“It feels like every event produces at least one new contender for the Fight of the Year 2014 nominations list,” said Cor Hemmers, GLORY matchmaker and Head of Talent
“In this tournament alone we got two nominees I think.”
In the final of the Featherweight Contender Tournament, Gabriel Varga and Shane Oblonsky staked their claim with a three-round war which had to be seen to be believed.
Both had gotten past difficult opponents in the semi-finals to take their spot in the tournament grand final, so they were both simultaneously warmed-up and carrying a few dents into battle.
Oblonsky’s fight in the semis was a scrappy affair while Varga’s was pure technical domination, and it looked like Varga was going to repeat that in the first half of round one with Oblonsky; he was sharp.
Then he got caught with an Oblonsky power-punch and suddenly the fight was on. Oblonsky pressed his advantage and had Varga backing up, then walked onto a shot from the Canadian and the tide turned again.
The speed and savagery of the fight did nothing to detract from the technicality of it. On the contrary, it was as if both knew they were part of something epic and they wanted their performance to live up to that. This is a fight they will look back on with pride for decades to come.
Oblonsky was making his GLORY debut in this tournament and he rose to the occasion. But the skill and experience of Varga began to tell.
The Canadian got into his flow and started racking points up, but then Oblonsky would rally and force him either onto the defensive or into furious gritty exchanges which looked like they might end the fight.
Things went at a frantic pace until the very final bell. Oblonsky had given a good account of himself but the result seemed obvious. The judges agreed; two had it 30-27 for the Canadian while the other had it 29-28 for him, having given one round to Oblonsky.
Oblonksy found himself in the final after a war with the incredibly game Marcus ‘Baiano’ Vinicius of Brazil.
Vinicius looked undersized next to Oblonsky, one of the division’s taller fighters. But as the saying goes, it is not the size of the dog in the fight which counts, rather the size of the fight of the dog.
Oblonsky’s own fighting style played right into Vinicius’ hands. In his pre-fight interviews he revealed how he likes to “get in there and just bang” and he quickly proved that wasn’t an exaggeration.
His reach advantage hardly came into play. This was a phone-booth fight which could have taken place in a ring a quarter of the size. Oblonsky’s hit power 1-2 combinations while Vinicius ducked and rolled and came up looking to take his head off with explosive hooks.
The crowd were on the edge of their seats as the fight looked like it could end at either moment. Oblonsky scored a knockdown in the first, though Vinicius disputed the call, but in the second they were trading massive blows with abandon, giving and taking power-strikes which would have felled lesser fighters.
When Oblonsky dropped Vinicius again in the third it only made the Brazilian redouble his efforts to take the Californian out. What was already a thrilling war clicked up a gear, Oblonsky looking to seal the deal with a finish and Vinicius knowing he needed a KO in order not to lose on points.
Oblonsky got there first; a second knockdown put the win in the bag and set the crowd - many of them his friends, family and training partners - on fire.
Varga faced Yodkhunpon Sitmonchai in the opening fight of the night.
Both fighters brought everything they had to this encounter and the usual feeling-out process was dispensed with in favor of immediate engagement in the middle of the ring.
Sitmonchai is a bright young talent with a wealth of tricks at his disposal but, following initial hard exchanges to set the tone of the fight, he ended up receiving hard lessons from Varga over the course of nine minutes.
Varga’s use of his reach advantage was pure mastery; he would dart in, pressure Yodkhunpon then take a slight step back and leave the Thai swinging at air as he attempted to counter.
Often, as he stepped back, Varga would flick his left leg up in a ‘fade-away’ head kick, landing while keeping his own head safely out of trouble.
Varga’s trickiness didn’t end there. Misdirection, huge body shots and chain-hitting came in an endless flow. He hit several spinning heel kicks and went for the spinning back-fist a few times, though Yodkhunpon read those latter efforts and prevented them landing.
Yodkhunpon’s own combination work was nice when he could solve the distance problem. The Sitmonchai team style includes a lot of low kicks - rare for Thai fighters - and Varga’s lead leg was a nice shade of purple by round two.
Frustration was etched all over Yodkhunpon’s face in the third as Varga hit near-perfect rhythm in his work. Brief successes of his own aside, Yodkhunpon mostly found himself covering up and taking punishment as Varga cruised to a solid decision win and booked himself a place in the final.
