The Saga of Marat Grigorian & Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong
Photo by Anthony Dibon/Icon Sport via Getty Images
Nobody beats Marat Grigorian five times.
These six words were seared in the Glory lightweight challenger’s head as he stepped into the ring against the champion, his arch rival, for the fifth time at Glory 65. Despite losing four consecutive times to the elusive Thai champion, the last two fights both went to a split decision, and outside of each other, both men consummately defeated everybody else in their lanes. Grigorian, in particular, had accumulated seven emphatic knockout victories during his long, upward climb back to the top. This was it.
Welcome to Glory’s epic five-fight series between Marat Grigorian and Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong. The two best lightweight kickboxers in the world prove their mettle in over an hour of fight time against the other. Every single fight in this saga is exciting and entertaining, and the growth that Marat displays over the course of this seemingly uphill battle is nothing short of inspiring. The Armenian-Belgian’s development over these fight fights will be charted as follows, and we will learn exactly how he configured a solution to defeat his long-standing rival.
Fight #1: Kunlun Fight 35
The story of the first fight between these two men was one of experience and depth. Grigorian is a subtle, potent stalker, but he had yet to fully develop the depth in his game that we would see from him in later years. A lot of the weapons Sitthichai offered were simply brand new, and in a lot of exchanges, the more renowned kickboxer just had an answer.
Grigorian picks up his lead leg to intercept Sitthichai, as Sitthichai throws a jab away on Grigorian’s high guard. The Thai steps his lead foot outside of Grigorian’s leg leg, taking the outside angle, before framing off his opponent to create space. Marat is forced to turn to face his opponent, and he attempts to counter with a right hand while simultaneously moving his lead foot to the outside of Sitthichai’s. However, Sitthichai subsequently angles off backward on the inside angle, avoiding Grigorian’s counter.
Sitthichai did his best work just outside of Grigorian’s punching range. Off the backfoot, Sitthichai was able to subtly glide just to the outside of Grigoian’s lead foot, draw counters with his southpaw jab, and impede Griogian’s pressure with lead-leg teeps. When Grigoian was able to push past Sitthichai’s first layer of defense, he found more success with combination punching on the inside. The risk, then, came from getting intercepted by Sitthichai’s clinch, which the Thai would engage both proactively and reactively.
In what is probably Marat’s best engagement in the fight, he opens the sequence of attack off of his left hook. Notice that in 3.63 after attempting to check an incoming leg kick (which wound up landing on his rear leg instead) , Grigorian doesn’t step in with his lead leg so much as he simply plants off to the side of Sitthichai’s lead leg before pushing off his rear leg, hop-stepping with his lead foot to reangle, and throwing the left hook. Then, he repeats the footwork sequence to land a leg kick before swarming Sitthichai.
Here is an example of Marat dissuading Sitthichai from stepping into the clinch. On the inside angle, Sitthichai throws a jab and attempts to convert it into a collar tie. Grigorian slips inside of the jab, attempting to jab back, but only lands on the lead shoulder of his opponent. However, as the two men lock up, Marat attacks with a short body shot.
Grigorian was too susceptible to being drawn on by Sitthichai, and his opponent’s angular footwork meant that he wasn’t able to track down the accomplished Thai. This is half the reason the series of fights I’m covering are compelling in the first place; Grigorian understood that Sitthichai was fundamentally a difficult stylistic matchup for him, and he knew he needed to adjust.
Sitthichai’s kicking conditioned Grigorian into keeping his lead leg light on his step-ins, which opened up quite a few offensive options for the Thai. Here, he looks for a 1-2 down the center, before slipping outside and countering Grigorian’s left hook with another rear hand punch down the middle. Another body kick, and then Sitthichai angles off on the inside of Grigorian’s lead left hook.
Marat simply wasn’t prepared for Sitthichai’s southpaw double attack. Between the open-side body kick and the rear hand straight, there were simply too many exchanges where Grigorian would be caught out at range, unable to capitalize or convert. It took Marat a round and a half before he realized he couldn’t let Sitthichai kick with impunity.
Sitthichai does a lovely job switching the plane of his attack with his left kick. The high kick opens up the rear hand straight, which, in turn, opens up the body kick. He even counters Grigorian’s step-ins with the left body kick. Marat has made his bones off of pressuring opponents off of their body kicks, but Sitthichai’s rear hand counters made this exceptionally difficult and dangerous.
