Fight night is nearly upon us once again, we have GLORY 32 this Friday in Virginia, USA with a featherweight title fight at the top of the card, complemented by a Light-heavyweight Contender Tournament. Let's take a look at how they all match up.
Featherweight champion Serhiy Adamchuk has been making a name for himself. He came into GLORY on 24 hours notice for a fight with Marat Grigorian, even though the fight was at 70kgs (155lbs) and Grigorian is a contender at that weight. He played a very tricky game and won a decision, and that was really the first time we saw Adamchuk's trademark style.
Since then his style has proven too much for some other fighters to figure out, including Mosab Amrani and Gabriel Varga. He took the belt from Varga at GLORY 25 MILAN by a close split-decision, but actually that wasn't the nicest-looking fight. Adamchuk was clinching a lot and in my opinion spoiling the fight; he was lucky not to lose a point.
Since then I feel like he's gotten better from fight to fight, I really like what he is doing in there now. Maybe he was playing it safe in his first fights for GLORY but now he's more confident in his position. His win over Amrani was impressive, the way he was able to dominate a fighter of that level. So now we will see whether Varga has been able to figure him out in the nine months since they fought in Milan. So far nobody has come up with the right gameplan, the right solution.
Pavel Zhuravlev is a guy we've wanted to sign for a long time. He's a really good fighter and he has a lot of big wins to his name, including former GLORY champion Gokhan Saki. He's naturally a light-heavyweight but often had to fight at heavyweight because kickboxing was really only centered around heavyweight and lightweight for a long time. But once GLORY had a light-heayweight division in place then we wanted him to be part of it.
It took us longer than expected to get a deal in place. His previous manager made unrealistic demands. Now he has a new manager and we were able to put a deal together which both sides are happy with. At heavyweight he had some losses to bigger names and natural heavyweights like Hesdy Gerges and Benjamin Adegbuyi, but light-heavyweight is his correct weight and I think he will make an immediate impact.
He comes in with a top four ranking and so we wanted him in the Contender Tournament straight away. Personally I think he will win it. I think he is a great addition to the roster. He was supposed to fight Cavalari but visa issues prevented Cavalari getting to the US for the fight; he got his application in too late. We tried several others guys, including Michael Duut, Danyo Ilunga, but they turned it down for being too short notice to face Zhuravlev, which is understandable.
Then we had Ariel Machado of Brazil actually petition us for the fight. He is from Curitiba in Brazil, where Cavalari is also from, and he heard from Cavalari that the slot needed filling. He has a long-term visa for the US already so he reached out to us. I assessed him and though I think he isn't on the exact same level as Cavalari, he does bring that typical Brazilian aggression and desire to really fight. He will bring the fight to Zuralev.
In the other semi-final we have Manny Mancha against Zinedine Hameur-Lain. I think that Hameur-Lain is the more skilled of the two but Mancha has the superior power. Mancha maybe also has more will to win, or at least seeks it more aggressively. But we see from Hameur-Lain that he is very good at fighting when moving backwards so Mancha needs to be careful if he is planning to walk him down.
Hameur-Lain has more experience than Mancha but doesn't have the same one-shot power so it's more likely he will win a decision if he doesn't get stopped at some point. Both of them have had two fights in GLORY now; Mancha is 2-0 and Hameur-Lain is 1-1, but Hameur-Lain has had the harder opponents.
Manny less skilled but has the punching power and the will to win. He is dangerous because of that power but Lain has the skill and experience.
