Breakdown: Schilling reflects on his LAST MAN STANDING fights

Joe Schilling (18-6, 11 KO’s) looks back on last weekend’s GLORY LAST MAN STANDING tournament with a mixture of pride and rueful disappointment.

Pride because his win over Simon Marcus (39-1-1, 24 KO’s) was a Fight of the Year contender in which both laid everything on the line and fought as hard as is humanly possible.

Disappointment because he didn’t win the tournament outright. He thinks his inability to beat (Artem Levin 50-4-1, 33 KO’s) in the final was at least in part because of his quarter-final war with Marcus.

“I am really proud of my performance in the tournament. I showed a lot of heart and was able to showcase some of the things that I have been working on,” he says.

“I am still disappointed that I lost, I am not a good loser, and there are still things that I need to work on. But overall I am proud of my performance and I got an insane amount of love from the crowd.

“I am not the type normally to come out blowing kisses to the crowd and waving but it was such an amazing feeling I had to thank them in some way.

“With Levin I just didn’t have the weapons. I couldn’t kick, my legs were too messed up, my knees were swollen up, I couldn’t bounce around, I didn’t have a whole lot of energy left.

“So I feel I lost that fight based on how the tournament worked out rather than any lack of skill on my part.”

The war with Marcus was an all-out war from start to finish. It was close too; at the end of the third round the judges had it as a draw and ordered an extra round.

They poured it on each other. Twenty seconds from the end Schilling was able to score a knockout with a right hook as Marcus stepped in on him.

Schilling then faced his rival Wayne Barrett (5-1, 4 KO’s) in the semi-final and had another close fight. He won a decision but felt lucky to do so. When he arrived in the final against Levin he looked like he had been in a car crash whereas the Russian was unmarked.

“People don’t realize how much pain you are in when you have one fight, go in the back and come out ten minutes later for another one. You have to walk back out and mentally prepare yourself again, get amped up,” he says.

“I was trying to do that for the Wayne Barrett fight but I had a terrible performance against him in my last fight and that was another loss that I took poorly. So it was important that I fight smart. I tried to change my style again for that fight.

“Wayne is more of a counter-attack guy and he has a very awkward style. It is hard to pick up his timing and know what he is going to do - sometimes I think he doesn’t know what he is going to do.

“He is definitely a waiter, he likes to wait on you to rush forward then he steps out, switches stance and catches you with one of those long hooks. So with this fight I figured ‘OK, I am going to out-wait him and make him come forward.’

“And I figured, ‘He’s doing weird stuff and when he does it messes with my head so I am going to do weird stuff back and mess with his.’

“That was why I did that horrible cartwheel kick. Not my proudest moment but I think I threw Wayne off. I also landed a jumping scissor kick which I have never thrown in my life. I was just trying different things to try to offset his confidence.”

Schilling is refreshingly honest when it comes to the outcome of the fight and the tough job the judges had in scoring it.

“I didn’t know who won the fight. I felt that he had won just because I was so frustrated the whole time. It was a different style for me and actually I don’t think either of us was landing that much,2 he admits.

“I asked him after the fight who he thought won and he said he thought he won 29-28. My coaches didn’t feel that way and his coaches were standing there and they didn’t say he got robbed. I asked the commissioners in the back as well and they said it was a close fight and nobody got robbed.

“After getting home and watching the replay I think I won the first and the third, the second could have gone either way.”

Eight-man tournaments are one of the hardest sports competitions in the world. Fighters who compete in the final especially will often have a quick turnaround between their semi-final fight and the next one.

“In the final I fought Levin and that was the hardest thing in the world for me,” Schilling says.

“After Simon there were three fights before I had to get back out there After the Barrett fight, I got out of the ring as Daniel Ghita and Rico Verhoeven were getting in it, walked into the back and changed the color of my gloves then walked right back out.

“My legs were shot, my knees were shot, my face hurt. There was a lot of head-butts going on in the Simon fight, not intentionally, so the side of my face was sore and swollen; I didn’t want to get hit there. I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of energy and it was frustrating.

“I asked my coaches where Levin had been getting hurt in his earlier fights, where his injuries might be, and they said he had been taking a lot of inside leg kicks. Then I look down at my shin and there’s just this giant boulder on my left shin and I’m like, “I can’t kick”.

“So I was forced to try and read his timing and look for the openings. He is very good at disguising his timing. He does a lot of head movement and he is very good at that. I figured ‘Well if his head is moving his body is not.’

“So I stepped in with a hard right cross to the body and a left hook to the head and as I came up for the hook I remember thinking ‘Yeah!’… then immediately he nailed me with that spinning back-fist and I went down. When I got back up, I had blown my eardrum.”

Over the course of the three rounds Levin racked up points while Schilling struggled to get into the fight, fatigue and injuries taking their toll. Even being docked a point for excessive clinching ultimately did nothing to dent Levin’s lead.

“After he got a point taken away for holding I thought we might go an extra round but I was losing the fight. I would have had to knock him out. But overall I feel like I lost because of the way the tournament played out,” Schilling says.

“He fought brilliant fights with Pereira and Verlinden, didn’t get any injuries, whereas I got in the ring looking like I had been in a car accident. I do feel like the fresh Joe Schilling who got in the ring with Simon Marcus and that makes me feel good.

“But overall I am still disappointed that I lost. I didn’t get the $200,000 and I don’t have another GLORY belt to show off… yet.”