David Rickels competed on the preliminary card of Bellator 219, defeating AJ Matthews by second round TKO.
One thing that embarrassed the victorious Rickels was that the mouthpiece continued falling out of his mouth during the bout, but Rickels wasn’t using the normal mouthpiece because it was stolen before the event.
“I was straight-up embarrassed by it, because I had to go to (expletive) Walmart last minute and buy a new mouthpiece,” Rickels said after the event (via Fernanda Prates & John Morgan of MMA Junkie). “I bought some damn $10 mouthpiece at Walmart, so if there’s a mouthpiece sponsor out there, send me a goddamn mouthpiece that says ‘Caveman’ on it. Long story (short), my car got broken into and they stole my caveman mouthpiece.”
There is no word yet on who stole the stuff from Rickels’ car or if it has been recovered by the authorities.
A victorious Rickels says the whole situation was really weird in the end.
“(Expletive), I don’t know, man,” Rickels said. “If anything, it was helping him toward the end, because I had him hurt pretty bad. And then that (expletive) just kept jumping out, you know what I mean? I had him hurt and then I was trying to finish and it was jumping out. Thankfully the ref was allowing me to still fight with the mouthpiece out, because I did have him hurt. It was a really weird situation, but got the finish regardless. I was really wanting to (expletive) go toe-to-toe toward the end, but his (expletive) is pretty swollen, so.”
The fighter has now won two straight in Bellator MMA, with the other coming over Guilherme Vasconcelos at Bellator 210.
