Jacoby blasts his way to victory in Middleweight Qualification Tournament

Every dog has it’s day. Friday August 7 was the day of perennial underdog Dustin ‘The Hanyak’ Jacoby. Denver native, UFC veteran and all-round nice guy, Jacoby has had one of the hardest runs of any fighter in GLORY.

He entered the organization after taking part in a ‘Road to Glory’ talent-scouting tournament on 48 hours notice. Driving overnight across several states to reach the weigh-ins, he neither ate nor drank on the way as he needed to make weight. Having done that, he promptly knocked out three opponents in one night to win the tournament and a GLORY contract.

The fairy tale then got darker. Jacoby was thrown to the wolves of GLORY’s light-heavyweight and middleweight divisions, established Europeans who had more kickboxing fights by the age of 12 than Jacoby had in his entire career to that point.

A run of losses followed, even as Jacoby dropped from light-heavyweight to his more natural middleweight. It seemed kickboxing wouldn’t be for him, yet at the same time he was showing improvement from fight to fight. The GLORY 23 LAS VEGAS Middleweight Qualification Tournament was finally his time to shine.

Opposing him in the final was Casey Greene of Los Angeles. A promising talent who has, like Jacoby, trained in the Netherlands in Dutch-style kickboxing, Greene has like Jacoby had some tough fights and hard losses but at the same time shown that he has potential to hang at the top level and go somewhere with his career.

Greene carried plenty of damage and fatigue into the final thanks to his semi-final efforts, placing him at a disadvantage versus the fresher Jacoby, who had scored a first-round KO. He went at it gamely but it was Jacoby’s night and Greene could not hold him off. Spirited exchanges characterized the fight before Jacoby’s pressure became too much and Greene was stopped in the second round.

Jacoby booked his spot in the final by flattening New York’s Ariel Sepulveda in the first round. The fight was a rare treat for the Denver man; instead of being an underdog facing an established fighter, he was the established fighter facing an underdog. Jacoby’s nickname should be ‘Deep End’ since that is where he has spent most of his time since GLORY signed him up.

Neither fighter is the kind to waste time on such mundane affairs as feinting and trying to figure the other guy out. They crashed into each other like feuding bulls when the fight started and they were still at it when it ended, Jacoby hurting Sepulveda then pouring the pressure on until his jaw presented itself for the big KO finish late in the first.

The second of the evening’s semi-finals was a stark contrast to the first, two technicians taking time to read each other and pick holes in their opponent’s defense rather than trying to crash through it. Green and O’Brien both have Muay Thai backgrounds but have different strengths in the art, Greene being more of a puncher and O’Brien having the edge in the kicking department.

Things started fairly slowly but that was just because they were taking time to figure each other out, as Muay Thai fighters often do. Once they got comfortable things warmed up considerably; the second round was a good scrap and the third was a dogfight. Greene edged ahead over the course of the fight, his punches taking their toll, but O’Brien made a real fight of it and Greene burned energy and took damage on the way to winning the decision which put him through to the final.