Fabio Pinca is highly accomplished in Muay Thai, his base art, but in two previous GLORY appearances had failed to do enough to convince the judges and found himself on the losing side of decisions.
His last GLORY appearance before tonight's was at GLORY 3 ROME, where he dropped a close decision to Italy's Alessandro Campagna. That was several years ago; in the intervening period he developed a style which was more suited to kickboxing rules and that won him this fight with Amrani.
Pinca is still very much a Muay Thai fighter at heart, in terms of his timing and his liking for baiting an opponent to make a move then countering him heavily, but now with more emphasis on using his hands and throwing combinations.
Amrani, who for most of his career competed in both Muay Thai and kickboxing, played the game with Pinca at first but quickly got frustrated and clicked into 'relentless forward pressure' mode. By the end of the first round his strategy had him simply marching forward throwing sequences of bombs. He landed some good shots and was looking for his infamous fight-finisher of a body shot but didn't cause Pinca any serious worries.
From the start of the second round Amrani continued with his carpet-bombing strategy. He hoped to overwhelm Pinca but actually it was a gift to him. By now Pinca had gotten his timing down and kept meeting him with heavy counters on the way in. Amrani got his head snapped back again and again with hard right hands, left hands and even some head kicks.
The third and final round was a torrid time for Amrani. His power shots were doing nothing to rattle Pinca and he was eating a lot of heavy leather in return. Pinca was dominating the ring space and dominating the action as Amrani's gas tank began to fade. As the seconds ticked away Pinca allowed himself a little smile, knowing he was on the way to his first GLORY win.
Oddly, it was not a unanimous decision. Despite Pinca's dominance of the fight one judge had scored all three rounds for Amrani, but the error of this was made clear by the other four judges scoring it as a clear win for Pinca. The official result is thus a split-decision but that does not reflect Pinca's dominance of the fight.
Fabio Pinca def. Mosab Amrani, Split Decision, R3 (29-28, 29-28, 29-28, 29-27, 30-27)
