Pinto: “I am here to conquer and claim the belt”

Antoine Pinto is a man of ambitions. No sooner had he secured victory in his GLORY debut than he stated his intention to dominate the division and take possession of the welterweight championship.

“What's next? I am here to conquer everything. I am here for the belt. I let the fools entertain the crowd but the king is back now. I am going to get my belt now and that's it,” he said following his win over Richard Abraham.

It was a close fight and resulted in a split-decision. Pinto also had to contend with being on Abraham's home soil in Chicago, Illinois, far from his own home city of Bangkok, Thailand. There were more than 500 of Abraham's friends and acquaintances in attendance and Pinto was heavily booed as soon as he stepped into the ring.

“It ain't no pressure! It may be his home town but the ring is my house. No matter where it is, the ring is my home,” laughed Pinto afterwards.

“I knew it was going to be a tough fight. Great guy, great fighter, undefeated in GLORY until now and when you fight a guy who is undefeated like that it is always going to be tough because they don't know what losing means.

“I knew it was going to be tough in his home town whole crowd cheering for him. It was tough but I had a good gameplan and I knew that I would adapt to whatever he did and that's what I did.

“I knew he would come with wild punches and low kicks and my plan was to keep the distance. I wanted to use my jab but he has really good footwork so I couldn't use it. So my second plan was go with the kicks and adjust myself to his footwork, and that went pretty easy.”