“Miss Dynamite” has her first booking for 2022.
Bellator officials told MMA Fighting that recent flyweight title challenger Denise Kielholtz (6-3) will fight Kana Watanabe (10-1-1) at the upcoming Bellator show on May 13, which takes place at SSE Arena in London.
A featherweight bout between Daniel Weichel (41-13) and Robert Whiteford (16-4) has also been confirmed for the event.
Kielholtz is coming off of a close split decision loss to Juliana Velasquez at Bellator 262 in a bout that was for Velasquez’s flyweight championship. The Dutchwoman was aiming to become the first Bellator fighter to win titles in both its MMA and kickboxing divisions. She claimed the Bellator Kickboxing flyweight in 2017 and won four straight Bellator MMA contests to earn her shot at Velasquez.
Watanabe, a former standout in Japan’s RIZIN and DEEP JEWELS promotions, won her first two Bellator fights before being defeated by first-round TKO by Liz Carmouche at Bellator 261 in June.
A two-time featherweight title challenger, Weichel makes his 16th walk to the Bellator cage with a 10-5 record record for the promotion. He is 2-4 in his past six bouts, which includes a loss to Emmanuel Sanchez in the quarterfinals of the Bellator Featherweight World Grand Prix. In his most recent outing this past November, Weichel lost a unanimous decision to Pedro Carvalho.
Whiteford competes for the first time since Bellator 267 in October when an accidental eye poke from Andrew Fisher in Round 2 rendered him unable to continue, resulting in the bout being ruled a no contest. Prior to that fight, Whiteford won four straight, though his most recent win was a third-round knockout of Sam Sicilia in November 2019.
Bellator London is scheduled to be headlined by a welterweight title fight between undefeated champion Yaroslav Amosov and Michael “Venom” Page.
Alexander K. Lee contributed to this report.
