Michael Duut will look back on his GLORY 41 HOLLAND fight with the same kind of confusion that the live audience watched it with.
On paper, a fight between him and Mourad Bouzidi is guaranteed fireworks, two fighters who get in the ring to bang it out and kill or be killed. But, for some reason, the firework failed to ignite for Duut in the Brabanthallen, Den Bosch.
Both are forward-pressure fighters and that was perhaps part of the problem. The two of them pressing forwards constantly meant that they kept ending up in a clinch. Worse, both of them were leading with the head as they did so, and that meant repeated head-on-head clashes.
Duut was soon wearing a cut on his forehead. Presumably it came from a clash of heads and if so it may have been the reason why the end segment of the first round found him actively trying to plant subtle headbutts on Bouzidi as they entered yet another clinch.
Referee Paul Nicholls saw what was going on and, having delivered warnings earlier on, took Duut aside and indicated that a point was being deducted. This was the beginning of the end for Duut: in the second round the clinching continued and Nicholls blamed Duut for it.
A warning made no difference and so a second point deduction was made. Duut was now deep in a hole, where only a stoppage could win him the fight. Well a stoppage did come, but Duut was on the wrong side of it.
More clinching followed the point deduction and referee Nicholls decided he had seen enough, stepping in to deduct another point and thus trigger a disqualification loss under GLORY rules.
Considering that Duut's last GLORY appearance – his war with GLORY COLLISION fight with Danyo Ilunga - was voted 'Fight of the Year 2016', it was a disappointing and humiliating end to what should have been another classic encounter.
There's little doubt that he will be back in the GLORY ring at some point; hopefully it will be a return to COLLISION form and not GLORY 41. In the meantime Bouzidi takes a win over a tough opponent and looks to spend the rest of 2017 trying to get on a run and climb the rankings.
Mourad Bouzidi def. Michael Duut, DQ, R2
