This Friday November 7, GLORY is back on television screens around the world with another live event. We will be in Oklahoma City, USA for a highly-anticipated card which has the world lightweight championship on the line and will see a light-heavyweight title contender emerge.
Davit Kiria won the belt with an epic comeback against Andy Ristie at GLORY 14 earlier this year. On Friday he will make his first defense of it, facing the dangerous power-puncher Robin van Roosmalen.
We also have the four-man Light-Heavyweight Contender Tournament. With four of the hardest-hitting fighters in the division taking part, I think it is safe to say that most if not all of the matches will end inside the distance. Afterwards, we will learn who our next title challenger is in this division.
The co-main event has New York man Wayne Barrett looking to keep his name in the contender conversation in the middleweight division as he takes on his first Dutch opponent, the dangerous and experience Jason Wilnis.
GLORY 18: RETURN TO GLORY airs live in the USA on SPIKE TV from 9pm ET this Friday, and altogether will air in more than 140 territories around the world, check local TV listings for details.
Davit Kiria (22-9-0, 7 KO’s) (Georgia) vs. Robin van Roosmalen (32-6-0, 19 KO’s) (Netherlands)
Lightweight (155lbs/70kgs)
Davit Kiria is like the guy from ‘Die Hard’. He just won’t go down, as we saw in his fight with Andy Ristie in which he won the title. He took a bad beating for three rounds but then came back to beat Ristie and knock him out, it was an incredible comeback.
Van Roosmalen has two wins by decision over Kiria, from 2011 and 2013, but those fights were three rounds and this one is five rounds. Van Roosmalen has got really good conditioning but the feeling is that the five rounds suit Kiria better than a three-round fight does.
Kiria has more surprises and more tricks up his sleeve than Van Roosmalen but he doesn’t have the same power. They both throw a lot of punches but Van Roosmalen’s are more dangerous and more effective. Kiria has high output but a lot are blocked whereas Robin has one of GLORY’s highest percentages of clean shots landed.
Here you also have a kicker versus a puncher. They are both complete kickboxers but Kiria’s strength lies in his kicks and the variety that he has, while Robin’s hands are his most dangerous weapon. Van Roosmalen presses forwards a lot, very aggressive, and that maybe allows Kiria to predict him and make some surprises, or land his kicks to get points.
So it’s an interesting fight. Because of their previous two encounters most people have Van Roosmalen the favorite but as we saw in Zagreb, Kiria is basically ready to fight to the death for that belt and he is dangerous for the whole fight. I’m looking forward to it.
Wayne Barrett (5-1-0, 4 KO’s) (USA) vs. Jason Wilnis (22-4-1, 6 KO’s) (Netherlands)
Middleweight (187lbs/85kgs)
After a dominant run on the amateur scene Wayne Barrett has spent almost all of his professional career in GLORY. He has become a contender in the middleweight division in just a few fights, which is impressive.
He made it to the semi-final of the LAST MAN STANDING tournament in June, losing a close decision to his US rival Joe Schilling after KO’ing top Romanian talent Bogdan Stoica. Now he faces his first high-level Dutch opponent in Jason Wilnis.
Wilnis comes out of the Coliseum Gym in Utrecht, Netherlands. His brother Jahfar fights in the GLORY heavyweight division and he also has Peter Aerts as a training partner. Wilnis is experienced at the international level and he has talked about how training with Aerts has given him a lot of experience to draw on.
Barrett has a boxing-based style, he uses a lot of head movement and angles and he is a former Golden Gloves amateur boxing champion. Wilnis has good hands but he is a more balanced kickboxing stylists, with punches and kicks in combination. Barrett has a good variety of kicks and sometimes is really unpredictable.
There is a lot on the line for both the guys here. Barrett lost to Schilling in the June tournament but only by a very close decision, but he’s still at #2 in the rankings so as long as he wins here he can stay in that contender conversation. Wilnis is coming off two losses in GLORY and even though one was to champion Artem Levin and the other was a very close split-decision, it is essential for him to get the win in this fight.
Brian Collette (21-2-0, 18 KO’s) (USA) vs. Zack Mwekassa (11-1-0, 10 KO’s) (South Africa/Congo)
Light-Heavyweight (209lbs/95kg)
Mwekassa made a great debut in GLORY by knocking out the former UFC star Pat ‘HD’ Barry. He’s got great boxing and really big power in his hands. He is dangerous for anyone. The only problem he has is that he plays around with dropping his hands and stuff, and against a guy with a serious head kick like Collette, that can be dangerous.
Collette is coming off a KO win of his own after stopping Warren Thompson with a head kick at GLORY 12 NEW YORK. I’ve watched him fight a few times and the way he throws that head kick is really nice, he can throw it from all kinds of angles and from unexpected positions. It is a very dangerous weapon for him.
Mwekassa is a champion boxer in Africa and while he used to train with the late K-1 great Mike Bernardo, he is definitely more a boxer than a complete kickboxer. He will have been working hard on the kicking game but it depends how much he has been able to retrain his muscle-memory and his tactical approach.
Collette was a finalist in a Road to Glory tournament and has now made his way to #8 in the rankings, while Mwekassa is at #11 after that debut. They are in a tournament with top fighters here and the winner of this fight will go towards the top five in the rankings whether they win the tournament or not. The question here will be timing: whichever one of them finds the hole in the other’s defense or concentration can stop the fight there and then.
Danyo Ilunga (56-5-0, 44 KO’s) (Congo/Germany) vs. Saulo Cavalari (28-2-0, 18 KO’s) (Brazil)
Light-Heavyweight (209lbs/95kg)
Ilunga is impressive, a former champion with Its Showtime and a top contender with GLORY. Ilunga has big power in his hands and has really good knee strikes. One of his coaches is Remy Bonjasky and Ilunga has some similar weapons, including the flying knee which was the Bonjasky trademark.
Ilunga has power but Cavalari showed he can take some shots in his GLORY 15 fight with Tyrone Spong and he also gave Spong a really good fight, which says a lot about his skill. I think this going to be a close fight., Ilunga hits hard but Spong probably hits harder and Cavalari didn’t seem to be troubled by Spong’s power in that fight.
Previously he has also beaten Filip Verlinden by decision and that was also significant because Verlinden is very experienced and has fought all the top guys. His finish of Mourad Bouzidi, also a very experienced guy, was impressive as well. I like Cavalari as a prospect, he’s interesting. He was an orphan at a young age and he was raised in the slums of Brazil so he has real fire in his heart, real determination to fight his way to a better life. Ilunga is #1 in the contender rankings and is already proven as championship material. This will be an explosive clash.
Overall, this is a tournament between four top talents and four proven knockout artists. The winner goes forward to challenge Gokhan Saki for the light-heavyweight title and you have to say that anyone who can win a tournament like this one surely deserves a world title shot; there are no easy fights for anyone in this line-up.