As the fight progressed, Marat did a better job of countering Sitthichai’s body kick with low kicks to his planted leg, but it wasn’t quite enough. The Thai proved too experienced the first time around, and the more Grigorian pressed, the more layers Sitthichai revealed.
Grigorian steps in again with his lead leg raised, and Sitthichai counters with an up-jab and a straight left to the body, each a half beat apart. When Marat plants his lead leg, Sitthichai attempts a hook, a full beat behind the left to the body, which Grigorian partially blocks with his glove. Marat retreats on the inside angle, but Sitthichai follows him with a kick to his trailing leg. With another left hand to his opponent’s guard and a right hand converting into a collar tie, Sitthichai breaks the posture of his opponent before piercing his midsection with a rear knee up the middle.
Marat had success against Sitthichai that would prove valuable in due time. In particular, the Armenian demonstrated a grit and pertinacity in attacking his opponent’s legs, even if it cost him a losing exchange. The more he hammered Sitthichai’s lead leg, the less the Thai was able to plant. Grigorian also began figuring out how much Sitthichai preferred to insulate himself from extended punching exchanges, and above all, he learned that his fuel tank (both in stamina and durability) was likely the superior of the two. It was a close and violent fight that would be the progenitor of a great many close and violent fights between these two great competitors.
Fight #2: Glory 28
The second fight between these two competitors came during Glory’s Lightweight Contender Tournament in early 2016. After a decision victory over Anatoly Moiseev earlier in the night, our hard-nosed hero was matched with Sitthichai once more to secure the tournament finals. Right from the outset, Grigorian proved that he had integrated the lessons from Fight #1, and looked to counter the southpaw kick from his opponent.
Grigorian is more diligent about hand-fighting with Sitthichai, and he attacks with both the inside and outside leg kick. The low kick counter from the first fight is already in play here, merely seconds into Round 1, and Marat does a lovely job keeping a persistent jab in Sitthichai’s face to draw responses before trapping his opponent’s lead hand downward and stepping in with a right hand lobbed over the top.
Sitthichai’s jab catches Grigorian’s left hook on the shoulder, and the Thai subsequently ducks under the following right hand. However, Marat lets the momentum of his right hand carry him through to the outside angle on his opponent, as he sneaks in a left hook the body just as the round ends.
The story of this fight is the Thai’s offensive sequencing, which is one of the most valuable skills that any fighter can learn, and few do it better than the great Sitthichai. Learning to sequence your offensive means you understand exactly how your opponent will respond to your attacks, and you can build off the engagements in layers. This is especially effective in kickboxing, where a greater breadth of skill set is commonplace. For example, Sitthichai built off his southpaw body kick from the first fight, using it as a tool to draw responses from Grigorian. In general, Grigorian prefers to counter with either the left hook or right. Sitthichai understood this, so his next move (be it a jab, a counter left, clinching, etc.) could be entirely informed by his opponent’s reactions. Conversely, if Grigorian chose not to respond to the drawing strike (the body kick), then that is simply another small victory for Sitthichai in the context of the rest of the fight.
Grigorian attempts to draw a response from Sitthichai with his jab, and Sitthichai counterjabs by going underneath his opponent’s lead arm to the inside track of Marat’s lead shoulder. The body kick follows. Sitthichai then drops his level, spears a left hand straight to Grigorian’s midsection, which Grigorian counters with a pitching right hand. Sitthichai immediately regains position with his lead hand on the inside of Marat’s shoulder and ducks his head to avoid the following left hook. Grigorian steps in to follow up, and runs directly into a straight left counter from Sitthichai. A rear leg high kick slaps Sitthichai’s chin on the break as Marat recoils.
The second fight highlights how challenging an opponent Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong is to fight, not even exclusively for Marat Grigorian. The legendary Thai is exceptional at giving opponents more to think about and react to than they are comfortable with and altering the threats he presents just enough to frustrate their expectations. As I said earlier, Grigorian had a lot of good ideas early, attacking the legs, using them as setups to layer punch combinations, and fighting hands in an open-stance engagement. Even so, the trouble arose from Sitthichai’s improved fencing with his jab and the clinch. Grigorian showed that he could deal with these individual threats in moments, but Sitthichai’s offensive sequencing made it difficult for him to cover his bases on every threat.
When Grigorian focused his attention on checking Sitthichai’s kicks, the Thai would surprise him with improved combination punching from midrange. When Grigorian attempted to battle back in his nominal area of expertise, Sitthichai remained defensively poised. In particular, I love Sitthichai’s pull + angling off on the backfoot to break the ‘anchor’ when both fighter’s left arms entangle.
