Daniel ‘The Warrior’ Sam is headed to Las Vegas with two goals: one, “spoil the party” for American heavyweight Xavier ‘X-Man’ Vigney, winner of the recent Heavyweight Qualification Tournament, and two, redeem himself following a “poor” performance against Benjamin Adegbuyi.
Sam (25-10, 13 KO’s) and Vigney (8-1, 8 KO’s) form the co-main event of GLORY 23 LAS VEGAS, which takes place at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday, August 7 and airs live in the US on Spike TV at 11pm ET/10pm CT.
“This is a great opportunity for me. I am feeling good and I am ready to get in there and show people what I am about,” says the burly London, England man.
“I have had a couple of bad performances in GLORY, the one against Benjamin Adegbuyi in particular, so in this co-main event I need to put on a good show and a good performance and show what I am really capable of.”
Sam watched the GLORY 21 SAN DIEGO tournament in which Vigney stopped an overmatched Maurice Greene before finishing Chi Lewis-Parry, also from London, in the final. Despite the back-to-back wins, Sam wasn’t overly impressed.
“His main strength is his size, and with that size comes range… er, for me that’s about it, really. You could say he also doesn’t shy away from a fight, like we saw against Chi Lewis-Parry he will stand in there and have it with you,” is Sam’s assessment.
“Chi tried to put it on him and Vigney wasn’t scared to stand there and trade with him. But that’s also a weakness of his. He stands in and trades but I didn’t see much head movement, he isn’t going to be hard to find. You can’t miss him.
“People are saying he will be quicker than me with cleaner technique but that is not going to be the case at all. I am in great condition and I am feeling really good for this fight, really confident.”
Sam also says that people shouldn’t pay too much attention to his form during last year’s fight with Adegbuyi, his most recent appearance in the GLORY ring. It was a very one-sided match in which Sam was extremely passive for large periods of time.
“That fight? Things didn’t go wrong in the ring, they went wrong well before that. I had things going on in my life which I had to deal with and which were very distracting. I wasn’t as focused as I should have been and it showed in the fight - there was only one guy in the ring and that was Benny,” he says.
“Hats off to him, he had a good performance, mine was poor. But right now I am focused and my head is back where it needs to be. The circumstances of that time aren’t relevant to this fight, there is no comparison to me then and me now.”
Sam usually spends some of his training camps at Mike’s Gym in Amsterdam, Netherlands but training for this bout is taking place entirely in his native London. “I have a business here, personal training, which makes it hard for me to be away for long stretches of time. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be back at Mike’s Gym at some point in the future.”
With the Adegbuyi loss now far behind him, clear goals in place and a newly refocused mindset, Sam is also relishing the prospect of avenging Lewis-Parry’s loss to America’s Vigney.
“Any time you get a UK vs. US fight there’s that rivalry there. I am going there to spoil the party for the US guys and I will be scoring one back for the UK against Vigney for sure!” he smiles.
GLORY 23 LAS VEGAS takes place at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday, August 7 and airs live in the US on Spike TV at 11pm ET/10pm CT.
The headline fight sees Nieky ‘The Natural’ Holzken square off with Californian rival Raymond ‘Real Deal’ Daniels to contest the vacant World Welterweight Championship over five rounds.
