Road to GLORY USA 85kg Tournament in LA Tomorrow: Preview

Friday, 08 February 2013 14:00

Written by Rian Scalia

The second edition of Road to GLORY USA takes place tomorrow form the Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood, California, just outside of Los Angeles. The event features the 85kg edition of the Road to GLORY tournament series, with the winner getting $20 000 and a contract with GLORY.

With the match-ups being drawn tonnight at the weigh-ins, we have the tournament seeds to work with:

Bracket One

#1 Eddie Walker vs. Random seed 5-8
#4 Van Wyk Povey vs. Random seed 5-8

Bracket Two

#2 Andrew Kapel vs. Random seed 5-8
#3 Mike Lemaire vs. Random seed 5-8

A week ago at the first Road to GLORY, we obviously learned that anything can happen as Dustin Jacoby won the tournament on 48 hours notice. Surprises can very well happen in tomorrow's tournament also but the top four seeds here are ranked as such for a reason and I think it's most likely that one of those four will win the tournament.

The difficulty in breaking down this tournament stems from the lack of video there is on most of the fighters. The two most well known fighters in the tournament are Eddie Walker and Mike Lemaire. Walker was featured on season three of the Enfusion reality show and also scored a huge KO win over Joe Schilling last year. Mike Lemaire was on the undercard of the K-1 LA show and put on an impressive performance in defeating Glen Spencer.

As for the other two top seeds, #2 Andrew Kapel and #4 Van Wyk Povey, video is hard to come by. It's known that Povey and Kapel are both pretty big for 85kg. Kapel has been doing MMA lately but has an extensive background in Muay Thai. Van Wyk Povey, originally from South Africa and now training out of the CSA Gym in Dublin, California, is the tallest fighter out of the top four seeds and has big power.

It's not out of the question that any of the top four seeds could win the tournament. Last week, it wasn't just the winner Dustin Jacoby who received a contract, as Brian Collette also impressed the GLORY team enough to warrant one for himself. Heading into this tournament tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised if a few more contracts were given out for impressive performances. There are a lot of variables relating to the outcome of the tournament and because of this, breaking it down is a difficult task, so let's just sit back and let things play out.

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