If not for their fated fifth contest, I would say that Fight #2 is the most dominant of the series. At times, it felt like Marat’s only concession to win this fight was to simply punch his way out of trouble and this got him punished fairly regularly. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Grigorian himself is something of a rote puncher, or at least ‘was’ at this point in the series. That’s not to say he isn’t well-trained or disciplined. Rather, he tends to look for the same series of counters in almost every exchange. His punch selection and targets were generally consistent, and the Thai figured this out quite early. Sitthichai held the initiative for the majority of the fight, so Marat wound up getting drowned in layers in a fight where he apparently couldn’t stop himself from responding to every one of the Thai’s attacks.
Sitthichai uses his body kick to draw out Grigorian’s response to beautiful effect here. As Marat counters, Sitthichai pops a jab in the Armenian’s face. Grigorian attempts a left hook counter, and Sitthichai stings him with a straight left before pulling slightly and hop-stepping backward in a proactive attempt to avoid any follow-ups.
By the end of the fight, too many exchanges just looked like this: Sitthichai keeping careful control of his stance, drawing responses (usually with kicks), and punishing the Armenian with straight shots down the center.
Marat’s gameness kept the it competitive, but Fight #2 ultimately proved to be more performance than fight.
Fight #3: Glory 36
The third fight in this series represents something of a turning point. Grigorian doesn’t net an official win here, but his progress from the frustrating Fight #2 is palpable. After a second loss to his rival, the Armenian rattled off three brutal knockouts in a row to earn a title shot against the champion, his old pal, Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong.
There was a serious sense of urgency in Grigorian’s third performance. After doggedly plodding after the Thai in their second fight, Marat recognized that he needed to aggressively push Sitthichai backward and not get drawn onto the Thai’s distance weapons as consistently.
Left hook as a herding strike into the right high kick. The same combination Marat killed Djime Coulibaly with just months prior. Marat follows it up by raising his lead leg and stepping in with a left hook. Sitthichai attempts to grab double collar ties to smother the Armenian, and Grigorian lands another left hook on the break to (not...?) score a knockdown.
Marat slips outside Sitthichai’s rear hand and swarms him with a combination. Later, after blocking a round kick, Grigorian steps in with a left hook which Sitthichai smothers. The Armenian then crossfaces with his rear hand and lands a short knee to the body on the clinch break.
More significantly, however, were Grigorian’s diligent efforts to employ the lessons he learned in the first two fights, as well as attempting some new ones. After getting beaten up in their last match, Marat made a serious effort towards moving his head and giving less shots away for free. Another impressive wrinkle from Marat was his willingness to not just hand-fight, but to work a tight right hook around Sitthichai’s rear hand and off of clinch breaks, when the Thai would enter with knees up the middle. It resembled more of a pitching counter than a guided straight.
Grigorian’s pressure and aggressive volume means that he will never be the defensively slick outfighter that his opponent is, but you can tell he looked to slip outside of Sitthichai’s rear hand more regularly. Baby steps.
Marat did a much better job of drawing reactions out of Sitthichai to counter, instead of the other way around. Here, he attacks with both inside and outside leg kicks, and looks to counter Sitthichai’s attempt at grabbing the clinch with an uppercut down the middle. His main goal in a lot of engagements was as simple as not letting his opponent set.
Grigorian looks for the left hook(!!!) around Sitthichai’s jab and his rear left straight. I cannot overstate how important this tactical adjustment would prove to be for the Armenian. This crucial development that would prove indispensable in the final fight between these two.
Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong has some of the very best distance-management I’ve ever seen in kickboxing, or perhaps in any kind of striker. The decorated champion almost never gives his opponents any uncontested space at range. Obviously, this stems from an incredibly deep technical game with attention to detail, but even the most skilled of strikers aren’t so consistently poised in terms of punishing openings in terms of distance and range. As I previously mentioned, one of Marat Grigorian’s main tactics to circumvent kicking offense is to pressure and throw back every time an opponent attempts a kick. It is remarkable how rarely that option was even viable for the Armenian to safely employ against Sitthichai.
The discipline of Sitthichai was often the difference-maker between the two in exchanges. Notice how diligently the Thai parries and checks Grigorian’s lead hand, and the moment Grigorian attempts to hook around Sitthichai’s lead hand, the Thai recognizes and counters down the middle. However, I liked seeing Marat punishing Sitthichai’s inside angles exits more regulary this time around.
