GLORY heavyweight champion Rico ‘The Prince’ Verhoeven defends his title for the fourth time this coming Saturday when he headlines the GLORY 28 PARIS card taking place at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris, France. Victory will put him on a ten-fight win streak in GLORY and 11-1 for his time with the organization.
His opponent is Mladen ‘The Scorpion Sting’ Brestovac, a giant Croatian whose string of left-leg head kick knockout wins call to mind a certain other Croatian kickboxer famous for ending his opponent’s nights with that same weapon.
Verhoven comes into the fight off the back of an incredible KO win over Benjamin Adegbuyi at GLORY 26 AMSTERDAM, his second win over the Romanian contender. Brestovac’s route to this fight owes a lot to Verhoeven basically having cleaned out the division.
The logic behind it seems to run something like this: Adegbuyi beat Jahfar Wilnis in the GLORY 24 Heavyweight Contender Tournament to earn his Amsterdam title shot and Brestovac has a KO win over Wilnis from GLORY 14 ZAGREB, therefore it is worth testing Brestovac against Verhoeven.
Brestovac was himself stopped by Adegbuyi in the GLORY 24 semi-finals, but kickboxing does not share boxing or MMA’s obsession with a fighter’s most recent result and that, combined with Verhoeven’s dominance of the division, means Brestovac gets an surprise crack at the belt. Victory would be an upset of course, but nothing is a given with heavyweight fighting. Men this size can end things in an instant.
“Definitely I take him serious.” a vehement Verhoeven tells Bloody Elbow. “He has a really dangerous kick – fifteen of his knockouts came from that head kick. He wants my spot, he wants what I have got, so I take him dead serious.
“Whoever GLORY puts in front of me I will fight. I think he and Jahfar are the only top-level guys I haven’t fought yet. He wants my throne and it’s my job to keep it, so we have to make sure we put him down.
“He’s really strong with his legs. In every Brestovac fight you can see the explosive kicks. And he’s a southpaw, which is also something to watch out for. Weaknesses… he’s got enough, yeah. We just have to exploit them. I have been working with a lot of southpaws this camp – Luke Rockhold is also a southpaw and moves nice – so I feel well prepared.”
Rockhold is the UFC’s middleweight champion and trains out of the American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) in San Jose, California. Verhoeven has just completed some time training there and greatly enjoyed himself. AKA man Daniel Cormier, the UFC light-heavyweight champion, has been effusive in his praise of Verhoeven’s striking skills after their training sessions together.
“I just got back from the US a couple of weeks ago, I was out there for about two weeks, training at some different gyms. We were looking for an MMA gym that would be a good fit for me and where we feel comfortable to prepare for a fight. It was a really good experience for me, I met some really nice people. I enjoyed myself,” say Verhoeven, who recently made his professional MMA debut with a stoppage win.
“The MMA thing is becoming serious, yes. I am not sure when and where the next fight will be, we are waiting to see what offers come in. Let’s see what happens. I am open to different things, I am excited about it, so let’s see what comes in.”
Verhoeven reveals he also spent time “at Team Quest with Dan Henderson, Erik Paulson’s gym, Frank Munoz’s gym and Xtreme Couture, where I did some grappling training and a kickboxing session with Sefo, so that was cool”, but listening to him it sounds like AKA is the place which has really caught his attention.
“AKA was a place I really enjoyed, a good atmosphere and I have a place in my heart for it. The atmosphere and feeling of a gym is really important. While I was there I moved around with Daniel [Cormier] and Luke [Rockhold], it was really good. It felt like we were on the same level, all of us champions,” he admits.
The conversation is taking place shortly after Nate Diaz’s submission win over Conor McGregor in the UFC 196 main event.
“I think Conor was a little bit over-confident and then he got caught out. But he will learn from it and I think he will be back, without a doubt he will be back… I think he maybe just underestimated Nate. He came from 145lbs where he was big and strong for that division but at 170lbs I think his punches didn’t have the same power,” Verhoeven muses.
“Nate said his punches were hard but nothing new. I think for Conor it was something different, maybe he was like ‘hmm, normally when I hit a guy like that he drops.’ And Nate just keeps on pushing.
“But it’s no big deal. He got submitted, that’s it. He got hit but he wasn’t out cold, just stumbling. From there he went for the takedown but Nate is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu so I didn’t think that was the smartest thing to do. For me it would have been better to move around the cage and try to clear his head.
“It’s all a learning experience. That is what fighting is about, we learn new things all the time. The fights you lose are the fights you learn the most from, because you try not to let it happen again. He will be back.”
GLORY 28 PARIS takes place this Saturday at the Accor Hotels Arena in Paris, France. The event will air live in the US on ESPN 3 and will re-air on ESPN 2 at 9PM ET on Sunday, March 27. The event also airs live in the Netherlands on Spike TV Netherlands.
GLORY 28 PARIS features a four-man Lightweight Contender Tournament which will send the winner forward for a shot at Robin van Roosmalen and his world title. In the running are Sittichai Sitsongpeenong, winner of the GLORY 22 FRANCE contender tournament, former champion Davit Kiria, current K-1 MAX champion Marat Grigorian and local wild card entry Djime Coulibaly.
Offcuts:
Verhoeven on GLORY signing Ismael Londt to the heavyweight division:
“It’s fun, it’s good for him, but for his sake I hope he has the training motivation to get back in shape. His fight with Badr I wasn’t really impressed with, he wasn’t in great shape. Let’s see what he does in his debut.”
Verhoeven on homeland reaction to his win at GLORY 26 AMSTERDAM
“We’ve been getting a lot of big publicity. It was so good for the sport in general in Holland. The media and publicity in general has been great. People are seeing that kickboxing is back again. The event was flawless, everything super.”
Verhoeven on opening his own gym:
“We’ve been working on a gym here close to my home, the gym is in my name and my wife is the main one giving the lessons. She’s a brown belt in Kyokoshin Karate and she used to compete in karate and kickboxing. She’s been Dutch champion, Belgian champion, she’s been to a Kyokoshin World Cup, she knows her way around the mat.
“She knows how I like to teach people and that’s how she teaches as well, so we are the same like that. Whether I teach or she teaches it’s the same, we use the same methods. So it’s cool to have a gym and it’s cool that she can be involved in the sport and stay busy. The gym is like 500 metres from the house so it’s good for me as well when I want to go and move around. We’ve got mats and bags in there, we’re still setting up, I think we will open in like a month from now.”
Verhoeven on acting lessons, auditions and Hollywood
“Things have been so busy, I’ve not really done much with in the last couple of months. Flying here, going there, doing this and that – it can be hard to fit things in. But it’s still a goal I’m working towards.”