Gabriel Varga won the GLORY featherweight championship by way of a shutout performance against the world-class Mosab Amrani in April last year, but then lost the belt to Serhiy Adamchuk of Ukraine in his first defense. The decision was unanimous but the result did not reflect the closeness of the fight, nor the ineffectual nature of the refereeing. On Friday night, Varga gets a rematch with the man who dethroned him.
That first fight with Adamchuk, at GLORY 25 Milan in November, was marred by constant clinching from the then-challenger, who also had a habit of leading with his head when he went in to close up with Varga. One such instance early on opened a cut on the Canadian’s head.
Such things happen in fights, and he didn’t complain. But after then witnessing Adamchuk receive over twelve warnings for clinching without a point being deducted, Varga could be forgiven for wondering what was going on with the officiating.
“I’ve noticed inconsistency with that referee’s actions many times,” the soft-spoken karate black belt says of controversial official Stefano Valenti. “I couldn’t understand why a point wasn’t being taken off but I guess you can’t always rely on correct decisions from referees.
“It is difficult to be unbiased about your fights, especially when you have so many people saying you should have won. But after I watched the fight I felt like OK, three rounds to two in his favor is a fair score. I’ve never bothered to watch and count landed strikes because it’s in the past and I have been focused on moving forward.
“Either way it was a close fight that I could have done better in. I couldn’t pull the trigger that night. Yes I moved forward but I felt off and wasn’t letting punches go. I also wasn’t prepared for all the clinching that was being allowed.”
That performance won Adamchuk a belt but didn’t win him many new fans. Since then however he’s opened up a lot more and demonstrated a much more crowd-pleasing style. His win over Mosab Amrani at GLORY 28 Paris saw him first frustrate, then take apart the lauded Dutch-Moroccan veteran.
“I think most fighters change fight to fight depending on their opponent. Amrani is a great match-up for Adamchuk and it allowed him to open up more. He’s good at dealing with very offensive fighters. The more aggressive fighters struggle with him because he’s good at avoiding shots and tying them up,” says Varga. “I have a different style so I would expect a different fight.”
Aside from the heavy clinching, Varga also observes that Adamchuk poses problems because “some fighters just have unorthodox styles and they don’t do what’s normal”. But that first fight also gave Varga an opportunity to study Adamchuk up close and since then he’s been doing some planning.
“Like always you want to figure out what your opponent is very good at and try to isolate it and at the same time recognize his weaknesses and try to exploit them,” he says. “Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone who has been helping me prepare for this fight has a set idea what to do. I believe my team will win me the fight.”
GLORY 32 goes down this Friday, July 22 and Bloody Elbow will have live fight coverage, including results and discussion, right here.
HOW TO WATCH
Glory 32 Superfight Series at 7:30 p.m. ET on UFC Fight Pass
Glory 32 Virginia live on ESPN3 at 10:00 p.m. ET. Visit WatchESPN.com.
Glory 32 Virginia replay on ESPN2 Friday night at 11:00 p.m. ET this week)