It’s been a frustrating year for Corey Anderson outside of winning the vacant Bellator light heavyweight title back in March.

While that moment allowed him to achieve a lifelong dream to hold a championship belt, the next nine months that followed didn’t provide a title defense or any kind of fight as he remained on the sidelines just waiting for the PFL or Bellator to book his next bout. After learning that old viral Vadim Nemkov was returning in January at a PFL card in Dubai and his original opponent Ante Delija was injured, Anderson jumped at the chance to grab that opportunity even if it meant moving up to heavyweight.

“I reached out to Bellator and Mike Kogan right then and I was like yo, if this is true, I want this fight,” Anderson told MMA Fighting. “They said [Ante Delija is] hurt. [Bellator] said ‘we haven’t heard nothing about it’ and then later on they were like ‘I guess he is hurt, I don’t know if he’ll take the fight or what not but I’ll see, I’ll do what I can for you, I know you really want this fight, I’ll do my best.’

“This ain’t about money for me. We’ve got to settle this beef. We’ve got to figure out the true best. We’re 1-1, we both know each other’s games, let’s get a full camp in and let’s get it going.”

The first meeting saw Anderson dominate Nemkov for the majority of the fight but then an accidental clash of heads resulted in the matchup being declared a no-contest. In the rematch, Nemkov made the necessary adjustments and put on a nearly shutout performance to beat Anderson by unanimous decision.

Anderson revealed Bellator actually had plans to book the trilogy back in 2023 but that’s around the same time Nemkov decided he was leaving the 205-pound division to pursue fights at heavyweight.

But Anderson was more than happy to pack on a few pounds to finally settle the score with Nemkov and he was over the moon to hear his dream fight was actually going to happen after his manager Ali Abdelaziz shared the news with him.

Even Anderson was in disbelief.

“I called Bellator and said ‘hey, Ali just called me and said they accepted the fight, is he pulling my chain? Is he just talking or is he for real?” Anderson recounted. “[Bellator] said ‘no, we really got it done. We were surprised, too, they agreed to the fight.’ For real.”

With that, Anderson started making plans around the holidays so he could travel from his home in Indiana out to Las Vegas to start his training camp before then moving back out east to finish things up in New Jersey.

After arriving in Las Vegas to begin working with coach Eric Nicksick at Xtreme Couture, Anderson started hearing rumors that perhaps Nemkov wasn’t actually going to fight him again.

Anderson saw an interview translated from Russian where Nemkov denied even being offered the fight but he made a call to PFL and Bellator executives, who once again assured him everything was good to go for January.

Then the bottom fell out.

“Thursday night, getting my last workout in before I go to dinner, I pick up my phone, my phone goes off and it says ‘he’s doing it again,’” Anderson said. “What do you mean he’s doing it again? ‘Now he doesn’t want to fight again, he says he needs more time to prepare for you, you’re too tough an opponent to prepare for on short notice.’

“On short notice? It’s seven or eight weeks out, we fought twice, what are you talking about?”

Anderson says Bellator officials told him to continue training and they would work on Nemkov with hopes of getting the fight finalized. Barely 48 hours later, Anderson got the news he didn’t want to hear.

“I wake up Saturday morning getting ready to go to sparring at 7:30 and my phone had an email ‘just go ahead and scratch it, we’ve been going at him all day, about 24 hours and he’s giving a hard no,’” Anderson relayed. “He wants another opponent. He doesn’t want you. He’ll take another opponent, he wants to stay on the card.’

“At first I was like he doesn’t want to stay on the card at all and [they said] ‘he asked to stay on the card, he really wants to fight — he just doesn’t want to fight you.’ I’m looking at the phone like what? This can’t be right. No way he said that. [Bellator] said ‘no, he literally said he wants to fight, he just doesn’t want to fight Corey Anderson this fight.’ So I was like so it’s over? Yeah, it’s over.”

So Anderson packed up everything and prepared for a trip home with no indication about when he might fight again outside of PFL and Bellator officials assuring him he would fight sooner than later.

While getting active again is definitely important to Anderson, he really wanted the Nemkov fight more than anything else and now he’s beginning to realize that trilogy is probably never going to happen.

“I told you a while ago before he moved to heavyweight, I believe he was scared of me,” Anderson said. “Now I know for a fact. I don’t have to believe it. I don’t have to think it. Now I know. This guy is scared. There’s no reason why you would ask for another opponent and you didn’t want to fight me. It is what it is.

“Dot the I’s, cross the T’s, it’s right there. He doesn’t want to fight me. He scared to fight me. You got scared. It was time to go to the altar, you got cold feet and ran. That’s all right. I’ll take it. I get it, you’re scared of me. Thank you.”

As of now, Anderson doesn’t know when he’ll fight again but he’s still hoping for sometime in early 2025. The only thing Anderson can say for certain after a rotten end to what started out as a great year for him is that he’s effectively moved on from the Nemkov fight, especially if rumors are true that the Russian is competing on the final fight of his current deal.

“I feel like after this, he’ll probably never take the opportunity to fight me again,” Anderson said about Nemkov. “One, he knew I wanted the fight so that’s on him, he’ll finish [his contract] on the high note. We’ll never do the trilogy. Never a chance of me beating him again. Two, I just feel like if it keeps coming, he’s going to find another way out of it.

“Dec. 22 will be the longest I’ve been out, which is nine months. The longest before that was before the Johnny Walker fight. It’s very frustrating, especially getting older. Ya’ll keep telling me we’re going to get a fight booked but I’m training everyday, twice a day, and it’s not like I’m a 20 some year old kid. I’m 35. The body doesn’t heal the same. It’s kind of frustrating. But at the same time, I put my faith in God, he’s going to take care of it at the end of the day.”