This Friday, November 7, Glory returns to action with Glory 18: Return to Glory. The world’s top kickboxing organization is back with a title fight headlined show live from Oklahoma. Glory 18 airs live on Spike TV this Friday, November 7 with a fight time of 9:00 p.m. ET. Bloody Elbow will have live fight night coverage, and to get ready for the show, we have you covered with our fight by fight previews.
#2 WAYNE BARRETT vs. #9 JASON WILNIS
In the night’s lone non-tournament, non-title fight, Wayne Barrett, one of Glory’s breakout stars of the past year, takes on solid Dutch veteran Jason Wilnis.
Wilnis (21-4-1 Overall; 1-2 Glory) was last seen in Glory dropping a split decision loss to Sahak Parparyan at Glory 14. He’s since scored a rebound win over Tomas Senkyr over summer. A solid pro with good experience, Wilnis comes from the always impressive Colosseum Gym in Amsterdam. He holds wins over Parparyan and Alex Pereira, both outside of Glory. Inside the Glory ring, he’s been given tough fights, and is yet to break out.
Stylistically, Wilnis favors the technical Dutch style. He has good, fast combos that he strings together quite nicely. I particularly like his left hook to the body, which he sneaks into the combos very well. He also has nice fast leg kicks, which he throws with the Dutch style. Less effective is his overhand right – a giant looping punch that is just begging to be countered by a clean counterpunch straight up the pipe. Wilnis has solid conditioning, and often wins by outworking his opponents. He’s prone to quick, multi-shot combos that land and score points, but don’t always seem to do a lot of damage. A weakness for Wilnis is his pace early in fights, as he often starts slow. He’s also willing to let his opponents dictate the pace and push him around – he’ll need to be more aggressive right from the opening bell to rise up the Glory ranks.
Wayne Barrett (5-1 Overall; 4-1 Glory) has looked so impressive in his Glory run that it’s hard to remember he just turned pro last year. Since making his Glory debut at Glory 9, the New York based Barrett has looked incredible, scoring big KO wins, defeating Joe Schilling at Glory 12, and making it to the semi-finals of the Last Man Standing tournament. He looks to bounce back from his first pro loss here.
Watching Barrett fight, there’s a lot to appreciate. He comes in with backgrounds in karate, Muay Thai, and boxing, and he integrates those styles beautifully, mixing in Muay Thai clinch work with more traditional boxing, with fast karate kicks seamlessly. But of those styles, it’s the karate that most influences Barrett’s current fighting game. He’s very light on his feet, using good movement to stay outside and then lunge in for the attack – very reminiscent of fellow karateka Lyoto Machida. He has long limbs, and uses them to dictate range, circling his opponent and finding just the right hole for an attack. When he does charge in, he does so with impressive power – the tough Schilling is the only man who has lasted until the final bell against Barrett. He has fantastic kicks, but his best technique is the right hook – a KO punch he can throw tight from the inside, or loop from the outside to throw over his opponent’s guard.
If there’s a flaw to exploit in Barrett’s style, it’s one that his opponent shares – an occasional gap in defense. When Barrett goes for some of his flashy techniques, he can get wild and out of position at times, and can completely forsake his defenses, which cost him in the Schilling fight. Wilnis, by contrast, is 9 times out of 10 a tight defensive fighter, but he too will let his normally tight guard drop too much when going on offense.
Looking at the head to head match-up, you have two very different stylistic but similarly high output fighters. I like Barrett to come out fast, using his movement well against Wilnis and landing some early shots. He’ll struggle to land those cleanly thanks to Wilnis’s tight defense, but Barrett’s movement will also keep him mostly clear from Wilnis’s own attack. Once they start mixing it up a bit more and getting loose, Barrett should do better, as his power and more unorthodox style will give him an edge. Not sure if he can find his way through that defense to land a clean enough shot for the KO, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did.
Prediction: Wayne Barrett by decision
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