Mike Lemaire and Casey Greene are both graduates of the âRoad to Gloryâ tournament series.
Lemaire won the middleweight tournament by beating three opponents in one night, two of them by stoppage. Greene was in the same tournament but exited after losing on points in the quarter-finals. Since then Lemaire has gone 0-2 in GLORY while Greene went 1-0, an interesting switch in fortunes.
Born in France but raised and resident in San Diego, Lemaire enjoyed home town hero status. Greene looked a little nervous on entering the ring and it took him a round to find his composure while Lemaire went after him racking up points.
Once the first round was out of the way Greene was a lot more settled and he started to impose himself on the fight. It developed into a hard-fought contest with both landing hard shots. From the casual spectatorâs point of view Lemaire looked to be the aggressor but the post-fight statistics showed that Greene actually landed more strikes.
Damage is a key issue though and Lemaire definitely had the edge in terms of landing effective shots, looking like he hurt Greene more than once. In the third round Greene had the upper hand for the most part, but the fight closed out with both trading heavy shots as the bell rang.
The judges saw Lemaire as the winner, giving him two rounds and one to Greene for a unanimous decision with scores of 29-28 on all cards. Lemaire, now 2-1 in GLORY, used his post-fight speech to thank the San Diego crowd for their support and state his intention to fight his way into a contender slot.
