The card opened with a women's fight between Jennie Nedell, fighting out of Longo-Weidman MMA in New York, and Anna Shearer of Canada.
Both worked diligently over three rounds with a variety of attacks, including several spinning back fists from both. In the end the judges struggled to choose between them, returning a split-decision in favor of Nedell by way of 29-28 on two cards, Shearer scoring 29-28 on the other.
Nedell now rises to 8-2 while Shearer drops to 3-2.
In the second fight of the evening, Zarrukh Adashev and Amine 'The Moroccan Boy' Ballafrikh also made their GLORY debuts.
Ballafrikh's timing is impeccable. He did a great job of staying just outside of range and then countering heavily when Adashev came in to attack. The right knee greeted Adashev several times and Ballafrikh also did good work with his whip-crack left leg.
Notable from Adashev were the sudden spectacular moves he would explode into out of nowhere. A jump kick with serious height transitioned into a Superman punch from mid-air and drew gasps from the crowd. These punctuated his otherwise generally workmanlike output which saw him throwing big left and right hooks and trying to get inside on his taller opponent.
Adashev wanted to make the fight into a brawl because Ballafrikh was not only taller and more technical but was often scoring constantly from outside whilst evading return punches. Ballafrikh needed to resist the temptation to get into a war, but found himself being drawn in during the dying seconds.
Five seconds from the end he threw a left kick; Adashev countered with a right hook and suddenly Ballafrikh was on the canvas. He bounced back up immediately but the referee stepped in and started to give him a count, making it an official knockdown. Ballafrikh protested but to no avail, and when the eight-count was done the timekeeper signalled the end of the round and thus the end of the fight.
The knockdown made the final round a 10-8 automatically. In the event, it didn't make a huge amount of difference. The judges returned a unanimous decision in favor of Adashev (29-27, 30-26, 30-26), with only one of them scoring a round of the fight for Ballafrikh at all, a scoreline which seems unfair relative to how the fight played out. It certainly prompted some debate and looks of disbelief from Ballafrikh's team.
Adashev now rises to 9-3 while Ballafrikh falls to 7-3.
