After winning Bellator's Season 2 lightweight tournament and challenging Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title, Curran will look to become the first Bellator fighter to win tournaments in two different weight classes as he enters Bellator's Summer Series featherweight tournament Saturday at Bellator 46, facing Luis Palomino in a quarterfinal bout in Hollywood, Fla.
Curran spoke with us Wednesday afternoon for this afternoon's edition of Bloody Elbow Radio. We discussed how his career would be impacted by the drop in weight.
"Before I did the (lightweight) tournament, I was fighting at 145," Curran said. "I was a replacement fighter going into the tournament at 155, so I just decided to do it, see how it went and I ended up winning it. Now I get a chance to go back down to my original weight class."
The run at 155 proved to be extremely beneficial for Curran. He took home the $100,000 prize as tournament champion and fought Alvarez for the lightweight championship in the main event of Bellator 39 in April, a fight he lost by unanimous decision when everyone was expecting him to get eaten alive. He said the entire run gave him confidence in his game.
"Absolutely, especially lasting against Eddie Alvarez," Curran said. "I stood with some of the best lightweights in the world and now I'm dropping down to 145, and I'm going to be a much bigger '45, I feel. I feel like I have to advantage now."
After being heavier for about a year, Curran needed to be smart about cutting the weight for this fight. He said, as of Wednesday, he was about 10 pounds over and noted he's feeling good and "everything's on track."
"You have to time it out to when you have to weigh," he said. "I eat pretty clean, pretty healthy, so I about two weeks out I just started cutting my portions down to small amounts and kept up my training and day-by-day, two to three pounds are going off and I just have to time it right to where I weigh in."
Curran, though, is still young. At just 23 years old, it's anybody's guess on how his body will continue to grow. That said, he could be moving back to lightweight before all is said and done.
"That's always a possibility if things don't work out at 145," Curran said. "In the future I might want to go back to 155. I might not be able to make the cut to 145 down the road, so anything can happen. My plan right now is to stay at '45 and be here as long as possible."
You can hear the complete interview with Curran on today's edition of Bloody Elbow Radio.