As he approaches his showdown with Japanese slugger Hisaki Kato in the Bellator 146 main event on Friday at the Winstar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Okla., Manhoef can see the end of what has been a long and fruitful tunnel in prizefighting. However, even at 39, the Suriname-born Dutchman has championship aspirations inside the Bellator MMA organization.
“I won’t be fighting until I’m 50,” Manhoef said with a laugh. “Right now, I am comfortable, but my goal is to become Bellator champion; and once I do that, that might be it. I want to defend the title a few times, and when I do that, I think it’s time for me to go and leave it for the young guys.”
Manhoef loves to scrap, especially against fighters who are willing to stand and exchange with him. Kato figures to be just such an opponent, promising a bout full of fireworks that almost no one expects to go the distance. Prior to his arrival in Bellator, Kato had spent his entire career in the Japan-based Heat promotion, where he pieced together a 4-1 record. The 33-year-old trains out of the Alive gym, where he works alongside former Shooto and Sengoku champion Hatsu Hioki.
“He’s a strong fighter who likes to come forward and bang,” Manhoef told Sherdog.com. “I like that also, so it’s going to be great; but this is MMA. He might try to take me down. I must be prepared for that.”
His resume highlighted by victories over Denis Kang, Kazuo Misaki, Mark Hunt, Kazushi Sakuraba and Evangelista Santos (twice), Manhoef needs a win if he wants to remain a relevant figure in MMA and make a move on the Bellator middleweight title. He has not had his hand raised since he knocked out former World Extreme Cagefighting champion Doug Marshall in the first round of their Bellator 125 clash more than a year ago. Manhoef has not fared well in subsequent appearances. “No Mercy” pounded on muay Thai star Joe Schilling at Bellator 131, only to get knocked unconscious 32 seconds into the second round. Manhoef then succumbed to blows from Alexander Shlemenko, though the result was later changed to a no-contest when the Russian was flagged for elevated levels of testosterone.
Kato, meanwhile, leveled Schilling with a Superman punch in his Bellator debut on June 26. Manhoef does not believe anything can be gleaned from their separate encounters with the same opponent.
“The fights were very different,” he said. “I was doing well against Joe and I was hurting him, until I made the mistake where he got me. With Kato, there was a lot of problems on the ground, but he took Joe out early in the second. Our fights were different.”
Manhoef longs to get back on track and understands that his time in the sport has begun to run short. He turns 40 in May and has been through a number of attritive battles with Robbie Lawler, Tyrone Spong, Remy Bonjansky, Stefan Leko and countless others. Manhoef claims he has learned to preserve his body through trial and error in training.
“It’s different, of course,” he said. “I’m 39, so I have a different approach to training. I still train two, three times a day, but my body feels good. We are more precise now. One example is we used to spar all the time at 100 percent, always going hard. Now, we still go hard, but it’s not 100 percent. We are much smarter when we spar.”
Manhoef -- who has gone the distance just four times in 44 pro MMA bouts -- attributes his longevity to a healthy diet, staying in shape and training more intelligently as he has grown older. With the rise of so many Dutch world champions over the years, especially in kickboxing -- Remy Bonjasky, Ernesto Hoost, Peter Aerts, Semmy Schilt, Nieky Holzken and Rob Kaman all come to mind -- Manhoef points to a simple way of living.
“The way we train, the way we think, I think that’s what makes it so great,” he said. “I think the training methods that we have in the Netherlands is very hard, and we mix it up with boxing. That’s why we have done so well.”