New Fights for Hesdy Gerges, Nieky Holzken

Coming out of Europe this week we've got two interesting new fight announcements featuring top 10 fighters.

First up, the #10 ranked It's Showtime Heavyweight champion Hesdy Gerges has been added to the It's Showtime card on September 12 in Amsterdam.  Gerges will face Rustemi Kreshnik in a non-title fight.  This is Gerges's first fight since his controversial disqualification win over Badr Hari in May.  Gerges has been steadily moving up the ranks in the last year, going 7-1 in his last 8, including wins over Ashwin Balrak, Paul Slowinski, and Ruslan Karaev.  Kreshnik has a pair of solid wins in the last year over Rico Verhoeven and Tomas Hron.  This will be a big challenge for Kreshnik, but if he can win it, he will catapult up the ranks.

Over in the Middleweight division, #5 Nieky Holzken has signed to face Sahin "Kass" Yakut on October 16 at Golden Glory's United Glory show.  Holzken is on a 6 fight win streak, going undefeated since losing in last year's MAX Final 8 to Buakaw.  This will be his second big fight in a month, as he faces L'houcine "Aussie" Ouzgi at the Sept. 12 Showtime show.  Yakut, like Kreshnik, has been somewhat quietly building up his resume, with some good wins on the undercard of It's Showtime shows.  United Glory is billing this as a grudge match between camps, as Holzken is a Golden Glory standout, while Yakut is one of the rising stars for It's Showtime.  I like Yakut, but Holzken has looked better and better lately, and this should be another win for Nieky.

Finally, United Glory has made a few more updates to their World Series starting at this October show.  In addition to Holzken v. Yakut, they have added a women's MMA contest featuring Marloes Coenen and an opponent yet to be determined.  The MMA side of the series now includes Siyar Bahadurzada, Tommy Depret, Ruan Carneiro, Sergei Golyaev, Nick Thompson, and 3 more names TBD.  The kickboxing side still stands at Errol Zimmerman, Gokhan Saki, Mourad Bouzidi, Brice Guidon, Stefan Leko, Anderson "Braddock" Silva, and 2 TBD names, though with Zimmerman and probably Saki now fighting in the K-1 Final 16 on October 2, their involvement could change.