Superfight Series 21 Results (Spoiler): Giga Chikadze vs. Ken Tran

Both fighters were making their GLORY debut and came looking to impress; Ken Tran didn’t get a chance though, as Giga Chikadze absolutely stole the show.

In his first appearance for GLORY he established himself as one of the best kickers in the entire organization. Among the kicks he landed, with force, were axe-kicks and the rolling somersault kick which his fellow Georgian fighter Davit Kiria often tries.

Tran couldn’t get his offense going as Chikadze was hitting him from all angles with everything but the kitchen sink; the volume and nature of his output was overwhelming but to his credit Tran - a top talent in his own right and a Muay Thai champion in his native Canada - kept pressing forwards.

The crowd got behind Chikadze in a big way as he put on a showcase performance of his skills. As he explained in his post-fight interview, he has been trying to get a spot on the GLORY roster for a long time and now that he had it, he intended to male the most of it.

When the finish came it was brutal. Chikadze let his hands go and forced Tran to cover his head, at which point he landed the body kick from hell, ploughing a left leg into Tran’s midsection with such force it looked likely to come the other side.

Tran dropped to the canvas in agony and took a referee’s count. Gamely he beat the count and returned to the fray but Chikadze had painted a big target on his ribs and was going after it. A head kick landed as a distraction; again Tran had his attention sent high and then Chikadze put a body shot in.

When he went down a second time, Tran was clearly finished. Body shots are notoriously hard to shake off - fighters routinely say they would rather take a hard head-shot than a hard body-shot - and the crowd erupted as Chikadze celebrated with his trainer Rafael Cordeiro of Kings MMA.

In the audience were numerous other professional fighters - Ross Pearson of the UFC, San Diego locals Brandon Vera and Chris Leben - and they all declared themselves highly impressed with the Georgian lightweight. In terms of making an impact in the division, it doesn’t get much better than Chikadze’s performance.

“I am really happy, I have been waiting a long time for this opportunity. I got the notice of this fight six days ago, Master Rafael called me at about 6am to tell me. It was the best wake-up call I could have had,” he said afterwards.

“Now I am here I am going to show some really good fights, you will see.”