Gokhan Saki in Action This Weekend

This coming Saturday, February 27, KickboxTV presents an Thai Boxe event headlined by K-1 star Gokhan Saki as he faces Dutch Muay Thai stylist Utley Meriana.  The event comes from Schiedam in The Netherlands, and will be streaming live at www.kickboxtv.nl.

This will be Saki's second relatively low profile fight in a row, as his last outing was a win over Dennis Stolzenbach at a smaller show in The Netherlands.  I'd say these kind of fights are perfect for Saki right now.  After a huge breakout year in 2008, Saki hit some roadblocks in 2009, first in an upset loss to Kyotaro, followed by an injury against Pavel Zhuravlev that put him on the sidelines for a number of months.  His return fight was a loss to Peter Aerts before getting back in the win column against Stolzenbach.  From the Aerts fight it seemed clear Saki needed a bit more time to get over the injury and shake off the ring rust - fights where he can get back to his top form away from the high profile of a major K-1 event are the perfect place to do so.

His opponent is Utley "The Easy Killer" Meriana, a Dutch fighter out of the Silent Dragon camp.  Like Saki, Meriana typically fights around 95 kg.  Largely unknown outside of the Netherlands, Meriana is a decently well-regarded fighter, though he is facing a big step up in competition here.  For more on Meriana, check out one of his fights on YouTube here.