Joe ‘Stitch Em Up’ Schilling (19-6, 11 KO’s) and Jason ‘Psycho’ Wilnis (25-5-1, 7 KO’s) are on collision course in the main event of this Friday’s GLORY 24 DENVER card live on Spike TV.
Schilling is already in line for a middleweight title shot and was supposed to be facing Russian champion Artem ‘The Lion’ Levin on Friday in a trilogy rubber-match. Levin withdrew because of injury and that led Wilnis to step in on short notice with the chance to steal Schilling’s contender status.
New York middleweight Wayne Barrett is also on this Friday’s card, facing Dustin Jacoby in the co-headline fight. He has fought Schilling (1-1 against each other) and Wilnis (0-1), so knows both fighters quite well, which makes him perfectly placed to offer some well-informed opinion on the match.
“Anything can happen. Knowing Joe, he’s a smart dude, I think there will be things he has seen, holes in Wilnis’ game,” he says.
“If you look at the third round of my fight with Wilnis you can see he has a problem with knees to the body, people will pick up on that. I knew that before I fought him and I don’t know why I waited to the third round to use it.
“He holds his guard so close and tight to his body that he can’t really defend against knees. I think Joe knows that and he has got some solid knees, he dropped me with one at Madison Square Garden. I think Joe will play at distance and use knees when Wilnis tries to close distance.
“But if Joe is lazy or sloppy Wilnis can chop those legs up. I think he is more powerful than Joe is expecting. But overall I think Joe’s movement will be too much for him, I expect him to control the fight and stop Wilnis closing the distance.”
GLORY 24 DENVER takes place this Friday at the Magness Arena, Denver, Colorado and airs live in the US on Spike TV at 11pm ET/9pm MT.
The card also features a four-man Heavyweight Contender tournament with Benjamin Adegbuyi, Ben Edwards, Jahfarr Wilnis and Mladen Brestovac battling it out for the chance to challenge Rico Verhoeven for his World Heavyweight Championship at GLORY 26 AMSTERDAM on December.
