It’ll be another home fight for Benson Henderson for his next outing at the Bellator.
The former WEC and UFC lightweight champion will face Islam Mamedov in the Bellator 273 main co-event on January 29 in Phoenix, Arizona. Showtime will air the main map, with preliminaries available for live streaming on YouTube and PlutoTV.
Henderson (28-11) is on the longest losing streak of his career, having lost three games in a row. In August of last year, he was knocked out by Michael Chandler, then relinquished a decision to Jason Jackson at welterweight later in November, and in his only appearance in 2021, he failed against Brent Primus at Bellator 268. in Arizona. His last win was a decision against Myles Jury in 2019, which capped his four-game winning streak.
Mamedov (20-1-1) comes off a rather questionable split-decision victory over Brent Primus at Bellator 263 in July. The Dagestan native has competed in the 2018 and 2019 PFL lightweight tournaments, retiring from the 2018 semi-finals with injury and losing a tiebreaker in the 2019 quarter-finals. His only loss dates back to 2009 against the former contender Bellator ‘Tiger’ Sarnavskiy on the regional stage.
Bellator 273 is featured in a heavyweight title fight between defending champion Ryan Bader and interim champion Valentin Moldavsky. Other fights were also announced alongside Henderson-Mamedov: Henry Corrales vs. Aiden Lee, Sabah Homasi vs. Jaleel Willis, Romero Cotton vs. Dalton Rosta, Sullivan Cauley vs. Ben Parish and Saad Awad vs. Chris Gonzalez.