(“Hey man, look on the bright side — if you had won, it would have ruined my parlay bet.”)
Talk about flying under the radar. Not sure how this slipped past us until just now, but apparently MMA veteran Matt Lindland will be facing Mamed Khalidov in the co-main event of KSW 16, tomorrow in Gdansk, Poland. (Remember when it was mentioned at Chael Sonnen’s appeals hearing that Lindland couldn’t be at the proceedings because he was in Poland? Yeah, that’s why.)
Lindland, who has suffered first-round stoppage losses in three of his last four fights, is coming off a brain-melting knockout loss to Robbie Lawler last December. Khalidov is on a two-fight win streak, and is returning to action after his quick, predictable submission of James Irvin at KSW’s last event in March.
KSW’s main event will be a heavyweight wheeze-off between strongman-turned-fighter Mariusz Pudzianowski — who’s coming off his submission-via-punches win over Butterbean — and James Thompson, who has secured just one victory in his last ten fights. I appreciated this bit from Sherdog’s weigh-in report:
Both fighters were in good spirits during the weigh-in. In a recent interview, Thompson called the Pole “an extremely ugly creature.” In response, Pudzianowski brought him a mirror so, as he put it, the Brit could realize his own ugliness. Thompson was to quick respond. “Mariusz invents his own jokes,” Thompson said. “You’re actually an attractive — but slightly retarded — man.”
Delightful! Speaking of which, the Nazi-tatted Toni Valtonnen will also be on the card. The Finnish hate-machine will be looking for his fourth-straight win against Jan Blachowicz
