James Gallagher was all set to headline the upcoming Bellator 187 card against Jeremiah Labiano, but then the fighter suffered a knee injury and the opportunity vanished.
The fighter says the knee injury occurred during a wrestling session as he was preparing for his bout.
“I was wrestling, we were doing some positional sparring and a guy got a single leg on me and I was trying to defend it,” Gallagher told MMA Fighting. “I was keeping my balance, but when he turned the corner my whole knee snapped. It sounded like a branch snapping, it was the most horrible thing I’ve heard in my life. The whole gym just stopped and looked around at me. I just looked at my knee, I was in the maddest pain I’ve ever been in. It’s the worst thing ever. Honestly, it made me feel sick. I looked at my knee and it just didn’t look right and it was fully locked out. It was only over the last few days that I could start putting weight on it.”
Surgery could be forthcoming for the fighter, but Gallagher won’t find out until this coming week if he will have to go under the knife. Brian Moore now faces AJ McKee in the Bellator 187 main event and Gallagher believes that Moore gets the victory in that fight.
“I’m delighted for Brian more than anything, but AJ knows that he’s only been bumped up to the main event because of me. I’m the only thing that’s making him relevant,” Gallagher said. “If it wasn’t for me everyone would be asking, ‘who is he?’ He can’t finish his dinner never mind a fight. I think Brian is going to go in there and knock him out. Bellator are really underestimating Brian. They’re throwing AJ to the big dogs for the first time. The pressure Brian brings is just going to be too much. AJ doesn’t have balls. He’ll break under the pressure and Brian will finish him. He will crumble very quickly.”
Bellator 187 takes place on Friday, November 10 from the 3 Arena in Dublin, Ireland with AJ McKee and Brian Moore headlining. Fightful is providing coverage of the event, which airs via tape delay on Spike TV.
