A four-man, one-night tournament will crown the new KSW Light Heavyweight champion, on a card set to celebrate 20 years of the promotion.
The tournament will take place at KSW EPIC, on February 24th at the PreZero Arena in Gliwice, Poland, as KSW roll back the years and fans get to witness a tournament format that is synonymous with the promotion's early shows.
One of the most intriguing things about the tournament is that fans will play matchmaker, using social media to vote and decide which athletes will face each other in the opening round.
The four men that are set to feature are number 1 ranked, Rafal Haratyk, number 3 ranked Marcin Wojcik, number 5 ranked Kleber Silva and number 6 ranked Damian Piowarczyk.
Haratyk cemented himself at the very top of the KSW 205lbs division in his promotional debut! Coming in and facing Ivan Erslan in his first bout, the ‘Polish Tank’ immediately showed his level, defeating Erslan in the first round.
Wojcik will be hoping he can take home the KSW Light Heavyweight title at the second time of asking. Having first fought for the promotion at KSW 2 in 2008, ‘The Giant’ returned 8 years later and put the 205lbs division on notice. Wins over Tomasz Kondraciuk, Michal Fijalka and Marcin Lazarz led to a contest against the champion Tomasz Narkun. It wasn’t meant to be for Wojcik as Narkun stopped him in the last second of the first round. He went on to compete twice more for KSW during that time before eventually returning in November of 2023, with a win over Luis Henrique da Silva.
Kleber Silva is the most experienced athlete of the four, with 36 professional bouts under his belt. The Brazilian will look to keep his unbeaten run with the promotion intact, entering the tournament with back-to-back wins against Lukasz Sudolski and Rafal Kijanczuk, at KSW 78 and KSW 85, respectively.
Damian Piwowarczyk has impressed many during his KSW tenure. Signing with the promotion when he was only 3-0, ‘Damsyn’ racked up two submission wins over Marcin Trzcinski and Marc Doussis and was looking like a promising talent. He then faced the vastly more experienced Bartosz Lesko at KSW 70 and the experience proved too much with Piwowarczyk suffering his first defeat as a professional. Things didn't get any easier for him, when the unbeaten Bogdan Gnidko handed him a second successive loss. Undeterred, he bounced back to winning ways with two first round victories in 2023.
Discussing the upcoming fight night, KSW CEO Martin Lewandowski is looking forward to seeing what the night has in store. He said:
"KSW EPIC will be a celebration of twenty years of KSW with all sorts of wild and fun combat sports fights. One-night tournaments played such an important part in the early days of KSW, we built our events around them. Now for the first time since KSW 11 in 2009 we are bringing back a tournament where the winner will be crowned the new KSW light heavyweight champion. And not only that, the fans can play matchmaker and decide which fighters meet in the first round. This will be just one epic moment in one epic night in KSW history!"
