stages of the round.
But Bellator insisted that Mitrione's involvement at Bellator 158 was contingent on the fighter passing his post-fight medicals, which Mitrione later claimed he did.
"I feel great, brother," he said, in quotes appearing on
MMAFighting.com. "It was a lot of fun, it was a great scrap, and I really look forward to getting back in the cage. I passed all my medicals. Everything is good, and it looks like I'll be getting another opportunity in a couple of weeks."
Mitrione is now set to fight another former UFC fighter, Oli Thompson, on the Bellator 158 card which will be headlined by a welterweight bout featuring Paul Daley and Douglas Lima.
