HONOLULU — Tywan Claxton wasn’t just happy to get the victory Friday night at Bellator 235. He was also glad to show how far he’s progressed as a competitor.
Claxton (6-1 MMA, 6-1 BMMA) earned a unanimous decision in a main-card featherweight bout against Braydon Akeo (3-1 MMA, 3-1 BMMA) at Neal S. Blaisdell Center, winning with across-the-board scores of 30-27. It was a solid rebound from his first career loss to Emmanuel Sanchez in September.
But Claxton, a blue-chipper who was in just his seventh pro fight, fully utilized his 15 minutes in the cage to show off all he can do.
“You’ve seen how calm I was on my feet,” Claxton told reporters, including MMA Junkie, backstage after his fight. “You saw a variety of strikes. You saw me throw some spinning (expletive) in there today, man. C’mon, you saw me throw some spinning (expletive), right? So that just shows you the evolution. You saw some boxing. You saw some kickboxing, some leg kicks. You saw some taekwondo. You saw some elbows, you saw some knees. We gettin’ there.”
This was important, because the Cleveland native was coming off what could have been a demoralizing loss to Sanchez in the opening round of the Bellator featherweight grand prix.
Claxton, who also works as a coder, doesn’t regret taking the huge step up in competition in Sanchez, given the winner of the Bellator tournament gets $1 million. But with that experience out of the way, he doesn’t see himself in any rush to get back to fighting the top guys just for its own sake.
“I think we continue to fight guys that are my experience level,” Claxton said. “Just because I dominate, that means I gotta go and fight guys who fought for the world title? You know? I have a goal. My goal is to grow like this with MMA. And continue to grow like this with coding. And I’ll decide if I want to fight or if I want to code. They’re both slow processes, and if you put a million dollars in my face damn right I”m going to go fight anybody. You put what I’m getting paid? We build. We fight guys with our experience.”
So from here on out, Claxton will continue to fight at his own pace and continue building his skills. Once he’s where he wants to be, then he’ll give the big dogs another go.
“Go and look at who everybody has fought (in the tournament). From (Adam) Borics to (A.J.) McKee, go and look at everyone they’ve fought,” Claxton said. “Who’s Tywan Claxton fought? I ain’t the smartest guy in the world, but we know how to debug some (expletive), and that just wasn’t it. We know that ain’t the route. We going to use another server.”