Sitthichai paws at Grigorian’s lead hand as the Armenian attempts to slowly move in to range. The Thai times his own step to the inside angle off of Grigorian’s lead foot touching the ground, and catches Marat with a powerful knee up the middle, while rotating his lead foot 45° as if he were throwing a body kick. Grigorian attempts to step in and fire back, but gets countered again.
There were a few factors in play for Grigorian that narrowed the fight to a debatable split decision. His pressure, head movement, and lead left hook were all valuable steps in the right direction, but one of the less recognizable adjustments that he made came upon late in the fight: not just counterkicking, but counterpunching the Thai.
When Grigorian committed to counterpunching Sitthichai’s active lead hand or leg kicks, he found success. It forced Marat to change up his (as previously mentioned) rote punch selection and layer tactics together. Here, he slips outside of Sitthichai’s rear hand on the inside angle, and counters with a right uppercut. Gorgeous stuff.
When kickboxers fight Thais, the traditional rule is that five rounds typically favor the Thai. Their conditioning, both in terms of stamina and dexterity often supersedes that of their counterparts. Here is yet another reason as to why this series is such a strange one. It is Grigorian who consistently outlasts his opponent, and gets stronger down the stretch. The grittier the fight gets, the more Marat comes alive and while it wasn’t quite enough in Fight #3, he proved the rule wrong.
Fight #4: Glory 57
Most men wouldn’t have made it this far. Most men would have cut their losses at three...but, not our hero. Not Marat Grigorian. No, the Armenian-Belgian needed to be nailed to the floor with wooden spikes before he would accept defeat. After seven more victories (four of which ending via knockout), Grigorian worked his way back to the legendary Thai for a fourth attempt.
The first round was a much slower one from Grigorian than Fight #3. Tactically, Marat seemed more interested in shelving Sitthichai’s rear leg hand with his right high kick and limiting exchanges. Sitthichai obliged the slower pace.
Marat keeps his guard tight, parrying Sitthichai’s lead hand and countering with a straight right.
Sitthichai could pick off his opponent with singular strikes, and a lot his previous weapons were on display: Using the body kick the draw counters and attacking up the middle with linear strikes to limit Marat’s entries. In combination, on the other hand, Grigorian shined.
I’ve written over 3000 words on this series of fights, and I haven’t even mentioned Sitthichai’s lead leg teep. This is one of the Thai’s very best tools to create space, deny entries, and prevent linear pressure. In Fight #4, Grigorian tried to add leaping strikes into his arsenal (superman punches, etc.), and Sitthichai calmly picked them off with his teep.
Leave it to Sitthichai to improve upon success. Grigorian steps in hard with an attempted 3-2. Sitthichai takes a small step backward with his lead foot, taking the inside angle, and brings both arms up to grab the collar ties. Notice how he bring his right arm up around Grigorian’s left arm just after the left hook, smothering his opponent’s lead hand, and smashes Marat with an intercepting knee up the middle.
After being kicked in the body for three fights, Marat Grigorian has finally had enough. He blocks Sitthichai’s body kick with his lead leg and gloves before taking a wide, outside angle step with his lead foot and countering with a massive overhand. As he swarms the Thai along the fence, notice the body-head lever with his left hand and attacking with a short right hook on the break.
Though it wasn’t a development Sitthichai landed on in this specific fight, it is worth discussing how subtle and effective the Thai’s feints are. His lead hand is routinely active, but Sitthichai is able to feint with a half-step to play with Grigorian’s sense of distance and expectations.
Sitthichai throws and lands a front kick with his rear leg. Then, he takes a subtle half-step forward and paws his lead hand. Grigorian bites hard on the throwaway, slipping inside his opponent’s lead hand and attempting to counter with a 3-2. Sitthichai draws his left glove up to catch the hook and turns the point of his rear foot outward, loading up his hip and allowing himself to reposition after kicking.
For Marat’s part, he really tried to force attacks off transitions and always attacked in sequence. Glory’s clinching rules wound up helping the Armenian, since Sitthichai would occasionally assume the ref would step in to break them and Marat took it as an opportunity to punch his man in the face.
Grigorian crashes into the clinch after punching off a kick, and as Sitthichai intercepts the Armenian and anticipates a break, Marat smashes him over the top with a tight right hook.
Marat lands a front kick to Sitthichai’s face and follows up with another along the ropes. Sitthichai draws Grigorian’s rear front kick off to his left and attempts to smother the Armenian’s return fire by collapsing into the clinch. Again, Grigorian hits a tight hook on the break.
