For Ilay Barzilay, there was no gimmick surrounding his grappling match against Bryce Mitchell, which was scheduled for Karate Combat 53 and later cancelled.
Born and raised in Israel, the 23-year-old prospect jumped at the chance to face Mitchell after the UFC featherweight made abhorrent comments on his podcast defending Adolf Hitler and proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened. After his podcast went public, UFC CEO Dana White called Mitchell’s comments “beyond disgusting” and added “out of all the dumb, ignorant shit I’ve heard in my life, this has to be the dumbest and most ignorant.”
Barzilay immediately took to Instagram to blast Mitchell for the comments, which got Karate Combat’s attention, but plans for their grappling match this past Friday fell apart after the Arkansas native booked a showdown against Jean Silva at UFC 314 in Miami in April.
“I had one week notice to this fight,” Barzilay told MMA Fighting. “I worked my ass off during this week. I improved my grappling so much because I didn’t want to disappoint. I wanted to beat him. I was going there to beat him and to submit him. I put a lot of effort into it. Now everything is mixed up. I’m disappointed, angry, everything is mixed up.”
While Mitchell certainly isn’t the first notable person to provide offensive commentary regarding the atrocities carried out by Hitler during World War II, Barzilay saw this as an opportunity to make an example out of him.
As much as Mitchell’s statements angered a wide variety of people, Barzilay says it hit too close to home for him, which is why he was so adamant about getting his revenge on the mats.
“He said some horrific things,” Barzilay said. “I’ll tell you something — my grandmother, she’s a Holocaust survivor and my grandfather lost all of his family during the Holocaust. What he said, it’s personal. I lost family because of the holocaust. My grandmother is still alive and she’s still telling me stories about the Holocaust. He said a lot of stuff and I did take it personally.”
When he got word that Mitchell had dropped out of their grappling match, Barzilay was understandably devastated and disappointed. If there’s a bright side to the entire ordeal, it’s that Barzilay may still get the chance to live vicariously through Silva, his friend and training partner. Barzilay is a member of the Fighting Nerds team in Brazil where he routinely trains alongside Silva.
As much as Barzilay believes Mitchell still could have shown up for the grappling match on Friday and then fought for the UFC in April, he’s trusting that Silva will make him pay for everything that’s been said.
“You know for Jean, it’s an easy way to the top 15,” Barzilay said. “Jean is a future champion. I didn’t train with no one at Jean’s level in this weight class. He’s a different level. He will beat Bryce very easily.
“Maybe the UFC didn’t like [him doing the grappling match]. That’s an option. I do believe he was worried about the grappling match. Maybe he was worried about me breaking the rules and start punching him.”
With a 6-0 record and currently competing in the LFA, the regional promotion famous for sending fighters to the UFC, Barzilay expects he’ll join many of his Fighting Nerds teammates in the promotion sooner rather than later.
More than anything, he just hopes there’s something left of Mitchell after Silva gets done with him because he’s not going to stop chasing that fight until he finally settles the score.
“Just let me fight the guy,” Barzilay said. “It doesn’t matter. Karate Combat, UFC, let’s do it in a gym. I just want to test myself again him. I want to fight this guy.
“This was personal 100 percent. If he’s talking about the Holocaust, he’s talking about my family. Because my family died in the Holocaust. They were murdered during the Holocaust. My grandmother survived the Holocaust. It’s personal then. For me, it sounds good. UFC debut against Bryce Mitchell, that sounds very good.”
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