I’ve no official confirmation on this by any means, hence I used the “rumored” tag, but from what I’m hearing in the Dutch combat sports insiders circle we’ll see Yousri Belgaroui fight on Dana White’s Contender Series later this year.
Nobody knows about this yet, so I felt like letting my Sherbro’s know first
In case you don’t know who Yousri is, here’s a post about him that I made two months ago which should tell you more:
Yousri Belgaroui is atleast 6’5”.
A multiple-time GLORY Kickboxing title-challenger turned MMA-fighter who fought Israel Adesanya (2 times) aswell as Alex Pereira (3 times).
He definitely knows a thing or two about both guys, and despite Yousri’s former intense rivalry with Pereira, he’s now helping his former foe prepare to defend his UFC world championship (just like he helped him prepare to win the title last November).
Yousri has a tall stature and long rangy kickboxing game, just like Adesanya.
In the training video below you see Yousri trying to imitate Israel’s evasive movement and feint attacks on Pereira. The past few weeks there’ve been a lot more sparring sessions on their Instagram-stories and I was truly impressed by the way Yousri was able to imitate Izzy
Like I said, Alex Pereira and Yousri Belgaroui shared the ring 3 times before in a heated rivalry, and now they’re close training parters and great friends, which is very nice to see.
Friendship aside, here’s the compilation video of their fights in GLORY, the vid shows highlights of all 3 fights (including the famous knockout):
(full fights are on GLORY’s YT aswell)
Here’s Israel Adesanya vs Yousri Belgaroui 2:
Yousri himself is doing a good job in MMA too.
Yousri went 5-2 since transitioning to MMA in 2021.
His two decision-losses came against hometown guys in UAE Warriors. His first loss over a year ago being a Izzy - Romero kinda fight against a wrestler-boxer, where Yousri was like Izzy landing from the outside but not doing much more and the wrestler-boxer guy being Romero doing absolutely nothing but walking forward swinging/missing haymakers.
Not a great performance at all (maybe because of inexperience), but I definitely thought Yousri won due to landing more, opposed to losing a split decision. Still, it was a hard fight to score.
His second loss a few months later was an absolute robbery against a local guy from Dubai, UAE though.
So yeah, basically Belgaroui could’ve been 7-0 instead of 5-2, but thankfully this sport isn’t like modern boxing where you get defined by a single loss
Anyway, keep an eye open during the Embedded Series this week. I’m sure Yousri Belgaroui will be shown on there, aswell as in Pereira’s corner on saturday. Hopefully their training pays off
I met Yousri at Levels Fight League (LFL) in Amsterdam last year, where he commentated the event together with my good old friend Robin Black
Yousri told me he’ll probably be fighting for LFA next, and if he does well, he has a good chance of entering the UFC. Yousri said that Pereira’s manager Jorge Guimarães fixed this for him. The training with Glover Teixeira and Alex Pereira definitely helped him up his game. Yousri also said he’s very excited to help Pereira prepare for Adesanya and train with all the great fighters at Teixeira MMA.
In the interview below you see me in a conversation with Yousri (in the background), where we’re talking about all this (timestamped):
I also spoke to the interviewer, Dennis Kornman, who’s the Dutch guru when it comes to combat sports.
He’s the executive producer of UFC on Eurosport NL and host of Dutch MMA podcasts “Vechtersbazen” and “De Gouden Kooi” (together with former UFC- and PRIDE-fighter Gilbert Yvel and Big Marcel Dorff).
He already knew me (but just by name), due to interaction via the podcast
And here Dennis talks to Gilbert Yvel and Big Marcel Dorff about meeting me at LFL 6 on his podcast the day after, lol (timestamped):
Some context and translation:
I send in a question for the podcast and asked them (Dennis, Gilbert and Marcel) something about the LFL event in the Q/A part of the podcast, and when my question popped up Dennis Kornman went like:
“Yeah shoutout to Maurits! Was really nice to meet you at LFL!” He then explained that I send in questions weekly and participate in their betting game and that he ran into me at LFL. He said he liked meeting me in person, while before he only knew me digitally. Following with “I really liked that!”.
Gilbert Yvel then asked: "What did he look like?"
When Dennis replied with: “Big, he’s a big guy, man. I really had to like (looks up in the air), yeah a big dude.”
I’ve no official confirmation on this by any means, hence I used the “rumored” tag, but from what I’m hearing in the Dutch combat sports insiders circle we’ll see Yousri Belgaroui fight on Dana White’s Contender Series later this year.
Nobody knows about this yet, so I felt like letting my Sherbro’s know first
In case you don’t know who Yousri is, here’s a post about him that I made two months ago which should tell you more:
I’ve no official confirmation on this by any means, hence I used the “rumored” tag, but from what I’m hearing in the Dutch combat sports insiders circle we’ll see Yousri Belgaroui fight on Dana White’s Contender Series later this year.
Nobody knows about this yet, so I felt like letting my Sherbro’s know first
In case you don’t know who Yousri is, here’s a post about him that I made two months ago which should tell you more:
Maybe he just wants the “opportunity” like Dana uses to say, lol
Well Yousri a career middleweight fighter (a huge one, god damn). His last few fights were at a catchweight of 200 lbs, but I expect him to cut down to 185 for this
If his tdd is solid, then yes. If it's not and they only give him strikers then yes. He won't get the same push that Alex did, but he's a hell of a kickboxer.
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