MMA
OKTAGON 54: Four finishes before the limit, Kincl is still the champion, Czechs are finished in Tipsport Gamechanger. Check out the highlights
The OKTAGON 54 gala evening took place on Saturday 2 March. Ostrava’s Ostravar Arena saw the start of the second edition of the Tipsport Gamechanger project or the title battle, in which Patrik Kincl and Piotr Wawrzyniak clashed. How did the event go?
The OKTAGON 54 gala evening took place on Saturday 2 March. Ostrava’s Ostravar Arena saw the start of the second edition of the Tipsport Gamechanger project or the title battle, in which Patrik Kincl and Piotr Wawrzyniak clashed. How did the event go?
Prelims OKTAGON 54
Before the start of the gala, Oktagon had to deal with several inconveniences. During the afternoon, the Wanliss vs Siraj match was postponed, and shortly before 6 pm it was announced that Radek Rousal, who was supposed to fight Luke Neal, would not be in Ostrava.
That left nine of the eleven battles. The first one was won by Miloš Janičič (16-3) and Ebrahim Hosseinpour (8-7) in the Tipsport Gamechanger reserve match. The Montenegrin fighter was expected to win, but the German has shown several times that he is not to be underestimated.
But Janičič didn’t do that either. The first round was quite cautious from both sides, not much happened. Both fighters exchanged more one-two punches than longer combinations with more punches. But in the second round the Montenegrin raised hell and finished his opponent in 1:23.
In the second fight of the gala, there was not much to look forward to. Jason Ponet (24-16-1) and Lukasz Rajewski (12-9) also clashed in the Tipsport Gamechanger reserve bout and it was something to watch. Solid pace, a lot of hard punches, variable combinations of punches and kicks, in short an attractive spectacle in which the Pole had the upper hand.
The second and third rounds were in a similar vein. There was some ground fighting in the middle of the fight, but it was nothing long or substantial. The second five minutes was dominated by Ponet according to the two scoring judges, but the Polish puncher won the entire fight with the judges, even though it was an evenly contested bout.
Main card OKTAGON 54
Tipsport Gamechanger
The first matches of the pyramid were refereed by the point judges
The first match of the main part of the Tipsport Gamechanger and the main card of the OKTAGON 54 gala promised an interesting showdown between two talents and great groundskeepers. Hafeni Nafuka (8-0) at 20 years old is the youngest participant in the pyramid and still went into the duel with Predrag Bogdanovic (15-1) as a slight favorite.
It is not often that a fight between two grounders ends in a stand-up battle, but this was not the case. The entire first round was played out on the ground, with Bogdanovic having the upper hand and appearing more technical, while Nafuka tried to push everything on the power. The second round was in a similar vein.
Before the third round, the Namibian Nightmare was clear that if he wanted to reach the next stage of the pyramid, he had to finish the Serb. However, he hadn’t found the recipe. On the ground, he was clueless in his stance. Thus, Bogdanovic again dominated the third five minutes, breaking his opponent even in the head and coming away with a well-deserved points win.
A battle ensued, with the only man who also appeared in the first edition of Tipsport Gamechanger. Marcel Grabinski (23-9) welcomed debutant Acoidan Duque (19-4) to the organization and fans could look forward to a battle of styles.
While Grabinski is a great stand-up fighter, Duque is known for his wrestling and ground skills. It was a question of who would assert their style and how much of a factor the fact that Grabinski was dropping a lot of pounds would play. The favorite, however, was the Spaniard.
And what did the fight offer? An evenly matched battle. While Duque tried to take the fight to the ground, Grabinski believed he could take the win standing up. Conditioning played a big part. While the Spaniard dominated the pressure, the German landed the punches. That was the story of the first round, except that two judges saw the Spaniard as the winner.
The second round was marked by the German’s dominance in the stand-up. The German landing great shots, defending takedowns well. He deservedly took the round for himself. But then came round three, and the Spaniard took over for a change. You could tell that Grabinski had lost his conditioning and strength advantage and Duque had more punches, more accurate ones, in addition to the pressure.
Acoidan Duque dominated the fight on points, more precisely on split decision.
Czechs in Tipsport Gamechanger are finished
Due to the withdrawal of Radek Roushal, the first fight with the Czech representation at the OKTAGON 54 gala had to wait for quite a long time. The first home fighter to go into action was Matouš Kohout (9-6), who tried his hand at a rematch with Mateusz Legierski (10-1), the organization’s first lightweight champion.
The Polish fighter entered the bout as the favorite, having defeated Kohout in the first bout, and now promised to finish the duel in the first round. But the Czech fighter has since moved on and wanted to show it in the fight. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance.
