Barrett: “Schilling shouldn’t have been able to touch me”

Wayne Barrett is a big hitter from The Big Apple.

The New York native has won Golden Gloves amateur boxing championships and has now battled his way into contender status in the GLORY World Series middleweight division.

Next month, on Saturday June 21, he will be one of eight top middleweight kickboxers taking part in the LAST MAN STANDING one-night tournament. The GLORY Middleweight Championship is on the line.

Barrett’s professional record often catches people out, consisting of just four fights and four wins, three by KO. But his amateur record in both kickboxing and boxing was impeccable. Barrett brings a lot of experience to the ring, his record just doesn’t show it.

And he takes pleasure in his record being deceptive. He’s very much a fighter who believes in angles, movement and nuance. As the great general Sun Tzu wrote over two thousand years ago, ‘Deception is the art of war’ - take your eyes off Barrett at your peril.

Barrett spoke to GLORY HQ on the phone from his Empire State base.

"I’ve been low key lately man! Just been training and getting better. I wasn’t too impressed with my last performance so I have just been working on some things that showed up," he says.

"Honestly, I shouldn’t have got touched by Joe Schilling [at GLORY 12 in November]. He wasn’t that great.

"I had some injuries and stuff… well, every fighter has injuries. I just wasn’t myself that night and I was disappointed in myself. I am ready to correct those mistakes and show everybody how that fight should have looked."

Barrett may have been disappointed in himself but the fans weren’t.

The rivalry between Schilling (16-5, 10 KO’s) and Barrett (4-0, 3 KO’s) is nuanced - both wish to be the top US and world middleweight, they have a West Coast/East Coast dynamic - and the fight turned out to be the heated grudge match fans wanted.

And while Barrett claims that he isn’t into feuding or playing up to their coastal loyalties, the fact he is describing Schilling as "not that great" is only adding fuel to the fire. You cannot imagine Schilling will feel pleased on reading the above words, nor some of the ones below.

"Hey, I’m down for anything that helps the sport of kickboxing and if a rivalry between myself and Joe Schilling is one of those things then I am all for it," says Barrett, clearly grinning from ear to ear.  "The fans love a good rivalry so why not? It fires them up and it fires us up."

That said, Barrett wants to point out that he does give Schilling "a lot of respect… He helped my game - he was the first guy who ever knocked me down in my amateur or pro career, so I tip my hat."

Having beaten Artem Levin (47-4-1, 33 KO’s) in the final to win the four-man middleweight tournament at GLORY 10 LOS ANGELES in September last year, Schilling is one of the favorites to win the LAST MAN STANDING kumite next month.

"Joe does have a chance in this tournament," Barrett concedes, though he does have a caveat: "We’ll see how the brackets work out - we could meet in the final. If we meet along the way, I’ll win.

"I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth now, but if this tournament plays out the way I envision it then it should be an easy night for me.”

The tournament line-up consists of: Artem Levin (RUS), Joe Schilling (USA), Wayne Barrett (USA), Alex Pereira (BRA), Filip Verlinden (BEL), Bogdan Stoica (ROM), Simon Marcus (CAN), and Melvin Manhoef (NED).

Also on the LAST MAN STANDING pay-per-view:

The World Heavyweight Championship belt will be contested by Daniel Ghita (50-10-0, 39 KO’s) and Rico Verhoeven (43-9-0, 10 KO’s) and welterweight champion Marc De Bonte (87-11-1, 28 KO’s) will defend his strap against ‘Bazooka’ Joe Valtellini (11-2-0, 10 KO’s) of Toronto, Canada. LAST MAN STANDING is priced at $34.95