Glory 6: Istanbul Recap

-Contributor: Lucas Bourdon

Another Glory card is in the books and once again it was a great event. Only 3 fights went to a decision and only two of the fights weren’t all that great.

In the main event of the evening, after a minor controversy in the first round when Daniel Ghita  hurt his left arm while being dumped to the ground by Gokhan Saki and an horrible call by referee Joop Ubeda that somehow ruled it a knock down, Saki absolutely destroyed Ghita in the second round with lightning fast combinations, knocking him down twice before forcing Ubeda to step in and call the fight. Saki has looked like a monster since leaving Golden Glory and Mike’s Gym seems to be an excellent fit for his agressive style. His performance earned him a rematch with Semmy Schilt for the heavyweight title.

Mourad Bouzidi dominated the first round against Fabiano Cyclone. The fight was getting more competitive in the second before Cyclone injured his knee and couldn’t continue. Unfortunate ending for a fight that was shaping to be an interesting one but good performance nonetheless by Bouzidi.

Marc De Bonte scored a big upset, knocking out L’Houcine Ouzgni in the first with a beautiful knee.

Karim Ghajji started out strong against Nieky Holzken, handily winning the first round before fading and letting Holzken take over from the second half of the second round, culminating in a knock down in the third. Ghajji’s performance earned him an extra round but his cardio just wasn’t there and he took a beating before getting cut open with a knee that put an end to a very good fight. It’s a shame that Ghajji didn’t get a shot at the big stage earlier in his career as he has the skills and heart to trouble a lot of people but at 32 just doesn’t have the conditioning to become a major player. That doesn’t take anything from Holzken’s performance though, his agressive style (particularly his nasty left hooks to the body) once again made for a extremely fun fight to watch.

I was very dissapointed in Andy Ristie’s performance against Alessandro Campagna. After scoring a couple of left hook kos in 2012, he seemed to have falled in love with it and completely abandoned technique in favor of wildly swinging punches. He still got the decision and while it wasn’t a robbery (although I scored it 29-28 for Campagna) and he’s got attenuating circumstances as he was scheduled to face Albert Kraus at Glory London and had to pull out due to visa issues, that’s a performance he’ll want to quickly forget. He called out Giorgio Petrosyan in his post fight interview but if he wants that to happen, he’ll need an impressive performance against Kraus next month in Tokyo.

Murat Direkci was getting the better of a brawl with Canadian prospect Joseph Valtelini before going down towards the end of the first round and getting totally dominated from distance and going down twice more in the second (once from a beautiful high kick). His corner wisely chose to put an end to the beating and threw in the towel in the beginning of the third. Excellent performance for the Canadian but at 33 and not having won a fight since 2010 you have to wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser for Direkci to call it a career.

Max Baumert and local favorite Ismail Uzuner went to war from the opening bell and went back and forth before Max Baumert landed a superb high kick and knocked out Uzuner with only 30 seconds to go in the first round. The 20 year old German takes his pro record to 6-0 having already faced very respectable competition for this stage of his career. He is definitely a prospect to watch.

It was a great card for Glory and to the delight of kickboxing fans, they’ll be back later this month in Milan with another very interesting card headlined by the greatest kickboxer in the world today: Giorgio Petrosyan. I can’t wait.

-Lucas be reached at @lucas_bourdon.