GLORY 27 CHICAGO takes place this Friday at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates, Chicago, Illinois. It's a card which promises some real hard-hitting action. Before every event I like to give a breakdown of the matchmaking behind some of the fights and outline some of what I think we can expect to see. So let's take a look at the Chicago highlights.
ARTEM LEVIN vs. SIMON MARCUS
First, the main event. Artem 'The Lion' Levin (51-4-2, 34 KO's) takes on Simon 'Bad Bwoy' Marcus (42-2-2, 24 KO's). This will be their third fight. They fought once under Muay Thai rules, which Marcus won, and then for the first time under kickboxing rules at GLORY 21 SAN DIEGO last year.
There was controversy in that fight. Levin used a lot of clinching tactics to shut Marcus down, but he wasn't progressing the fight. The referee took one point away and Levin was lucky I think that the referee did not take away two points.
We've told Levin and his camp that we don't want to see that amount of clinching again. It is OK when clinching is with a purpose, an active clinch, something aggressive and which pushes the action, but not when a fighter lands a punch or two and then gets into a clinch to shut the fight down and stop the opponent counter-attacking.
In San Diego Marcus was there to fight and in my opinion Levin was blocking the fight. Here we want to see a really good fight, I want to see the old Levin. And I think we will see the old Levin because he went back to Russia to prepare for this one.
For the last one he prepared at an MMA gym in San Diego and I don't think he had the level of training partners there. Training focus is very important. Like I say also about the guys who do kickboxing and MMA, I think they have to be very careful.
I said it about Joe Schilling and I'd say the same now about Rico Verhoeven and Robin van Roosmalen â when you start splitting your focus, it's a risk, you cannot maintain the same level of sharpness as if you are focused only on one discipline. Something will suffer. So I am happy that Levin went home to Russia to train for this one.
Levin is usually very nice to watch, when he plays his game of bobbing, weaving and slipping. That is the kind of thing we want to see. Marcus is hungry for this one. The last fight had a lot of comment afterwards because of the clinching. Marcus and his fans felt he should have won that fight. So there is heat in this rematch.
Schilling was actually top of the list for a title shot but we couldn't get negotiations settled with him on a new contract, so it meant Marcus was able to step up and get the immediate rematch.
THE MIDDLEWEIGHT CONTENDER TOURNAMENT
In the past we did Qualification tournaments with All-American line-ups and the winner would move up the rankings, start fighting bigger names. But some of the participants in this one are in the top six so we said OK, it can be a Contender tournament and the winner can challenge for the title.
Mike Lemaire was originally in the tournament but he moved to the Superfight Series to fight Joe Schilling. We couldn't get an agreement in place to get Schilling in the title fight but we still wanted him on the card and the UFC liked the idea of him headlining the Fight Pass card, he wanted to fight, so that's what we did.
Lemaire said he would take the fight so he dropped out of the tournament and was replaced by a newcomer, reserve fighter Karl Roberson, who got robbed against Jerome Le Banner last year. So we've got Wayne Barrett (5-4, 4 KO's) vs Robert Thomas (8-3, 5 KO's) and Dustin Jacoby (7-6, 6 KO's) vs Karl Roberson (0-1), with the winners going forward to fight each other in the final.
Barrett is riding some losses into this one. I think he lost some confidence. When he fought Dustin Jacoby he looked like he was hesitating and he was not sure what to do. We talked and he asked what I thought he was doing wrong and I said that he moves too much, he needs to step in and fight, let his hands go, use his power.
He is a good boxer, he has knockout power, he has to fight. He can't score if he is moving around too much. If you are a good football player you have to go for goal, else you cannot win, no matter how good your movement is.
Robert Thomas stepped in GLORY and half of his fights have been with the top guys, Artem Levin and Joe Schilling. He lost decisions to those guys but he was impressive in how he performed, so he deserves to be in this tournament and actually in my opinion, he is underestimated. He could be the guy who wins the tournament.
Dustin Jacoby is another guy who has experienced hard times and has suffered in the ring, he could also be a winner. Roberson is a guy nobody really knows, he is new to kickboxing as a professional, but he had a great performance against Jerome Le Banner and the only reason he didn't win by stoppage was the French referee and judges not playing fair.
He was the tournament reserve fighter so when Lemaire was taken out of the line-up, he came in. Roberson is a dark horse; nobody really knows him but his coaches say he is going to be a serious force. This one is predicted to be a war.
