Lorenz Larkin is looking forward to fighting at home for the first time since he left the regional MMA scene seven years ago.
Fighting out of Riverside, California, Larkin (18-7) is slated to headline Bellator 193 against Fernando Gonzalez on Friday night in nearby Temecula. It will be Larkin's first appearance in Southern California since April 2011.
But while the location for his third Bellator fight is perfect, the circumstances are not. Since signing with the promotion last year, Larkin is 0-2 -- with losses to then-champion Douglas Lima and Paul Daley.
"I never would have thought my first two fights in Bellator could have gone like that," Larkin told ESPN. "I just want to redeem myself."
Although Larkin is unhappy with the results, he also admits he hasn't taken much away from his last two fights.
Sure, there were small adjustments he could have made in the loss to Lima, but nothing to specifically hone in on. And the fight against Daley changed on a dime -- one punch stunned Larkin, another ended his night.
"It's frustrating because you want to pull things and go, 'OK, I should have done this, this and this,'" Larkin said. "But it literally came down to, I ducked under a spinning backfist and was a couple centimeters not low enough. It skimmed my head, rocked me and left me open for a hook."
Despite the two setbacks, Larkin remains confident he can make the kind of noise Bellator had in mind when it signed him as a free agent.
He knows he was competitive with Lima (29-7), who just surrendered the Bellator title to Rory MacDonald last weekend at Bellator 192. Larkin believes Lima should have won that fight after badly hurting MacDonald's legs, but didn't take advantage of it.
"He showed his fight IQ is a little off," Larkin said. "He had that fight and he made dumb mistakes not to capture it. He could have won in great fashion. And it's not even like I thought he had to do something crazy. Just bounce around a little bit and make Rory chase him.
"He could have breezed through the later rounds, but just decided ... I don't know. I don't know."
MacDonald (20-4) will certainly garner plenty of interest as the 170-pound division's new champion, but Larkin says he's focused on getting the job done against Gonzalez this weekend -- and then he wants to even the score against Daley.
"He won that fight, and kudos to him, but he gave me his word we can run it back and that's what I intend on doing," Larkin said. "I want that fight. And after that fight, I'm looking at whatever. But that's a fight I'm trying to get back to."