'Robbed' against Mousasi, Shlemenko also wants 5-round non-title Bellator headliners

Count Alexander Shlemenko among those who would like to see Bellator adopt five-round fights for non-title Bellator headliners.

Granted, he’s a bit of a biased party.

This past Friday at Bellator 185, Shlemenko (56-10 MMA, 12-4 BMMA) suffered a narrow unanimous-decision loss to to big-show vet Gegard Mousasi (43-6-2 MMA, 1-0 BMMA) in the Spike-televised headliner at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn.

“I would like to say Gegard Mousasi is a very strong, very experienced fighter,” Shlemenko told MMAjunkie Radio through an interpreter. “That’s why it was really difficult to finish him, to knock him out. But I still think that I beat him and I got robbed by this judges’ decision.”

He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Shlemenko, whose manager said he plans to appeal the loss, was a major underdog to 8-1 favorite Mousasi, who made his promotional debut following a long run with the UFC and Strikeforce. After the fight, folks throughout the industry panned the decision.

Shlemenko heard from many of them.

“(Bellator commentator) Jimmy Smith, even during the fight, he gave me the victory, 29-28, and we agree with that,” he said.

After the fight, Bellator President Scott Coker mentioned the possibility of Bellator scheduling its non-title headliners for five rounds, which the UFC currently does.

Shlemenko, though, said he expressed his support for the idea even before the controversial decision, which saw seven of 11 media outlets score it for the 33-year-old Russian, via MMADecisions.com.

“In one of the interviews prior to my fight with Gegard, I said I wanted this fight to be a five-round fight,” Shlemenko said. “But unfortunately, Bellator doesn’t have such a rule. Their main events are just three rounds if it’s not a title fight. So I think yes, I would love to fight in five-round fights.

“I think it would be a great idea if Bellator would have main events of five rounds, and if this fight against Gegard was a five-round fight, I’m quite confident Gegard wouldn’t have survived. He wouldn’t have seen the end of the fight.”

For complete coverage of Bellator 185, check out the MMA Events section of the site.

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