Giga Chikadze is well known for his unorthodox and highly effective kicking game, a product of training in Goju Ryu karate as a youth and then later learning what he calls “Brazilian Muay Thai” from super-coach Rafael Cordeiro.
GLORY debutant Mauceri comes from a more orthodox Muay Thai background (although his first sport was actually gymnastics, where he nearly made the US Olympic team). He's fought some high-level opponents in Muay Thai, but nothing prepared him for Chikadze's trickiness.
Mauceri marched forwards at the start of the fight and looked to pressure Chikadze ceaselessly. The plan was clearly to shut Chikadze's space down and therby cramp his ability to deploy his varied range of kicks.
It's a sound plan on paper, but it failed to account for Chikadze being able to throw all kinds of attacks at all kinds of distance, from all kinds of angles. About a minute into his game of marching Chikadze down, Mauceri was caught with a high kick which staggered him backwards and opened him up for a barrage.
Mauceri managed to tie Chikadze up and get his head clear, then went back to marching Chikadze down and throwing at him with bad intentions. At one point he was able to back Chikadze up into a corner and try a flying knee effort of his own, having taken two already from Chikadze.
Back in open play and Chikadze found the space he wanted. A jab to the head caught Mauceri's attention then a left kick to the body landed square on Mauceri's liver and dropped him to the canvas. He lay face down in agony as referee Dan Miragliotta counted him out; there was clearly no chance he was going to get up.
The winning shot was an almost perfect replica of the one which scored Chikadze a KO win over Ken Tran at GLORY 21, his debut. He now rises to 3-1 in the organization with 2 KO's and stakes a solid claim to being one of the most dangerous kickers in all of fight sports.
