Gabriel Varga kicking Yodkhunpon Sitmonchai

By Kelsey Mowatt

On April 3rd, not only will Gabriel Varga compete for GLORY’s vacant featherweight championship, but he’ll do so against the man he’s been hoping to battle all along. After Varga won the kickboxing promotion’s contender tourney last June, he called for a championship fight with Mosab Amrani, and GLORY granted the Canadian his wish.

“No, that’s always been something that I was actually asking for,” Varga relayed on Full Contact Fighter Radio, when asked if he was surprised to hear that he’d face Amrani for the vacant belt. “He beat Yuta Kubo, who was the champion in 2013, and that just put him in that #1 spot, and I was sitting at #3, so there was no point beating around the bush. Might as well go for the #1 guy, and yeah, I’ve been asking and it made sense for GLORY to pick him.”

The Moroccan-Dutch fighter has posted an impressive 52-8-4 record to date, and Amrani heads into GLORY 20 having gone 4-1 in his last 5 contests. Most recently, in June, 2014, he stopped Lim Chi-Bin. The fighter’s aforementioned victory over Kubo took place in December, 2013, and was via unanimous decision.

“I’ve known about him for a long time now,” said Varga. “Back in Holland, even up to ten years ago or something like that, they had the organization “It’s Showtime”, and I think that’s when I first saw him. I was watching the big fighters, Peter Aerts and Badr Hari, the big kickboxing names and he was just on the undercard or something, and I thought ‘this guy’s good, he’s got a nice style, maybe I’ll end up meeting him at some point in the future’…It took a while to get there, but I’m pleased that I get to fight against him now.”

Varga (photo via GLORY)

“Just from what I’ve seen in the past, I know that he’s got an aggressive style,” Varga added about Amrani, after admitting he hadn’t studied up on his opponent too much, since at the time of the recording the fight was a few months away.  “He likes to sort of dominate fighters by pushing forward, and really just taking the fight to them, and if he can roll through people and get them on the defensive, get them a little gun shy to throw, he can really start to dominate a fight.”

The 29 year-old Varga, however, doesn’t plan to let that happen.

“But if you have someone who stand their ground, then it turns into a different fight, and you have a much better chance,” the 10-2 fighter stated, who decisioned Yodkhunpon Sitmonchai and Shane Oblonsky to win the GLORY 17 contender tourney. “I’ve fought a number of guys in the past that have tried that sort of strategy, and it hasn’t worked for them. I do realize Mosab is a different level, he’s better, but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

GLORY 20 will be hosted by the Dubai World Trade Center, and will feature a lightweight fight between Robin van Roosmalen and Andy Ristie in the main event.

The card will also include a middleweight contenders tourney featuring Simon Marcus , Wayne Barrett, Jason Wilnis and Alex Pereira.