Van Roosmalen: "He's going to feel the pressure, high pace, no rest"

Robin van Roosmalen (34-6, 19 KO’s) goes into Friday night’s defense of his GLORY World Lightweight Championship in an odd position: champion, yet underdog.

His opponent Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong (103-28-5, 28 KO’s) has been accorded favorite status, largely thanks to the demolition job he did on former champion Davit Kiria at GLORY 22 FRANCE back in June. But being underdog is nothing new to Van Roosmalen; he has made a career of it.

The Den Bosch, Netherlands fighter is consistently both one of the most exciting fighters on the GLORY roster yet also one of the most overlooked. At GLORY 20 DUBAI he made critics eat their words when he panned Andy Ristie in a rematch he was expected to lose badly, and on Friday he intends to serve his critics their second course.

“He is a great fighter yeah, but so are all the other fighters I faced the last few years. For me being champion doesn’t make any difference, I am still considered the underdog but that is fine by me, I am always the underdog. I don’t mind,” he shrugs, smiling.

“I feel good, I am excited about it. I am motivated to defend my title. Is he one of my hardest opponents? We will see Friday. He is very good, he has a typical Thai style but he puts a little twist on it. He is not bad at boxing and he has good sense of distance. But I don’t think it makes a big difference that he is southpaw. We trained a lot about that.

“His best weapon is his left knee. How am I going to deal with that? By not letting him make the left knee. Simple as that. For me I think that my best weapon in this fight is to give him pressure. If you watch him he is best when he is controlling the distance and having the fight at the range he wants it.

“I have seen fights where he is pressured backwards and his distance and timing is disrupted, his defense is opened up, so that’s what I need to do. I am going to let him feel the kickboxing rhythm: high pace, no time to rest. I don’t want to let him fight at his rhythm.

“I don’t see any need to sit back and take a look at him, feel him out. I know what I want to do and how I want to do it. Let him worry about figuring me out.”

Van Roosmalen hasn’t fought since GLORY 20 in April - his first defense of the belt - whereas Sitthichai has competed and won four times since his June outing at GLORY 22. Van Roosmalen doesn’t feel like there is any clear advantage there.

“I think he just trains for the sake of training [because he competes so often] whereas I train for specific fights. So I don’t know who has the advantage there to be honest,” he says.

Sitthichai’s main strength is his left leg. As well as the knee strike Van Roosmalen has identified as the main threat, Sitthichai also has a murderous left body kick.

Numerous opponents have felt its force baseball bat-like across their arms and torso, including Kiria and Jauncey back in June. Often Sitthichai is able to hurt the opponent in the body and force them to drop their hands to defend it, thereby opening up their head.

“He is good with the left kick, it is a strong weapon for him, but we worked on that a lot and we have some plans for it. Of course I know about the high knee-block that the Thais use to defend against the body kick, that might be something I use in this fight to shut down his left kick, we will see,” muses Van Roosmalen.

He and Sitthichai headline GLORY 25 MILAN with their five-round fight. Immediately before they meet each other, former world #1 Giorgio Petrosyan (81-2-1, 35 KO’s) will meet rising Canadian talent Josh Jauncey (23-5, 12 KO’s) in the co-headline fight.

Van Roosmalen lost narrowly to Petrosyan in the final of the GLORY 3 ROME lightweight tournament but isn’t convinced that the Armenian-Italian is back on career-best form, even though he is 3-0 since being stopped by Ristie at GLORY 12 NEW YORK.

“My money is going on Jauncey to win. I see the hunger in him but I didn’t see that in Petrosyan’s last fights. And sometimes Jauncey can be surprising with his knees and kicks,” he says.

“To be honest I hope Petrosyan is the winner because I have always wanted that rematch. But I want that fight anyway, whichever guy wins. Do I think Jauncey deserves a title shot if he beats Petrosyan? Yeah, you can say that. I think probably that deserves a title shot.”

GLORY 25 MILAN takes place Friday, November 6 at the PalaIper in Monza, Milan, Italy and airs live in the US on ESPN 3 at 1pm PT/4pm ET, re-airing Friday night on ESPN 2 at 22:30 PT/01:30 ET.