Nieky Holzken became the GLORY Welterweight Contender at GLORY 19 in Virginia, USA on Friday night by beating Alexander Stetcurenko and Raymond ‘Real Deal’ Daniels in back-to-back fights.
The win puts him in line for a title shot against ‘Bazooka’ Joe Valtellini, the reigning welterweight champion. Valtellini and Holzken have already met once before, with Holzken stopping the Canadian in the final round of their GLORY 13 TOKYO contest in December 2013.
“I consider the welterweight title belt to be mine. I beat Valtellini and then I had to take 2014 off because I got injured in a car accident in January,” Holzken told a packed post-fight press conference which numbered Mike Tyson among its attendees.
“So he’s got the belt right now but I am coming for it. Valtellini is good and it is going to be a good fight but the belt belongs to me and it will be coming home with me.”
The tournament final was a fast-paced and frenetic thriller. There was no touch of gloves at the start as the two immediately clicked into their games, Daniels looking to move and elude as Holzken stalked forward looking to close him down and start picking him apart.
Daniels landed one of his hard spin kicks early on but almost immediately afterwards was forced to pay for it as he ate a right hand then a body shot which made him drop to his knees. Holzken then kneed him in the head for good measure, claiming he didn’t realize Daniels was downed when he threw the shot.
On the restart Holzken went to work, landing hard right crosses again and again, Daniels backpedaling around the ring trying to find space but instead finding himself trapped in corners. Holzken’s constant head and body combination work made a finish seem imminent but Daniels seemed to find a second wind from the punishment and began answering back.
With 45 seconds of the first round left he found a home for his straight right followed by a brutal knee to the body, which in turn was followed by a spin kick to the abdomen. Flurries closed the round out, with Daniels ending the round in a stronger position than he had been in for most of it.
In the second round his tendency to get trapped in corners cost him again. Less than one minute in he was forced to take a knee after Holzken pinned him into a corner and shortly after that he was put down again. Under tournament rules the final fight is stopped if there are four knockdowns so Daniels now found himself with one life left.
He survived the second and went into the third. They were still competitive and things became more even when Daniels was awarded a knockdown for putting Holzken down with a spin body kick, though Holzken was on one leg attempting his own kick at the time he took it, and protested that it had not been a real knockdown.
Daniels went all-out then, trying to overwhelm Holzken and see if he could get another knockdown to even the scores. He went to work, but so did Holzken. The Dutchman backed Daniels into a corner yet again and used tap-shots with his hands to force Daniels to cover up. When Daniels did so, Holzken threw a hard knee up the middle of Daniels’ guard and into his face.
It was the final straw. Daniels sank to his knees, the fourth knockdown of the match. This ended the fight by way of referee stoppage and sealed the deal for Holzken. He was awarded the Ramon Dekkers Memorial Cup trophy for his efforts and is likely to meet Valtellini at GLORY 21.
Holzken edges Stetcurenko
Holzken was on fire in the first round of his semi-final fight while Stetcurenko seemed like he had just been dragged out of bed. Aside from some nice head movement he didn’t really show much in the first three minutes, so Holzken ran riot with a kickboxing in combination work.
He has some of the best hands in the division and is a professional boxer as well as kickboxer, which is evident in his flurries and his head movement. Body-shots are a Holzken specialty and he let them rip, left side and right, as he bullied Stetcurenko around the ring. The only notable thing about Stecurenko’s first round was his head movement, which was at times exemplary.
With round one having gone the way it did it looked like Holzken might come out in round two and look to score a quick finish in order to minimize his ring time and limit the amount of damage he was taking. Instead he went the other way, reducing his output. Afterwards he said it was a tactic to conserve energy; it was certainly a risky one - it lost him a round and made the fight extremely close.
Output was higher from both in the third and it made for a close round, though towards the end of it Holzken was in the driving seat and putting hard combinations in on Stetcurenko. The judges saw it for Holzken two rounds to one
Daniels runs game on Oliveira
Its hard not to feel sorry for Jonathan Oliveira in having to face Raymond ‘Real Deal’ Daniels in the semi-finals of the GLORY 19 Welterweight Contender Tournament. On paper Daniels seems easy to gameplan for - take his space away, shut his kicks down and destroy his legs with kicks.
That worked for ‘Bazooka’ Joe Valtellini when they met at GLORY 13 in December 2013 but since then Daniels has worked hard on becoming a more complete kickboxer. He still has the arsenal of insane kicks such as the one he stopped Francois Ambang with at GLORY 16 but his boxing is also much improved.
Oliveira duly came forward looking to pressure Daniels and take his legs away. But Daniels had spent his entire camp preparing for exactly this and he had plenty of responses ready. Oliveira, on the other hand, has nobody in his training setup who can replicate what Daniels does, partly because nobody in the world can really do what Daniels does.
It was a scrappy affair at the start as the two frequently got into clinches but gradually opened up into a free-flowing fight in which Daniels showcased his absolute mastery of timing and distance. There were spin kicks, jumping spin kicks, jumping side kicks, kicks using Oliveira’s own shoulder as a platform to jump off, all interspersed with a rangy lead jab.
The first knockdown of the fight came in round one with a spinning heel kick. The second came in round two. Daniels had been hitting spin kicks to Oliveira’s abdomen which were really hurting him, so when Daniels looked to be about to throw another Oliveira crunched down to protect his stomach and ended up ducking his face right into the full force of the kick.
On the restart he went after Daniels like a man possessed, looking to take his head off, but Daniels was waiting for him with another spinning jump kick. Oliveira walked onto it, took in the stomach and collapsed to his knees in agony. Under tournament rules three knockdowns in one fight over, tournament over for Oliveira and Daniels into the final against Nieky Holzken.
GLORY Welterweight Contender Tournament: Results
Nieky Holzken def. Raymond Daniels , Referee Stoppage, (4 Knockdowns) R3
Raymond Daniels def. Jonatan Oliveira, TKO (3 Knockdowns, Tournament Rules) R2, 2:15
Nieky Holzken def. Alexander Stetcurenko, Unanimous Decision, R3
