During Saturday night’s landmark Bellator 248 show held at the Accor Arena in Paris, France, Michael “Venom” Page put in a dominant performance to see off the highly touted prospect Ross Houston. But his biggest critic was clearly not impressed, and decided to come out of the woodwork. The 33-year-old “MVP” (18-1) uncharacteristically moved away from utilising his flashy karate techniques against the Scottish “Hitman” (8-1), with the canvas being much more slippery than expected. Instead, he was more cautious with a traditional boxing stance, leading to a unanimous decision on the judges’ scorecards. After Page had his hand raised in victory inside the cage, he took to the mic and gave a stern warning to Bellator welterweight champion Douglas Lima, the man who put the only blemish on the Briton’s record. “I only want one person, one person has given me my defeat. Wherever you go – middleweight, I’ll find you. Light heavyweight, I’ll find you. Heavyweight, I’ll find you. That’s the rematch I want,” Page said. “Some people are talking like he’s not coming back down to welterweight. If he doesn’t, that means I have to move up. When it comes to MMA, that’s the one fight I do want, that’s the one fight I think about.” Lima instantly took to Twitter to respond. “[Bellator CEO Scott] Coker said [Lorenz] Larkin is next for the title, so why would anyone trying to get that shot take fights with unranked (no disrespect) opponents?” Lima wrote. “Makes me question if they really want this work!” Coker said Larkin is next for the title, so why would anyone trying to get that shot take fights with unranked (no disrespect) opponents? Makes me question if they really want this work! ♂️ — Douglas Lima (@PhenomLima) October 10, 2020 The two met in November 2019 at Bellator 221 in the semi-finals of the US$1 million welterweight grand prix, where Lima scored a second-round knockout in spectacular fashion. Many argue “MVP” was winning that fight up until the moment he was finished. Page is confident the rematch will play out very differently and believes the Brazilian has changed his tune as the possibility of them stepping back into the cage again looms. “I’ve been extremely active as soon as I lost that fight,” Page said. “It does feel like more and more, every fight I have now, he’s more and more trying to undermine what I’m doing. I think it’s simply because he and I both know how close that fight was, how much success I was getting during that fight until that point. “He even admitted it afterwards, how fast I was. He never came up against someone with that kind of speed. He said all these amazing things, had a lot to say about me as an athlete directly after the fight. And now that I want to get back in, I think he doesn’t want that. “He’s almost as worried about what could happen the second time around which is why, near enough every fight, I hear something from him that basically suggests he doesn’t want to make this fight happen again. Which for me means I live in his head, I’m happy. I will keep pushing until we end up back in that cage.” Lima is preoccupied, however, with chasing the middleweight title in a clash with Gegard Mousasi at Bellator 250 on October 29 at the Mohegan Sun Arena, where the promotion has created a bubble dubbed “Fightsphere”. Page is not banking on getting that rematch any time soon, so plans on getting a quick turnaround and erasing a display on Saturday that he was heavily critical of in the post-fight presser. “I’m annoyed by that performance so I kind of want to get back out there and just remind people who ‘MVP’ is,” he said.