The Transition Story for Jake Hager from WWE to Bellator MMA: Nearly Complete
Are you a wrestling fan? Do you wait for the wrestling season to start? It doesn’t matter who is your favourite fighter, we are sure you would love to watch some great WWE matches.
You may even love to place MMA bets with Betway, if you want. It is easy, fun and it takes only a few seconds. However, if you are keen to know about the WWE world, you would have heard about the transition story of Jake Hager.
The past few years have shown us that the difference between Mixed Martial Arts and Professional Wrestling has been waning. Many stars from both the sports have crossed on to the other game and vice versa. Some of the known names include Ronda Rousey, CM Punk and more.
The latest in line for this transition is Jake Hager who has been a sports entertainer for over a decade, thirteen years to be precise. He is better known as Jack Swagger in the world of WWE.
Now that he is all set to debut at Bellator 214, a part of the Fedor Emelianenko-Ryan Bader Heavyweight World Grand Prix final that is to take place at LA, we know that as a student at the University of Oklahoma he was into both football and wrestling. He also set a record at University as the person with the most pins in one season.
Although he wasn’t sure about his future career, he believed MMA to be a part of his life.
Iceman and Tito made his interest in MMA grow, but he still pursued a career in professional wrestling.
Jim Ross first came across Hager and trained and backed him till he ultimately became the World Champion. In spite of the rollercoaster ride that was his journey at WWE, Hager loved being there, but the thoughts of MMA had started taking root in his psyche.
Hager himself said that once Danny Rubenstein who was his teammate in college became an MMA manager, he really could end up seeing a future in the sport. But it was due to his professional commitments with the WWE that stopped him from jumping into MMA head on.
However, by the March of 2017, Hager had started his training for Mixed Martial Arts and fast-forward to a few more months, and he had his contract with the Bellator ironclad. The last twenty odd months have seen Hager putting in a lot of effort to become a more through fighter who has the potential to make it big in the next stage of his career: Mixed Martial Arts.
While there has been a lot of questions about the soundness of his decision to switch careers at this age- he is 36- he believes that he can handle the pressure as well as the next person. He also says that he feels fortunate to see where this new chapter leads him to.
It will be interesting to see whether this will be another successful transition or whether he will ultimately fail to reach the benchmark he has set for his career.
