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Hisaki Kato was focused on KO at Bellator 139 following Joe Schilling trash talk (MMATorch Interview)
Jul 4, 2015 - 9:35:14 AM Hisaki Kato was focused on KO at Bellator 139 following Joe Schilling trash talk (MMATorch Interview)

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Hisaki Kato made an emphatic entrance into Bellator last week, knocking out Joe Schilling with a superman punch in one of the best highlight-reel finishes of the year.

The win was even sweeter for the Japanese-Frenchman after some trash talking by Schilling during the week, and gave him the breakout victory for which he was hoping.

"During the first round he was insulting me, and he was really not respecting me the day before," Kato said in a conversation with MMATorch. "I think he tried to get in my head to make the fight easier for him, but I was aware of it. So it didn't disturb me. He's missing a really good part of the martial artist aspect, and that's to be a good man and to be respectful, all these views that I really care about.

"I said during the weigh-in [I wanted a star making performance], because he was already not respectful, so I said big words too, like I'm going to knock him out. That's really what I wanted, and what I was focusing on, and I'm lucky because I had it during the fight, so yeah I'm really happy with my performance."

Kato, a kudo practitioner who continues to compete in that karate offshoot in Japan, was comfortable as the underdog coming in. He says he studied Schilling well in the lead up to the fight, and expected he may have an opening for that superman punch.

"I was aware that I was the underdog. It was no problem for me," Kato said. "Actually I was just really glad to have a chance to make my debut in Bellator... I studied [his style] a lot, and I studied all of the differences between his kickboxing fights and MMA fights to know what was his typical part to [anticipate] in the fight.

"One of the things that I noticed when I was studying him was that he was not really moving [his head] a lot. I knew I could touch him really hard with these kinds of techniques, so that's why I was actually training the superman punch for that advantage."