Gabriel Varga felt strongly that he never truly lost the GLORY featherweight title when he was defeated by Serhiy Adamchuk in a highly controversial bout back at GLORY 25.
Eight months later he’s champion once again.
Varga (27-3) defeated Adamchuk (33-6) by majority decision at GLORY 32 earlier tonight (July 22, 2016) at Ted Constant Convocation Center in Norfolk, Virginia.
48-47, 48-46 and 48-48 were the scorecards handed in by the three judges.
The key moment of the fight came in the second round, when Varga landed a beautiful three punch combination after ducking under a right hand by Adamchuk. The Canadian two-time champion landed a left to the body, and followed that up with a right/left combination that sent Adamchuk to the canvas.
Varga suffered a cut in the opening round after an accidental headbutt, but was not hindered by it during the five-round title fight. The bout was clinch heavy, but nothing as ugly as their first encounter where Adamchuk was warned countless times for holding and stalling. Varga was the more efficient striker and landed the more significant strikes. Adamchuk had some success, especially with his low leg kicks, but the knockdown was too much to overcome.
The co-main event was a light heavyweight rematch between Brian Collette (23-3) and Myron Dennis (18-5) from their first encounter at GLORY 19 last year, which saw Collette win by unanimous decision. The Virginia native would get his hand raised once again, earning another unanimous nod by the judges.
Two judges scored it 30-27, with the third handing in a 29-28 score card.
Collette nearly put Dennis away after landing a head kick in the second round, but Dennis was able to weather the storm and survive. Collette couldn’t get the finish, but he remained in control to get his fourth GLORY win.
Zinedine Hameur-Lain (56-13) won the four-man light heavyweight “Contender” tournament by knocking out Ariel Machado (43-7) and Warren Thompson (11-4) to earn the Ramon Dekkers memorial trophy and a future shot at the light heavyweight title. He will have to wait for the winner of the title unification bout between current champion Artem Vakhitov and interim champion Zack Mwekassa, which has yet to be scheduled.
In the tournament final, the Frenchman landed a big left hook that sent Machado reeling into the ropes and finished him off with a perfectly-timed knee to the body off the carom.
The official time of the stoppage came at 1:00 of the second round.
Hameur-Lain advanced to the tournament final in emphatic fashion, knocking Warren Thompson out cold with a vicious right hand in the opening seconds, which face planted “The Destroyer” into the canvas where he remained for several minutes. The win was a surefire candidate for the $5,000 “Knockout of the Night” bonus that the promotion recently added to fight cards.
The official time of the stoppage came at 0:12 of round one.
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In the opening semi-final bout of the evening, Machado took the fight against Pavel Zhuravlev (69-11) when several others would not, and he upset the savvy veteran by unanimous decision to punch his ticket to the tournament final.
Two of the judges scored it 30-27 for Machado, with the third scoring the bout 29-28.
The Brazilian—who was making his GLORY debut—used a steady diet of low kicks and solid footwork to outwork the Ukrainian throughout the three-round contest and pick up his first win inside the GLORY ring.