Legierski was able to stop Kohout in the first round. About halfway through the round he was able to take his opponent down with hard punches. He eventually got to the Czech’s back and gradually worked his way into position to apply the choke. He did so at 4:38 and Kohout was forced to tap.
Later, Vladimir Lengal (6-2) faced the biggest test of his career, challenging former world No. 30 Daniel Torres (14-5) and former KSW champion. The Moravian slugger was the clear underdog, but he had nothing to lose. Moreover, it was expected to see a stand-up shootout where he would not be without a chance.
However, the Austrian representative started the fight in a big way. He wanted to take Lengal’s head off with every punch. So he was mainly defending himself from a lot of pressure and threatening from counters. After a minute, Lengal committed illegal kicks.
As soon as the fight could resume, we saw a crazy fight, incredible shootouts, hard shells from both sides. However, the more active Torres had the upper hand, taking the first round three times 10-8. Moreover, at the beginning of the second round, the Austrian kicked Lengal’s left leg and that’s when Moravian really started to have a tough day.
He threatened here and there, but his mobility was severely limited and Torres started to use his wrestling to help out. The fight calmed down a bit after that, but it lost none of its appeal. Lengal fought to the end, showed heart. But he lost on points and he’s out of the Tipsport Gamechanger. So there is no more Czech fighter in the million-dollar pyramid.
Machaev destroys UFC veteran, Paradeiser narrowly wins
One of the highlights of the evening. It was supposed to be a fight Makwan Amirkhani (17-9) vs Mago Machaev (13-1). It was expected to be a spectacular show. Everyone was curious to see how the Finnish representative would do after his long stint in the UFC. He faced the second youngest participant of Tipsport Gamechanger and a great prospect.
It was quite heated between the two fighters, both were very confident. But only one could win. The winner was more or less decided in the first round, although we didn’t see the finish until the third. Machaev was greasing the more experienced opponent from the beginning, he was better in all aspects.
When Amirkhani’s takedown attempts and ground and pound failed and Makhaev was able to negate everything while threatening himself, it was decided. Mago gave a sovereign performance, but Amirkhani stood up to a lot. But early in the third round the Finn went down after a hard grenade, which he also took in the counter.
Then lightweight champion Ronald Paradeiser (18-8) was the only Slovakian to enter the pyramid. He faced Turkish challenger Attila Korkmaz (14-7) as the favourite, who was very confident against the home star, even though he was much underestimated.
Paradeiser, however, had problems in his preparation. He caught a severe form of coronavirus after his fight with Ivan Buchiger and had only three weeks to prepare. This affected his performance a lot. Korkmaz was a more equal opponent than expected.
Especially with his kicks he gave the Slovak star problems. He kicked the champion’s legs well. However, fortunately, he couldn’t get Rony into much trouble and although the fight was close, it was Paradeiser who dominated on split decision points.
The Oktagon still has the same champion, Kincl got the biggest win
It was the reigning champion who was supposed to fight Cepo in December, but he was seriously injured and so the Pole took him by surprise. He was the underdog, but he surprised and defeated the Slovakian fighter. He stopped him in the third round. It was only a matter of time before he challenged the Inspector. But few expected it to be this soon.
Kincl recovered from his injury early, but he admitted before the fight that it was a bit of a risky move on his part. It was clear that Wawrzyniak would want to exploit this weakness. And that’s exactly what happened. The Pole applied pressure, trying to target the recently injured eye of the Inspector a lot.
Piotr was very explosive, that didn’t suit Patrick very well. The Inspector wasn’t doing too well in the grappling on the canvas either, trying to take the fight to the ground wasn’t working out either. Besides, Kincl landed two nasty punches to the groin.
The Czech was more accurate in the first round, which won it for himself. But he knew the rest of the fight wouldn’t be easy. The second round was clearly dominated by the Pole. He was helped a lot by one slip by Kinclo about halfway through the five minutes, after which Wawrzyniak was able to keep him under constant pressure.
The Pole started the third round better as well, seeming to want to take the champion to the ground and keep him there. He succeeded in doing so, however Kincl cleverly reacted and attempted a kimura. He was unsuccessful, but still found a way to turn the unfavorable course of the fight to his side.
As a result, he got into a full mount and tightened Wawrzyniak up for an arm-triangle. He showed that he is a true champion. Kincl won a fight where he didn’t do so well. He beat an opponent that stylistically didn’t fit me very well. Excellent performance.
It’s worth noting that the Pole had more punches, both overall and significant. Kincl doesn’t need to address that now. He is still the champion and has another defense to come.
Source: Octagon MMA, Instagram, Twitter
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