{"id":312089,"date":"2021-07-30T15:18:23","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T12:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/aj-mckee-wants-respect-for-family-entering-bellator-263\/"},"modified":"2021-07-30T15:18:23","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T12:18:23","slug":"aj-mckee-wants-respect-for-family-entering-bellator-263","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/aj-mckee-wants-respect-for-family-entering-bellator-263\/","title":{"rendered":"#AJ McKee wants respect for family entering Bellator 263"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#AJ McKee wants respect for family entering Bellator 263<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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It never sat right with AJ McKee how little acclaim his father\u2019s 20-year mixed martial arts career received.<\/p>\n

The Bellator 263 headliner, who will face featherweight champion Patricio \u201cPitbull\u201d Freire on Saturday at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., in a fight that wraps up the pandemic-delayed Featherweight World Grand Prix with $1 million up for grabs, is out to put some respect on his family name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never felt that my father [Antonio McKee] got the recognition or respect that he deserved in his career,\u201d McKee recently told The Post over Zoom. \u201c\u2026 So, me coming into my own career and just making sure that the last name gets the respect and recognition it deserves, that was a big key and a big part for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old is well on his way to that goal. He\u2019s 17-0 with 12 finishes, including five in his past six app<\/a>earances. The latest came in the tournament semifinals last November, when McKee locked in one of the most heralded submissions of the year: a modified neck crank at 71 seconds of the first round against former Bellator bantamweight champ Darrion Caldwell that\u2019s been dubbed the \u201cMcKee-otine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antonio McKee knew a thing or two about unbeaten streaks during his fighting days. The elder McKee, now 51, went 11-0-1 from Aug. 10, 2003 until a split decision loss in his lone UFC appearance on Jan. 1, 2011. That unbeaten run is about 400 days longer than AJ\u2019s entire professional career, which began on April 10, 2015.<\/p>\n

\"AJ
AJ McKee<\/figcaption>
Bellator MMA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Antonio\u2019s prime was spent largely toiling on the regional scene, as well as a 4-0 mark with former league-based promotion IFL that produced several future UFC notables. His was a grinding style of fighting that rarely led to finishes, a difficult style aesthetically when it came to winning over the knockout- and submission-hungry MMA fans of the post-\u201dThe Ultimate Fighter\u201d boom. He finished his career in September 2019 with a TKO win \u2014 only his ninth finish in a 30-6-2 career \u2014 on the same Bellator card his son earned an eight-second KO over Georgi Karakhanyan.<\/p>\n

The way AJ sees it, his father\u2019s style isn\u2019t so different from his own. But the younger McKee worked with his father to make tweaks to be more well-rounded and avoid needing the judges\u2019 input to decide a winner. Mission accomplished, given his ever-growing highlight reel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to take someone down and hold them down, I\u2019m capable of doing that,\u201d AJ said. \u201cBut I always want to give the fans what they want. They want a gory knockout. They want to see blood. They want to see something drastic happen in a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

AJ McKee will square off against another opponent known for \u201cdrastic\u201d happenings in the cage in Pitbull (32-4, 23 finishes), who also reigns as Bellator\u2019s lightweight champion after beating recent UFC 155-pound title challenger Michael Chandler by TKO in 61 seconds two years ago. The dual champ is practically Mr. Bellator, having competed for the promotion dating back to April 2010, when it was built around its season tournaments. Those went out of fashion for a time before CEO Scott Coker reinstated them as grand prix events intended to last a year and focused on one weight class at a time. Pitbull last lost at 145 pounds the same year McKee debuted, dropping the championship before reclaiming it in April 2017. He\u2019s since defended the belt successfully five times.<\/p>\n

McKee\u2019s entire career has taken place under the Bellator banner, and he says he\u2019s been \u201canxious\u201d to face Pitbull since the very beginning. However, his father and Coker were set on him taking a more natural, less-rushed career arc toward the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the grand prix revealed what McKee surely already believed about himself: He\u2019s ready to challenge Pitbull at last and take both of his opponent\u2019s belts in succession.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a great fighter. He\u2019s held the reins since I first stepped in that cage,\u201d McKee said. \u201cHe\u2019s got multiple achievements and accolades that I look forward to conquering, becoming a champ-champ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the $1 million prize to the winner has some allure as well. Seven-figure paydays are rare in MMA, and McKee already has his eye on one way he would treat himself in addition to paying off his house and making investments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been looking at a Porsche,\u201d McKee says with a smile. \u201cThat [911] GT2 RS has been calling my name for a while now.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#AJ McKee wants respect for family entering Bellator 263” It never sat right with AJ McKee how little acclaim his father\u2019s 20-year mixed martial arts career received. The Bellator 263 headliner, who will face featherweight champion Patricio \u201cPitbull\u201d Freire on Saturday at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., in a fight that wraps up the pandemic-delayed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":312090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/20210730mckee.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[113094,77738,71314],"class_list":["post-312089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-30-21","tag-bellator","tag-mma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}