Mwekassa on world title fight preparations: “I am a soldier on a mission”

Light-heavyweight knockout machine Zack ‘The Black Warrior’ Mwekassa (13-2, 12 KO’s) is pulling no punches when it comes to discussing his rematch with Saulo Cavalari (31-2, 19 KO’s) on Saturday, September 19.

The two are fighting for the vacant GLORY World Light-Heavyweight Championship in the flagship kickboxing match of the Bellator/GLORY ‘Dynamite’ card taking place in San Jose, California.

They first met in the final of the GLORY 18 OKLAHOMA Light-Heavyweight Contender Tournament back in November. Mwekassa had stopped Brian Collette in the semi-finals and Cavalari had decisioned former #1 Danyo Ilunga.

Both are proven finishers and the fight could have gone either way. Things were close after two hard-fought rounds but early in the third Cavalari threw a left head-kick which landed clean and dropped Mwekassa, prompting the referee to wave the fight off.

“Honestly I don’t feel like he beat me, I feel like I beat myself. He didn’t beat me. I think I lost that fight because I lost concentration, that’s it,” says Mwekassa.

“I went into that tournament with no sparring at all. No disrespect to Saulo Cavalari, he is a very good fighter, but I was more worried about Brian Collette going into that tournament than I was about Saulo.”

In fact, Mwekassa thinks Cavalari was the one who was worried.

“He ran away from me! He didn’t run away from Bouzidi, he didn’t run away from Tyrone Spong, but when he faced me he just wanted to come in a little bit, kick, and then run. I think he wanted to wait until he felt I was out of breath,” he says.

“I don’t think he was so magnificent in that fight, I think rather the problem came from me being too comfortable. I had spent every day worried about Brian Collette and his kicks and then in the end I just knocked him out. So then I went into the Saulo fight too confident, with my hands around my waist.

“Also I wasn’t used to this format of having a fight, having the adrenaline rush, then going back to the changing room and waiting until you have to have that adrenaline rush again. I had spent every bit of my adrenaline on Collette. When I went into the fight with Saulo I was very flat, like ‘OK, let’s just get this job done’.

“I think this time around, things are going to be different. I got comfortable and that was it. I didn’t get beaten up, I didn’t even get knocked out. I got knocked down, I got up and the referee stopped the fight… I wasn’t knocked out like the way I knock people out, let’s put it that way.”

To be fair, Cavalari certainly has knocked other opponents out the way that Mwekassa has, leaving them unconscious on the canvas for uncomfortable lengths of time. His GLORY 12 NEW YORK finish of Mourad Bouzidi was a frightening ordeal for fans because Bouzidi took an age to wake up.

That finish was a 2013 ‘Knockout of the Year’ winner but Mwekassa does not seem impressed by what he felt from Cavalari in their fight, aside from the left head-kick which ended it.

“His power? What power!?” he says when asked to comment on that subject. “No, I am sorry… I mean no disrespect, but nobody ever kicked me as hard as Pat Barry and punching-wise… I don’t know what to say.

“In kickboxing terms I find Saulo awkward very awkward, unorthodox, he mixes things in strange ways. It doesn’t look the prettiest but it is effective. He has a scrappy style, but I don’t worry about his power in any way.

“He has learned how to win a fight and he does everything he can to win the fight. To me, I don’t get into a fight to try and win the fight [on points], I get into the fight trying to knock a guy out. That, to me, is winning the fight.”

In his quest towards winning this fight - and the world title - Mwekassa has taken himself to the Netherlands for an extended training camp. There his sparring partners include GLORY middleweights Filip Verlinden and Samir Boukhidous, plus other experienced A-Class fighters from the European circuit.

“Back home in Africa I don’t have anyone to train with apart from some MMA guys. No kickboxers or Muay Thai guys. I went to GLORY 16 with bad training and GLORY 18 with bad training and some pads. Here I get some great training, good technical training and hard sparring,” he says.

“I’ve been training at least twice a day. Two sessions a day officially, but in between them I have been doing some other work on stuff. It can get lonely being here on my own, I must admit, [but] I’m a soldier on a mission.”