They often say “Three times a charm”. After 2 articles on young heavyweight kickboxer Rico Verhoeven, titled “The prince on his way”, I didn’t expect to be able to call him king this quickly.
By the time of my last article on Verhoeven, no one knew there would be a heavyweight tournament at GLORY 11 Chicago on October 12, 2013.
While GLORY was busy focusing on their Spike TV debut, 4 talented heavyweights were focusing on a one-night 4-man tournament with a jackpot of no less than $ 250,000.
Number 1 ranked heavyweight Semmy Schilt seemed to be retired although there still hasn’t been an official announcement from GLORY or the 4-time K-1 World Grand Prix champion himself. Anyhow, he didn’t participate to the event, just like Peter Aerts, who was ranked number 4 before this tournament, and Remy Bonjasky, ranked number 5 at the time.
Number 2 Gökhan Saki, number 3 Daniel Ghita, number 6 Rico Verhoeven and number 8 Anderson Silva participated to the tournament.
GLORY seemed to be focusing on the ‘American’ way of hype, with several fighters talking more trash than we’ve seen of them before. At the end of every pre-fight interview, the fighters looked into the camera and stated a message for their opponent; something that seemed to be a request from GLORY. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that when you’re focusing on your new key market, but not all fighters seemed very comfortable with this.
The tournament semi finals were Gökhan Saki vs Rico Verhoeven on one end of the bracket, and Daniel Ghita vs Anderson Silva on the other end.
Many fans, as well as Saki and Ghita themselves, were expecting the Turkish ‘Rebel’ and the Romanian ‘Savage Samurai’ to meet in the final for their 3rd encounter. Saki declared about Verhoeven he is not a talented fighter, just a hard worker. About Ghita he said that the Romanian had excuses after his 2 losses against Saki, and that he’d probably have more excuses after another loss in the heavyweight tournament final. However, that final wasn’t meant to happen…
The ultimate upset
Even though Verhoeven replied to Saki’s words by saying he would “smash” Saki, many didn’t believe that, since Rico isn’t known for his knockouts. And Rico didn’t succeed in smashing Saki, but he surely defeated him!
While Saki is trying to convince his followers on Twitter and Facebook that he lost because of a “bullshit 8 count”, many know that’s not the issue. After the very first time that moment was shown from a different angle, everyone could see that the 8 counts were “bullshit” indeed. Photos show that the referee even looked straight at Verhoeven’s right cross connecting with Saki’s shoulder, not his jaw. Because of the kick that Saki received prior to the right cross, he wobbled on his legs and the punch put him off balance. It’s unbelievable that a referee gives an 8 count for this, but it happened.
Saki got frustrated and pushed the referee because of this decision, and Saki is very lucky he didn’t receive an official warning for this. The ref was wrong, of course, but as a sportsman – a professional one for sure – you should be able to keep your composure whatever happens.
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