This Saturday night will be a landmark event in the history of our sport.
The GLORY 17 LOS ANGELES and GLORY: LAST MAN STANDING cards take place back-to-back at The Forum in Inglewood, Los Angeles, California.
With three world titles on the line in the Heavyweight, Middleweight and Welterweight divisions, plus a four-man Featherweight Contender Tournament and the US kickboxing debut of Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic, this is the most stacked event in kickboxing history.
In previous articles we’ve take a look at the matchmaking reasoning behind the GLORY 17 LOS ANGELES card and the Featherweight Contender Tournament. Now we turn our attention to the eight-man LAST MAN STANDING Middleweight Championship Tournament.
The winner will walk away with $200,000 and the World Middleweight Championship Title, making him the undisputed best 185lb striker on the planet.
When we laid the tournament brackets out we decided to seed the top 4 fighters in the white corners and select their opponents from the remaining four, rather than do a random draw.
This was because we wanted to guarantee the most spectacular fights for the fans and also make some matches which we know the fans really wanted to see.
Quarter-Final 1: Artem Levin (RUSSIA) vs. Alex Pereira (BRAZIL)
Levin (47-4-1, 33 KO's) is the current #1 in the official GLORY World Series rankings and he is also the WBC Muay Thai champion at this weight.
Pereira (14-1, 9 KO's) won the Middleweight Contender Tournament at GLORY 14 ZAGREB with a KO of Dustin Jacoby and a dominating performance against Sahak Parparyan.
I think this is a good match; Levin will really need to be sharp against Pereira. The Brazilian has professional boxing experience, fast and surprising spin-kicks and we’ve seen the kind of power he has.
Levin also has power - he broke Parparyan’s jaw really badly at GLORY 7 MILAN - and he combines that with his tricky defense.
He’s known for bobbing and weaving, showboating and taunting opponents to try and hit him. His timing is exceptional. He has been #1 for a while and for good reason.
It was a big surprise when Schilling was able to knock him down and take a win over him in last year’s Middleweight tournament. It showed that American challengers are emerging and the possibility of a rematch in this tournament is really interesting.
Quarter-Final 2: Melvin Manhoef (NETHERLANDS) vs. Filip Verlinden (BELGIUM)
Here you have a match between two very experienced guys who have both fought in the same three weight categories. Manhoef (47-11-0, 37 KO's) and Verlinden (42-11-1, 16 KO's) have fought as heavyweights, Light-Heavyweights and middleweights.
Middleweight is the division which best suits them both, they don’t have to bulk up and carry extra weight. They gain speed and stamina without sacrificing any of their power. We are expecting a good fight here.
Manhoef is well-known in the USA from his fights for Strikeforce under MMA rules. He is a fan favorite around the world for his ferocious KO power. He is really a knockout machine and a fighter who comes to do or die.
Styles make fights and Verlinden is somewhat opposite to Manhoef, a technician. His critics want to see more KO’s from him but he was always small for Heavyweight and Light-Heavyweight; now at Middleweight we might see the finishes start to come.
Note also that Verlinden doesn’t get KO’d - he took Tyrone Spong the distance in the GLORY 9 NEW YORK Light-Heavyweight tournament, for example.
On the other hand, Manhoef can KO absolutely anybody. He is the only fighter in the world to have a clean KO of Mark Hunt using punches.
This will be a war. If Manhoef doesn’t get an early KO then you can expect a Verlinden decision or even a KO of his own.
Quarter-Final 3: Joe Schilling (USA) vs. Simon Marcus (CANADA)
One reason we decided to make matches for the opening fights rather than a random draw was that we didn’t want to miss out on certain fights. This was the main one of them - a rematch between Joe Schilling (16-5-0, 10 KO's) and Simon Marcus (39-0-1, 24 KO's).
They have fought twice under Muay Thai rules and Marcus has won both of them, though Schilling says that one of those should be a No Contest as he maintains Marcus used an illegal sweep to spike him on his head.
This time they are fighting under the Unified Rules of Kickboxing as used by GLORY. We like to keep the action moving and so the clinch is extremely limited. Fighters have around five seconds and must be active, there can be no stalling.
Marcus is undefeated and has beaten three of the fighters in this tournament: Artem Levin, Joe Schilling and Filip Verlinden. But those wins are all under Muay Thai rules and Marcus uses the clinch a lot.
Schilling has the advantage here because he is used to GLORY rules whereas Marcus isn’t. But he will have to overcome the psychological disadvantage of having lost to Marcus twice. If he can be the first to take a win over the undefeated Marcus then he is in with a good chance of winning the tournament.
Quarter-Final 4: Wayne Barrett (USA) – Bogdan Stoica (ROMANIA)
Barrett (4-0, 3 KO's) is becoming known for explosive finishes. Three of his four professional wins have come with a spectacular KO inside the distance. He doesn’t have a big professional record but don’t be mislead; he wanted to have a lot of amateur fights and gain experience before he turned professional.
He has a strong boxing background and has won one of the prestigious Golden Gloves amateur tournaments. His hands are dangerous and his footwork, defense and head movement are good. He also has Karate and Muay Thai experience and has won a WKA National Championship.
In his last fight Barrett beat the GLORY 10 Middleweight winner Joe Schilling, which was a huge win for him. The two are becoming big rivals and may meet again but first Barrett must face his first non-American, high-level opponent in GLORY.
Stoica (38-5, 29 KO's) is ranked #10 and is making his GLORY debut in this tournament, which is very tough. He was selected to take part because #6 Sahak Parparyan and #9 Jason Wilnis both suffered losses during the very recent GLORY 14 ZAGREB event.
He comes in as champion of this weight class in Romanian organization SuperKombat. He got there via his arsenal of dangerous and spectacular techniques. Stoica likes flying knees, axe kicks and other attacks not
often seen in the ring.
Stoica has an explosive fighting style and is one of the wave of fighters coming out of Romania right now. Benjamin Adegbuyi is currently making waves at heavyweight and that division is also home of course to Daniel Ghita.
Barrett has the better boxing but Stoica is more dangerous with unorthodox techniques so Barrett has to be on his guard at all times. Stoica’s use of spectacular techniques also plays well with the judges under the scoring criteria.
This fight potentially produces interesting storylines. If Barrett wins he either rematches Schilling or becomes the second US fighter to try and beat the unbeaten Simon Marcus. If Stoica wins, he upsets the bookmakers and then immediately faces one of the division’s top talents in the semi-finals.
GLORY: LAST MAN STANDING takes place at The Forum in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, June 21 with Ghita and Verhoeven in the headline slot.
It airs live across the USA on pay-per-view priced at $34.95.
Also on the LAST MAN STANDING pay-per-view, welterweight champion Marc De Bonte (87-11-1, 28 KO’s) will make his first title defense as he faces Canadian contender ‘Bazooka’ Joe Valtellini (11-2-0, 10 KO’s).
