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Bellator champion Daniel Straus: Don't call it a redemption story

Daniel Straus recounts his hardships in MMA personal life in Doug Merlino's Beast.

The last thing that newly crowned Bellator Featherweight Champion Daniel Straus wants to be viewed as is a story of redemption. That was the case when he made his debut in Bellator MMA as a 26-year-old looking to shed the label of a man overcoming his past.

"Straus had refused to play along. Prison was not only a part of his life he didn't want to revisit, but he hate the thought of some kid watching and thinking it might be okay to mess up, get locked up, and think you would come out with a redemption story," Doug Merlino says in his book Beast.