Matt 'Matics' Embree (39-7, 18 KO's) may be one of the hardest-hitting fighters in the featherweight division, but he is no knucklehead. In fact the young Toronto, Canada native might be one of the most erudite athletes on the GLORY roster.
Embree's daily breakfast ritual sees him eat his morning meal while reading passages of whichever book is currently occupying his attentions. He favors works on philosophy, business and psychology, but his favorite subject is the art and strategy of war. The great general Napoleon is one of his heroes.
On Friday night, Embree will challenge Robin van Roosmalen (36-7, 20 KO's). If victorious, he will walk away with the GLORY featherweight title. Van Roosmalen is probably the single most successful fighter in GLORY history, yet Embree sees advantage lying on his own side.
“My advantage lies in my intelligence. I feel like I am a smarter fighter. Aside from my physical advantages – I am taller and have more reach – I feel like I am a more technical, smarter fighter,” he says.
“He is a very strong fighter, he is very aggressive and uses a lot of pressure. But all the top Muay Thai fighters he has faced, he has lost to. People fight him at his style, he happens to be the best at his style, but I am not that. I am not fighting him the way everyone else does, I am going to pick him apart.
“Good fighters block, great fighters make you miss, that's where the difference is going to lie. I want to outclass him and I want to finish him too. I want to make him feel inferior with his offense, I want to break him mentally and then hopefully put him away.
“I feel like I hit not only the hardest in this division but also the most precise. When I put it on these guys they are going to sleep. I am all about the art of fighting, that's my philosophy, that's what I embody.
“The art of fighting is fluid, there are many ways to win a fight, not too many rules. Everyone is trying to figure it out and what you are going to see is my interpretation of the art of fighting.”
Van Roosmalen's last fight resulted in him taking the belt from then-champion Gabriel Varga by way of a ferocious onslaught which lasted for four rounds and ended only when Varga's team pulled their man, who had been overwhelmed by Van Roosmalen's relentless pressure, from the fight before the fifth could commence.
Embree doesn't see his own fight going the same way.
“If you lose your brain then you lose the war, so I keep my composure, keep my head,” he says. “'Amid the turmoil of events do not lose your presence of mind' - that's from The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene.”
GLORY 37 SUPERFIGHT SERIES airs live worldwide on UFC FIGHT PASS on Friday, January 20 from 7.40pm PT / 10.30pm PT on UFC FIGHT PASS, the UFC's digital broadcast platform.