Both men consistently wanted to have the last word in exchanges, so the extended engagements in the fourth and fifth rounds were truly epic.
The problem with Grigorian’s blitzing gambit was that it left him far too vulnerable on entry and exit. His best work in previous bouts came from his ability to subtly work into range and counter the Thai, but by diving in behind massive, committed leaps, he just wasn’t prepared for Sitthichai’s counters. There were a few exchanges that Marat conceded to losing simply by diving in to push his opponent backward. As we’ve seen in Fight #3, Grigorian is a very effective fighter against Sitthichai when he either initiates or counters in range. When Marat is forced to fight in-out, the openings to land on him increase.
By the fifth round, the stitching in both Grigorian and Sitthichai’s gloves was peeling and both competitors wore bruised, bloodied faces. In case, I didn’t make this clear, Fight #4 is the finest bout in this series, and one of my favorite kickboxing fights overall. What begins as a slow simmer turns in to an absolute boil by the end, with both competitors utilizing their knowledge and experience against the other to incredible, violent effect. If Fight #4 wasn’t as good as it was, the Armenian might’ve been cut off here from ever facing the Thai again.
It must be said that it could’ve justifiably been scored any number of ways, but alas that is not the way this story goes. In the end, Sitthichai was granted the split decision nod, but it was Marat Grigorian, staring dead-eyed and thick-browed at his now 4-0 rival, who finally said, “No more.”
Fight #5: Glory 65
It all led this. Four losses, one man responsible for them all. Grigorian didn’t just need to rebuild technically, but mentally as well. It is hard to overstate how dispiriting it must feel to fight a man four times, fall short every single time, with the last two bouts being coinflip decisions that just didn’t go your way. Plenty of fighters have had their confidence eroded by much less.
It is comeback story time.
Grigorian fought the first round carefully, shelving Sitthichai’s rear hand with the right high kick, countering with low kicks, and trying to pick off the Thai’s needling punches. His opponent more or less played the same game as last time, looking to draw out responses with his rear kick and feints.
Marat mostly bailed on the leaping blitzes from Fight #4, instead favoring a more linear sort of pressure when it came to closing large swathes of distance. Sitthichai does some lovely work here, checking Grigorian’s low kick with his back along the ropes, and converting his missed hook by grabbing at Marat’s lead crossfacing shoulder and landing a knee.
I very much liked Grigorian’s committment to cutting the ring off from Sitthichai. Here, Marat uses a stepping, inside leg kick with his lead leg to cover his entry inside. Sitthichai counters with the body kick, and Grigorian counters with a low kick off his his rear leg after planting his lead. (Typical ‘pressuring off an opponent’s kicks’ stuff from Grigorian.) Then, as Sitthichai attempts to exit out the open side along the ropes, Grigorian looks for another low kick counter and takes a wide lateral step with his rear leg to mirror alignment with his opponent.
Towards the end of the second round, however, Grigorian found his opening. Remember when I mentioned that Marat’s newfound success with the left hook would be pivotal back in Fight #3? Well, the time has come to revisit that hypothesis.
Fight #5 is Grigorian’s most left-hookiest performance in the series. He led with it and looked to close the door more often, and the more he threw it, the more it landed. In this exchange, the superman punch makes a return, but his lead leg never leaves the ground, meaning he doesn’t blitz in quite as far as he did in Fight #4. More importantly, he lands the left hook on the break as the Thai is attempting to pivot out.
Grigorian’s classic entry (tapping low kick off the lead leg into overhand right) is on display here, as he kicks his opponent’s lead leg into taking the outside angle. Sitthichai attempts to block and frame with his arms, which was a terrible mistake. Inside, Grigorian holds the collar tie with his left arm and smothers with his right with his foot wedged down Sitthichai’s centerline. He uses a right knee to create space, forcing his opponent to turn, and he follows with a short right, left hook combination that crushes the Thai to the mat.
Sitthichai was completely swamped in this exchange, even before the knockdown. Grigorian’s collar tie on the Thai’s right side meant that the left hook was coming from a blind angle, and the Armenian forced the Thai to turn into the punch. He knew exactly how to turn his opponent into the left hook, and didn’t concede position as soon as the two locked up. It was a synthesis of several individual lessons the Armenian had learned up to this point. Masterful effort from Marat Grigorian.
Fight #5 is where Grigorian began winning the lead hand war. Here, he looks to hook around Sitthichai’s lead hand, taking the outside angle softly with his lead leg before taking a wider step outside and pivoting.
