ROSEMONT, Ill. – Neiman Gracie and Javier Torres’ Bellator 198 fight lasted eight minutes and 18 seconds, before Gracie was able to find the arm-triangle choke that ended it.

Well – the official fight, anyway. As Gracie told reporters afterward, there was almost another one that took place before the two welterweights even took to the cage for the Paramount-televised main card bout at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill.

“We were about to walk out, and he was talking some (expletive), and I kind of lost my head and jumped into him and people broke (it) out,” Gracie said. “But it was just two minutes for us to fight; we didn’t need to do it back there.”

Was that maybe just an attempt by Torres (10-4 MMA, 0-1 BMMA) to mess with Gracie’s (8-0 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) head? His coaches, Gracie said, later told him that may very well have been the case. But it’s going to take a little more than that to throw off someone who’s carried a very specific last name through life.

“Being a Gracie, when I used to go to school, people were always trying to get in my head, always picked fights with me.” Gracie said. “And it never went good for them.”

It didn’t go to well for Torres, either, whose gameness wasn’t enough to keep him from becoming the seventh submission victim on Gracie’s unbeaten eight-fight record. Torres had a four-fight winning streak snapped and his Bellator debut spoiled, while Gracie once more made the best of his time in the promotion’s main-card spotlight.

Gracie has reasons to feel great about his night. He says he felt very relaxed out there – and didn’t really mind getting some extra cage time when the fight went into a second round. He also remains confident that a title shot is going to come “soon.”

As for that callout he’d warned us about during a press conference on Thursday? Well, Gracie clarifies, it isn’t really a callout – it’s more like a few ideas. There are, in fact, “many guys” that he’d like to fight. They could either mean that step-up that he’d talked about before, or names that stand out for different reasons.

“Guys that represent their families in Bellator, like me,” Gracie said. “Maybe like Kimbo Slice’s son (Kevin Ferguson Jr.), Randy Couture’s son (Ryan Couture), I think it’d be some cool matches. Why not make that happen?”

To hear from Gracie, check out the video above.

And for complete coverage of Bellator 198, check out the MMA Events section of the site.