A four-man Middleweight Contender Tournament is confirmed for GLORY 27 CHICAGO, which takes place Friday, February 26 and will be broadcast in the US by ESPN.
Dustin Jacoby (7-6, 5 KO's), Wayne Barrett (5-4, 4 KO's), Robert Thomas (8-3, 5 KO's) and Mike Lemaire (14-2, 7 KO's) are the four participants in a tournament which has numerous possible revenge plotlines running through it: Barrett has a win over Lemaire, as does Thomas, Lemaire has a win over Jacoby, Jacoby has a win over Barrett. Some scores will surely be settled in Chicago.
Thomas is from Vancouver, Canada and is the only participant not to hail from the USA. He faces Barrett, fighting out Queens, New York, in the first of the evening's semi-finals. Lemaire, fighting out of San Diego, California, faces Jacoby, fighting out of Denver, Colorado, in the second.
It's a first meeting between Barrett and Thomas but a second meeting for Jacoby and Lemaire. They first crossed paths at the start of 2014 in a reserve bout for the GLORY 17 LAST MAN STANDING middleweight tournament, Lemaire winning a decision after three rounds.
Jacoby now has the chance to score one back against Lemaire and in the process maintain his recent run of form. Jacoby has had one of the most remarkable career runs of any kickboxer, having made his professional debut with exactly zero bouts to his name.
That came about when he entered a 'Road to Glory' eight-man tournament in early 2013. The tournaments were designed to unearth new talent for the GLORY ring and Jacoby entered on just 48 hours notice due to a late pull-out, driving through the night from Denver to Tulsa, Oklahoma to make the weigh ins and doing his weight cut along the way.
He then shocked everyone by winning the tournament with three consecutive stoppages in one night, although the fact that he was a UFC veteran with almost all his professional MMA wins coming by KO or TKO was a big hint that he had plenty of power in his strikes.
Jacoby looked like he might become an overnight sensation but his full GLORY debut put the brakes on that. He was stopped by Michael Duut at GLORY 5 LONDON in a fight which showed the gulf between a full-time experienced European professional kickboxer and an American scrapper new to the sport.
A tough run followed for Jacoby as he went 1-4 in his next five. But he was never written off by GLORY matchmakers or fans because he showed big technical improvement from fight to fight and dogged determination to get to the top level. None of his losses were washouts and in all of them he put on gritty performances which earned admiration from all sides.
At GLORY 20 DUBAI he gave the veteran Mourad Bouzidi a hard time before losing a decision and his performance showed that he was starting to become a real kickboxer in his own right, rather than a crossover MMA fighter. Sure enough, his next outing at GLORY 23 LAS VEGAS saw him win the middleweight tournament with back-to-back KO's.
He followed that with a decision win over Barrett at GLORY 24 DENVER in which Barrett started competitively but seemed to feel the spirit drain out of him halfway in. It was one of Jacoby's most dominant performances in the ring, impressive against a fighter of Barrett's caliber and athleticism.
Barrett started strong in GLORY but a loss to Joe Schilling at GLORY 17 pre-empted a confidence-shattering loss to Jason Wilnis at GLORY 18 OKLAHOMA. An unstable training situation did not help things and Barrett went on to lose to Simon Marcus at GLORY 20 and then Jacoby at GLORY 24.
With his head in the right place, Barrett is a creative, fearless opponent. But with his spirits low he is almost the opposite, and so the battle for Barrett is more mental than physical as Chicago's showdowns approach. He is riding an 0-4 run now, which he finds bewildering. As with Jacoby during his trials, Barrett has not been written off. But he must stop the rot in Chicago.
That means he has to first of all beat Robert Thomas. The young Canadian is something of a Muay Thai prodigy but was thrown into the deepest of all possible waters for his GLORY debut. Artem Levin – then the division's #1 but not yet crowned champion – needed an opponent for GLORY 16, so Thomas stepped up. Unsurprisingly, he lost, though he gave a good account of himself.
Since then has gone 2-1, a loss to the then-#2 Joe Schilling sandwiched in between wins over Mike Lemaire and France's David Radeff. He's in a great position to show people what he can do and take that step up to the next level – if he can get past a hungry, back-to-the-wall Barrett.
And so the tournament is a tightly-balanced mixture of fighters riding different career paths but with the same goal in mind. The winner breaks free of the mid-tier and starts working his way into the upper levels, commencing with a title shot for the back-to-back victories that the tournament will require.
The GLORY 27 CHICAGO Middleweight Contender Tournament is a hugely important moment in the career of all four fighters taking part. The action airs live on ESPN 3 (10pm ET/7pm PT) and then ESPN 2 will air the action via tape-delay on Sunday, February 28 at 9pm ET/6pm PT.
GLORY 27 CHICAGO is headlined by a World Middleweight Championship grudge rematch between champion Artem 'The Lion' Levin of Russia and his bitter rival Simon 'Bad Bwoy' Marcus of Canada.
Tickets for GLORY 27 Chicago (including access to the GLORY SuperFight Series Chicago) are priced at $200, $100, $60 and $35. Tickets are available for purchase at searscentre.com and the Sears Centre Arena box office.