It was fascinating hearing Grigorian speak on the fight afterwards, arguing that his main development from previous bouts was as simple as kicking more, but I’m unconvinced that is what made the difference. Marat’s great improvement was him hooking more, which shut down Sitthichai’s return fire and caught the southpaw blind in the third or fourth layer of exchanges.
Like any great fighter, Sitthichai exhausted every tool in his arsenal to battle his way back into the losing fight. He started pushing Grigorian onto the backfoot with combination punches, looking for his own punches in transitions, and finding the lead hook himself. He even caught kicks; a tactic that the Thai probably would’ve been wise to start using much earlier than Fight #5.
Sitthichai catches Grigorian’s right body kick under his arm, parries it across his body, and lands a low kick to Marat’s rear leg in the process of pushing him backward.
I am always fond of kickboxers punching the body, since often their defense can be a bit two-dimensional, but Sitthichai goes on further here. He plays with the timing off his knee, landing just a hair after the left hook upstairs, which is enough time for Grigorian to throw his counter (which the Thai anticipates), opening up the knee just underneath the Armenian’s right arm.
For the first time, however, it wasn’t enough and Grigorian’s composure ultimately secured the victory to round out an absolutely brilliant series of kickboxing contests. Fight #5 is a confluence of everything Marat Grigorian has learned up to this point about his rival. Almost every tactical improvement he stumbled up after four losses was in play against the champion that night. The sweetest victory of all was that it was definitive. As definitive as any fight in this series. The taciturn slugger looked a bit lost for words when the belt was finally wrapped around his waist, but his spirit was unmistakable.
Conclusion
After five fights, four years, twenty four rounds, thirty seven Glory events in the interim, nine shots to the cup, and one fateful knockdown, Marat Grigorian finally overcame all odds and defeated his arch rival in one of the most riveting kickboxing series I’ve seen to date. The first two fights are solid, but Fights #3 and #4 are two of my favorite Glory bouts to date and Marat’s performance the fifth time around brings everything full circle.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time discussing Grigorian’s gradual ascent to greatness, so as I wrap up, I must play an even-hand: Sitthichai is one of the best kickboxers in the world and there is a reason he won the duration of this series. To call the Thai a slick outside mover would be an understatement. The former Glory champion is a stunningly efficient outfighter, one who knows exactly how to draw and dictate his own exchanges and one with such subtle gradients between his setups that finding openings against him can prove uniquely difficult (see; the first four fights). What is perhaps less obvious is the heart and soul of the Thai competitor. Any time a war broke out, Sitthichai dug deeper within himself to find answers. Just like Samart against Dieselnoi, the Thai champion cannot be blamed for his performance in the fifth fight, as he never once stopped looking for answers or fighting to win.
Jokes aside, it must be said how impressive this sort of commitment and will is from the hard-nosed Armenian. Like I said, fighters have had their confidence completely eroded by a lot less than four losses the same man, but Marat endured that and never stopped pushing. Improvements are hard to make, especially when you continue to adapt and find yourself one step behind your opponent. When the final bell sounded and the championship was granted to Grigorian, I have to imagine that a small part of elation was the relief to be fighting somebody in the future not named Sitthichai for once.
This series might have skewed the opinion on the Armenian-Belgian as a finisher, which the champion went to extreme lengths to rectify in his most recent performance against poor Elvis Gashi.
I wanted to write about this five-fight arc, because it is a rare and surprisingly spirited story in the cynical world of combat sports. Most fighters would’ve simply given up after two consecutive failed attempts, but Grigorian shouldered double that before he finally figured out the dangerous riddle in front of him. It is a testament to his resilience, introspection, and perseverance that he managed to even the scorecard to a whopping 1-4. In some ways, this is the most incredible journey of the human spirit I’ve ever seen in combat sports, with Marat Grigorian throwing himself at a brick wall again and again and again (and again) before finally bursting his way through. A few of the fights in this series could be scored for the Armenian, but a coinflip split just wouldn’t have had the same impact. He wanted a dominant victory over his rival, and in the end, that is exactly what he got.
I do not know what comes next for either man. There are interesting fights from both guys elsewhere (specifically, in the case of either man moving up in weight, international badass, Cédric Doumbé), but if Sitthichai finds a chip on his shoulder the same way Grigorian did, then I will happy watch these two great competitors throw down once more.
At the highest levels, great fighters should bring the best out of each other, and I’ll be damned if that isn’t exactly what Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong and Marat Grigorian do here.