Poland’s premier org brings in the new year with a very pleasant event worth your time and money.
KSW kicks off 2021 with a snug event featuring more of their workhorse talent without too much flash and a lot of focus on the meat and potatoes of the game.
French phenom Saladdine Parnasse (14-0, 1 draw) has been a joy to watch in KSW, having adequate development for a bright prospect and evolving nicely to be a solid and proper featherweight champion. His pinpoint striking coupled with his takedown and submission defense have made him a problem, and he’s got a great challenge ahead. This time he faces Brazilian/Austrian Daniel Torres (11-4), another striker with a Karate base that is perfectly comfortable taking the fight to the ground and loves to get into prolonged exchanges to land damage.
This fight should be worth the price of admission, as Parnasse has been one of the better talents to watch out of the European scene. Torres should be a stiff test as well, being a sturdy hitter that has more varied offense with his level changes and submission threats. This should be the one fight to watch this weekend.
Co-main event honors go to Szymon Ko?ecki (8-1) vs Martin Zawada (29-15, 1). Ko?ecki is walking into this one with back to back wins over Mariusz Pudzianowski and Damian Janikowski. The former powerlifter had every one of his wins prior to his KSW arrival end by finish, and they were violent affairs that looked like this or like this. Zawada is clearly more experienced, and has been the head man over at UFD Gym in Dusseldorf, bringing in some of the brightest talent in KSW for a while now. His last bout was against former UFC fighter Thiago Silva in mid-2019, but the savvy light heavyweight should be a hard matchup for the younger strongman.
Former Strikeforce and UFC fighter Guto Inocente (8-5) took a break from kickboxing to return to MMA and returned to action last year, but makes his KSW debut as he takes on Micha? Andryszak (21-9). Andryszak has had some rough patches lately, but is truly a do-or-die heavyweight with a ton of finishes on his record. This is a tremendous appetizer to open up the card.
Finally, former Ultimate Fighter contestant and American Top Team rep Uroš Juriši? (11-0) meets Russian standout prospect Shamil Musaev (14-0) at welterweight. This one is a bit under the radar, but a stellar matchup between two strong talents, especially Musaev with his composure and complete skillset.
You can watch the weigh-ins right here:
Weigh in results are as follows:
Salahdine Parnasse (145) vs. Daniel Torres (144)
Szymon Ko?ecki (206) vs. Martin Zawada (203)
Micha? Michalski (171) vs. Aleksandar Rakas (171)
Shamil Musaev (171) vs. Uroš Juriši? (170)
Guto Inocente (259) vs. Michal Andryszak (250)
Pawel Politylo (136) vs. David Martinik (135)
Robert Ruchala (149) vs. Daniel Bažant (149)
Bart?omiej Kopera (155) vs. Francisco Albano Barrio (156)
Wouldn’t be a KSW event without the killer production work in their trailers.
Parnasse vs Torres:
Ko?ecki vs Zawada:
Michalski vs Rakas:
KSW 58 starts at 2:00pm EST here in the U.S., with the event available for purchase at KSW’s proprietary PPV site, as well as on FITE.tv.