Adverse Reactions

Dalton Rosta now gets the opportunity to show he can get back up, dust himself off and move forward in the face of adversity.

The Bellator MMA middleweight finds himself on the rebound following his first professional defeat, as he charges into battle against the undefeated Norbert Novenyi Jr. in a featured Bellator Champions Series 3 attraction this Saturday at 3Arena in Dublin. It marks Rosta’s first appearance since he ran out of gas in a unanimous decision defeat to Aaron Jeffery some 10 months ago, the setback knocking him from the ranks of the unbeaten after he had started his mixed martial arts career a perfect 8-0.

“We had a game plan in place,” Rosta told Sherdog.com. “I was following it for the first half of the first round. Even when I got away from it, I was still winning the second half of the first round. I got the first round in that fight, and getting away from my game plan is what I think made me tired. We prepared a certain way. Your body’s used to doing that all camp long, and then you start fighting a different way during the fight against somebody who likes fighting a certain way. You’re playing into their game.”

Jeffery lured the Sharon, Pennsylvania, native into a series of close-range exchanges that forced him out of his comfort zone and strained his reserves.

“He’s used to doing that all the time, fighting in the clinch, doing that dirty boxing, and that wasn’t the game plan at all,” Rosta said. “The game plan was anytime we end up there, circle him, engage, get back to him. You see me do it for the first two and a half, three minutes of the first round, and then I stay in the clinch with him after that. I circle him, but instead of disengaging, I’m throwing uppercuts to the body, just trying to lay on him, s--- like that. I think eventually that led to my shoulders getting a little bit tired. It’s not that my cardio can’t handle that. It’s just the way I prepared for that fight. That probably wasn’t the best way to go about it.”

Consider it a lesson learned for Rosta, who trains under a host of world-class coaches—former World Extreme Cagefighting champion Mike Thomas Brown chief among them—at the famed American Top Team camp in Coconut Creek, Florida.

“I should have just listened to my coaches during the fight, should have followed the game plan,” he said. “Obviously, there are little nuances and stuff I could change throughout camp and what I did in fight week. I think I was a little bit too comfortable during fight week. I wasn’t taking him as seriously as I should have been.”

Novenyi Jr. looks like an intriguing prospect himself at 185 pounds. The 24-year-old Hungarian has finished six of his first seven opponents, four of them via submission. A London Shootfighters rep, he has not fought since he punched out Kamil Oniszczuk a cool 46 seconds into their Bellator 297 pairing more than a year ago.

“I think he’s a good fighter,” Rosta said. “He has power in his hands. He showed that in a few of his fights, but I think I’m just on a different level. He’s good, but I’m just levels ahead of him. I think I’m going to knock him out. I think he’s going to overextend, I think he’s going to get frustrated, I think he’s going to make some mistakes and I think I’m going to knock him out.”

Even with the Professional Fighters League’s recent acquisition of Bellator, Rosta has no plans beyond his forthcoming clash with Novenyi Jr.

“I’m just going to go in there and fight, treat it like any other fight, take him seriously and go out there trying to get a win,” he said. “Then we’ll talk about [the future] after.”