Bjorn Rebney: “Nothing official” regarding Paul Daley’s freedom to fight overseas

Bellator had certainly gone out of their way to advertise and publicize the fact that Paul Daley would be in the next Bellator Welterweight Tournament. Unfortunately, Daley was arrested for assault, preventing him from fighting United States. After being forced out of the tournament, Daley took to Facebook to complain that Bellator wasn’t giving him a chance to compete outside of the organization, yet the next day he said the company had changed it’s position.

CEO Bjorn Rebney recently clarified things, explaining Bellator rolled out the red carpet for Daley and wanted to keep him happy but added that letting Daley fight in the U.K. is far from a done deal. According to the executive, though Bellator has done it before with other fighters,  there is a lot more to think about when they have invested so much money in a person that has only fought under their banner a single time.

Rebney told Bloody Elbow:

The process has yet to be followed here, and there’s nothing official. We’ll wait and see. If we can get it done to our satisfaction, we’ll allow it to happen, and if we can’t, then we won’t. For the time being, nothing has been approved. If the process that we’ve laid out is followed, I think a fight for him could occur, but until that happens, he’s in a hold mode, and we’ll see what happens.

Rebney on Daley’s online rants:

I haven’t seen anything that Paul has said or written, but we obviously have high hopes for Paul. I mean, we put him in the voting for the fight competition, we flew him down to Orlando for a very elaborate, four day photo shoot that was for our partners at Spike, we flew him to the US for exposure and to introduce him to US consumers, we gave him a signing bonus … we’ve done a lot of things to show Paul how committed we are, and we think he’s a very fun fighter to watch.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bellator